Charters helped ignite the blues revival of the '50s and '60s. He made field recordings of forgotten and previously undiscovered performers. He also wrote two books. He died Wednesday; he was 85.
Phil Klay served in Iraq from January 2007 to February 2008. He recently won a National Book Critics Circle award for his collection of short stories. Originally broadcast Nov. 25, 2014.
Seymour: An Introduction is an inspiring new documentary by the actor Ethan Hawke. It's about Seymour Bernstein, who quit a successful concert career at the age of 50 to become a piano teacher.
In Hanya Yanagihara's deeply moving novel, college friends rise, lose their bearings, fall in love, squabble and wrestle with life's tragedies in New York City.
Blake has performed for more than 60 years. He was in Johnny Cash's band and played on Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline album. Now 77, his new album is called Wood, Wire and Words.
Malaby has merged his two trios — with a cello and a tuba — into a quartet called Tubacello. Their new album is Scorpion Eater. Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead says he hopes to hear from them again.
Daniel Genis, son of Soviet emigre writer Alexander Genis, served 10 years for armed robbery. The crimes fueled his heroin addiction. "It was so obvious I didn't fit in," he says.
In Daniel Torday's The Last Flight of Poxl West, a Jewish refugee tells his heroic World War II story in a best-selling — and partly fabricated — memoir.
The perfect example, says critic David Bianculli, is HBO's The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst. Spread out over six weeks, the finale had the most chilling TV moment he's seen in years.
Many historic recordings have been transferred to CD, but not always as accurately as desirable. But a small record company in France has been remastering these recordings in a revolutionary way.
Brandi Carlile is a singer-songwriter who has cited influences as various as Elton John, Patsy Cline, and Queen's Freddie Mercury. Carlile has been releasing albums for the past 10 years, and Fresh Air rock critic Ken Tucker says her new one, called The Firewatcher's Daughter, is her best yet.
In his new memoir, Frank describes how early in politics he feared people would "draw inferences" if he supported gay rights. But his drive to fight discrimination was stronger.
The film is about a teenage girl who sleeps with a boy and is suddenly under a curse. Critic David Edelstein says he didn't enjoy feeling "sick with dread," but the ending is unexpectedly moving.
Fenton Johnson says that while alone, people can "find the richest possible ways of being in the world." He's lived alone for more than 20 years. His Harper's article describes his pursuit.
n the 1800s, the Thames River was thick with human sewage and the streets were covered with horse dung, the removal of which, according to Lee Jackson, presented an "impossible challenge."
In Abigail Thomas' What Comes Next and How to Like It, the aging process robs the 70-something of beauty and energy. In H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald trains a goshawk after her father dies.
Wikipedia editor Bryan Henderson has made it his crusade to edit out the phrase "comprised of" in more than 5 million articles. While his quest is harmless, it shows that zealots can dominate the Web.
In 2011, George Hodgman visited his mother Betty for her 91st birthday in Paris, Missouri. When he saw she needed care, he left Manhattan to live with her. But she still hasn't accepted that he's gay.
Groups celebrating 50 years of existence aren't too common, which is why the media generally makes a big deal out of it. But one such group had their 50th anniversary in 2014 without many people in the U.S. hearing about it. The Hollies, though, are often overlooked in this country because they weren't virtuosos or showmen, and because the American disdain for pop meant that they didn't have the kind of big hits they had in England. Fresh Air music historian Ed Ward has their story today.
Cooking with plant foods naturally high in compounds called glutamates can stimulate the same taste receptors that meat does. America's Test Kitchen explains in The Complete Vegetarian Cookbook.
