Critic Ken Tucker reviews new music by the British punk band The Mekons and the American country-rock band The Mavericks. Both groups have recorded new songs that were inspired by recent news events.
The 1960s show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In turned actress Goldie Hawn into a star. Later, she starred in the films Cactus Flower, Swing Shift, and Private Benjamin. Hawn's autobiography, written with Wendy Holden, is Goldie: A Lotus Grows in the Mud.
The National Book Award winner's new novel is based in part on her memories of growing up in Brooklyn in the 1970s. Woodson describes the teen years as an "amazing and urgent moment" in life.
Megan Abbott's new book takes readers deep into the intense, vacuum-sealed universe of young female gymnasts and their parents. Critic Maureen Corrigan says You Will Know Me is worthy of a gold medal.
As their parents engage in a bitter real-estate dispute, the friendship between two adolescent boys deepens in Ira Sach's new film. Critic David Edelstein calls Little Men "quietly devastating.
While on tour for her album, Over and Even, Shelley stopped by WHYY to play some of her songs along with accompanist Nathan Salsburg. She tells Fresh Air's Sam Briger she's always wanted to perform.
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and essayist William Stanley Merwin was known in the 1960s as an anti-war poet. Now an environmental activist, Merwin has published a new book of poems, The Shadow of Sirius, which addresses themes of memory and mortality.
The Late Late Show host talks about belting out songs with celebrities like Elton John, Steve Wonder and Adele. He tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross he doesn't know what he did to deserve this great gig.
"The '70s were a toxic, dangerous, scary time in America" says Jeffrey Toobin. His new book puts the kidnapping, crimes and trial of Patty Heart in the context of those times.
Dean Burnett says the human brain is like a computer that files information in a way that defies logic. According to Burnett, brains can alter memory, cause motion sickness and affect intelligence.
In her comedy special Baby Cobra, Wong speaks frankly about sensitive topics, including prejudice within the Asian-American community, interracial dating and her own miscarriage. She says her decision to film the special while pregnant was a personal one.
A conversation with novelist Jay McInerney about finding fame as a young man, writing, New York City, and his new novel Bright, Precious Days about marriage, fidelity and middle age.
Rock historian Ed Ward says that musicians in Düsseldorf, Germany, including Klaus Dinger of the band Neu!, helped start a new German pop movement in the 1970s and '80s.
Actor Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass pair up again for another chapter in the series about a rogue CIA assassin. Critic David Edelstein says Jason Bourne is very flashy — but not much fun.
The co-founder of the first national lesbian-rights organization in the United States — and the country's first national lesbian magazine — died Aug. 27 at age 87. We remember her with a Fresh Air interview from 1992.
As New Orleans' levees buckled, Kimberly Rivers Roberts turned her video camera on marooned friends, relatives and neighbors. Roberts' footage has been adapted into a powerful documentary that is as much about America as it is about the deadly storm.
The energetic lead singer for The Dap-Kings spoke to Fresh Air in '07 and again in '16, after she'd been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. "I want to perform," she said in July. Jones died on Nov. 18.
Donald Trump's pledge to be the "law and order" candidate revived a slogan that's associated with Richard Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign. Many people have heard that phrase as racially coded, then and now. But linguist Geoff Nunber notes, its resonances aren't quite the same as they were back then.
