Through his first band, La Perfecta, labeled "the band with the crazy roaring elephants," Palmieri was credited with originating Latin jazz's trombone sound in New York during the sixties. In 1994, Palmieri's lobbying culminated in the announcement of a new Grammy Award category for Afro-Caribbean Jazz.
Civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz is known as a defender of free speech and an advocate for the right to a passionate defense. Dershowitz has defended many controversial figures and is currently involved in the Claus von Bulow and Jack Henry Abbott cases. He has been a professor at Harvard Law School since the age of twenty-eight. His new book is "The Best Defense."
Kieran plays, Roman Roy, one of three self-involved adult siblings vying to take over Waystar Royco, the family-run media conglomerate, after their elderly father retires or dies. Roman, the youngest brother, is known for his slimy sense of humor and casual zingers.
Frank Friel was the co-director and chief investigator of the Philadelphia Police/FBI Organized Crime Task Force, which dismantled the Nicodemo Scarfo-led mafia in the 1980s. The gang's violent acts terrorized the Philadelphia area; they also infiltrated Atlantic City's casinos. Friel has a new book about that time, called Breaking the Mob.
Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews "Rock of Life," by Rick Springfield and "Til My Heart Stops," by Lisa Hartman, two TV stars trying to make the rock charts. Springfield plays a doctor on the daytime soap "General Hospital;" Hartman is a cast member of the evening soap "Knot's Landing."
Virginia Sole-Smith produces the newsletter and podcast Burnt Toast, where she explores fatphobia, diet culture, parenting and health. In her new book, Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture, she argues that efforts to fight childhood obesity have caused kids to absorb an onslaught of body-shaming messages.
In the viscerally unnerving films of Ari Aster, there's nothing more horrific than the reality of human grief. His haunted-house thriller, Hereditary, followed a family rocked by traumas so devastating that the eventual scenes of devil-worshipping naked boogeymen almost came as a relief. Aster's new movie, Midsommar, doesn't pack quite as terrifying a knockout punch, but it casts its own weirdly hypnotic spell. This is a slow-burning and deeply absorbing piece of filmmaking, full of strikingly beautiful images and driven less by shocks than ideas.
Philadelphia Daily News reporters Barbara Laker and Wender Ruderman received the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for the 10-month series "Tainted Justice." Their reporting on an allegedly crooked police narcotics squad resulted in the review of hundreds of criminal cases -- and started an FBI investigation into one of the Philadelphia police's elite units.
Mary J. Blige has a classic R&B instrument: Her voice has that mixture of gospel assurance, soulful rawness and dynamic range that enables her to make her best performances into short stories with a beginning, a middle and an often cataclysmic end. Her ninth studio album, Stronger With Each Tear, is an uneven effort that finds Blige shifting her tactics between commercial calculation, gut-instinct music she just wants to sing the heck out of, and some ineffable combination of the two.
Joel Selvin, the Rock Critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, talks with Fresh Air Producer Amy Salit about the life of Grateful Dead band leader Jerry Garcia. Marin County officials in California say Garcia died early this morning of apparently natural causes. He was 53.
Robert Shope, Co-chair of the Committee on Emerging Microbial Threats to Health. Shope is also a physician and professor of epidemiology at the Yale University School of Medicine, and was part of the team that identifyied the virus that caused Lyme disease. Terry will talk with him about a new virus strain discovered in the Southwest.
His songs include "By The Time I Get to Phoenix," "Up Up and Away," "Wichita Lineman," "Macarthur Park," "Galveston," "Didn't We," "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and "All I Know." His songs have been recorded by Glenn Campbell, Johnny Cash, Joe Cocker, Linda Ronstadt, Art Garfunkle and the Fifth Dimension. At one point in the 1960s, he had five Top 10 hits within a 20-month period.
Healey's organization works on behalf of prisoners of conscience around the world. His latest strategy to raise awareness for this issue is to stage rock concerts featuring politically-minded performers like Bruce Springsteen, U2, and Stevie Wonder. Healey was a Catholic priest in the 1960s, but found he had more opportunities to pursue humanitarian work in the secular world.
The French filmmaker started making movies before the New Wave movement, and without having a vast knowledge of film history. Her latest, Kung Fu Master, is about forty-year-old woman who falls in love with an adolescent boy. Varda cast her son as the male lead.
Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell have been friends and collaborators since they first met in 1974. While they always wanted to make an album together, they never did until recently. Old Yellow Moon includes songs by Crowell, Patti Scialfa, Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson among others.
Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story made a splash, but critic John Powers says its critique of capitalism is "the kind of scattershot tirade I used to hear in my college dorm." Better object lessons: New documentaries, Schmatta and American Casino, that do far more to explain how grand economic forces shape our daily lives.
Actor Brian Dennehy who won a Tony Award for his portrayal of Willy Loman in the current Broadway production of "Death of a Salesman." Mr. Dennehy recently starred in the television movies "Shadow of a Doubt" and "Jack Reed: A Search for Justice." He is perhaps best known for his work in feature films, which include Presumed Innocent, Best Seller, Twice in a Lifetime, F/X, Cocoon, Silverado, Gorky Park, First Blood, Never Cry Wolf, and Peter Greenaway’s Belly of an Architect.
Stacey and Doug Loizeaux are niece and uncle, and are part of the family-owned demolition company, Controlled Demolition, of Maryland. They are experts at imploding buildings. The buildings theye brought down include the Seattle Kingdome, the Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas(which was brought down spectacularly with a fireworks display), and the bombed federal building in Oklahoma City. Doug father pioneered the techniques of implosion nearly 60 years ago.
While he served as a Party leader, Junius Irving Scales was arrested and convicted under the Smith Act. After his release from prison, Scales left the party after revelations over Stalin's actions in the Soviet Union. His new book, called Cause at Heart, recalls his work as a political activist.
Tex-Mex rocker Doug Sahm. For many, he's still best known for his stint with the Sir Douglas Quintet, a group of Texans and Mexicans who were packaged to look like a British Invasion band. The group sported regal coats and fakey British accents and cranked out hits like "Mendocino" and "She'a About a Mover." Sahm has been playing a variety of styles ever since, including Tex-Mex, blues, rhythm and blues, rock. Sahm is now touring with Antone's Texas R&B Revue, and has just released a new album, titled Juke Box Music.
