Sarah Chayes has been living and working in Afghanistan since she covered the fall of the Taliban government for NPR. She joins Fresh Air to explain how the hard-line religious movement is using both fear and persuasion as it works to once again expand its power in Afghanistan.
Mosaic Records has re-released the work of jazz musician Anthony Braxton in an eight-CD set. The Complete Arista Recordings of Anthony Braxton features recordings from the 1970s that previously existed only on vinyl. Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead has a review.
Antony Hegarty, lead singer for Antony and the Johnsons, has a striking sound — "between male and female ... at once ethereal and earthy," one critic writes. The group's new CD is The Crying Light.
Parkinson's disease is part of journalist Dave Iverson's personal history: His father had it, his brother has it and he has it. Now, a new PBS "Frontline" documentary, My Father, My Brother, and Me chronicles Iverson's attempt to understand the disease.
Saxophonist Hank Crawford died Jan. 29 at the age of 74. The Memphis-born musician backed B.B. King and Ray Charles before going solo. He later became the musical director for Charles' band. Fresh Air remembers Crawford with a 1998 interview.
James Bobin is the co-creator and director of HBO's series Flight Of The Conchords. He has been nominated for eight Emmys since 2003 for his work on Conchords and Da Ali G Show.
Bill Paxton plays Bill Henrickson, the head of a polygamous family in the HBO series Big Love. He received Golden Globe nominations for his work on the show in 2007 and 2008.
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist John Updike died of lung cancer on Jan. 27. Fresh Air remembers the writer with archival interviews from 1988, 1989 and 1997.
Jose Torres-- the former light-heavyweight boxing champion-- died from a heart attack on Jan. 19 at the age of 72. Fresh Air remembers him with an interview from 1989.
Although many Americans heard Barack Obama's inauguration speech, they probably weren't listening for plyptotons and catachresis — but Geoff Nunberg was.
Robot soldiers are no longer just the stuff of sci-fi fantasy. As technological warfare expert P.W. Singer explains in his new book, Wired For War, some military tasks previously assigned to humans are now being handled by machines.
Critic-at-large John Powers reviews a newly-released DVD of Roberto Rossellini's 1966 film The Taking of Power by Louis XIV. Originally made for Italian television, the costume-drama follows a rocky transfer of power amidst the lavish court rituals of 17th-century France.
Natasha Trethewey won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for her book Native Guard. Her parents had an interracial marriage while it was still illegal in Mississippi, and Tretheway's poetry often draws on her childhood as a biracial child in the south.
Street artist Shepard Fairey created the iconic red, white and blue Obama illustration that became the unofficial poster of the campaign. Although his campaign poster never became official, Fairey has been commissioned to design the official poster for the inauguration.
Eric Foner, author of Our Lincoln, talks about the era following the Civil War in which former slaves were promised equal rights and citizenship. Foner is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University.
Ta-Nehisi Coates grew up in the post-civil rights era, son of a publisher and former Black Panther; he's a contributing editor and blogger for The Atlantic magazine and author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, 2 Sons, and An Unlikely Road to Manhood.
