In this week's New Yorker, Atul Gawande asks whether it's possible to lower medical costs by giving the neediest patients better care. Gawande says that primary care physicians who target the chronically ill are the new leaders in health care reform.
In the film Animal Kingdom, Australian actress Jacki Weaver plays the matriarch of a criminal family who has a twisted relationship with her sons. Weaver and Animal Kingdom's director David Michod discuss their unglamorous portrayal of a crime syndicate.
The Decemberists' albums have been characterized by a wide variety of styles, from indie-rock minimalism to art-rock expansiveness. Rock critic Ken Tucker says the band's new album, The King Is Dead, is its best album so far.
Debut author Siobhan Fallon writes about the lives of soldiers and their families in her new short story collection, You Know When the Men Are Gone. Families, she says, take the strangeness of deployment and learn how to create a new normal.
Clarence Jones helped draft Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech and was a close personal adviser and lawyer to the civil rights leader. But he almost turned down the chance to work with King. He explains what changed his mind in his memoir, Behind the Dream.
Both The Green Hornet and The Dilemma open this weekend. The two big-budget male buddy pictures -- one starring Seth Rogen; the other Kevin James and Vince Vaughn -- illustrate that the juvenile "bromance" genre is just getting old.
Singer Margaret Whiting, who collaborated with lyricist Johnny Mercer and performed classic standards like "Moonlight in Vermont," died Monday. Fresh Air remembers Whiting with highlights from a 1988 interview, where she explained how Mercer taught her to read a lyric.
Computerized algorithms now do much of the work on Wall Street. Financial journalist Felix Salmon says they've become ingrained in the financial system -- but are also increasingly complex and difficult to regulate.
Joel and Ethan Coen's latest film is an adaptation of the Charles Portis western novel True Grit. The filmmakers and writers discuss the making of the film and the difficulties of working with both child actors and horses.
Amy Chua, a professor of law at Yale, has written her first memoir about raising children the "Chinese way" — with strict rules and expectations. Maureen Corrigan predicts the book will be "a book club and parenting blog phenomenon."
Writer Mira Bartok's memoir, The Memory Palace, is in part about the car accident that left her with traumatic brain injury and about her relationship with her schizophrenic mother. She explains how her brain injury helped her understand — and reconnect with — her mother.
The new FX series Lights Out centers on a retired heavyweight boxer contemplating a comeback. TV critic David Bianculli says the intense boxing drama may end up being the best new dramatic series of 2011.
What happens to your online presence when you die? Evan Carroll and John Romano edit The Digital Beyond, a website that helps users plan what happens to their online content after death. They suggest you start planning now for the inevitable.
William Trevor has been writing for more than 50 years and has won more literary awards than we have time to list. A volume of selected stories has recently been published, and Fresh Air's book critic Maureen Corrigan has an appreciation.
Arizona's gun laws, among the most lenient in the country, allowed Jared Lee Loughner to conceal and carry his firearm without a permit, explains Washington Post reporter James Grimaldi, who wrote a piece Sunday about Arizona's lax gun laws and Saturday's Tuscon shooting rampage.
Blue Valentine stars Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams as a couple in its final throes -- and also, through flashbacks, in more romantic times. Director Derek Cianfrance has previously made several documentaries. Critic David Edelstein says Cianfrance employs that documentary style in this film.
Three shows, all with ties to Britain, premiere Jan. 9. TV critic David Bianculli says all three -- a period drama on PBS and two comedic adaptations on Showtime -- are clever, well-acted and pleasures to watch.
Mark Wahlberg and David O. Russell talk about creating a movie based on the real-life boxer Micky Ward, who won a welterweight championship in 2000 after several years away from the boxing ring.
Guitarist and composer Marc Ribot's latest album, Silent Movies, pays tribute to film scores. The creation of the album, he says, allowed him to express his more lyrical side.
Since 2006, more than 60,000 of the weapons used in Mexican crimes have been traced back to the United States. Washington Post investigative reporter James Grimaldi explains how a team of reporters uncovered the names of the top 12 U.S. dealers of guns traced to Mexico.
