Segments by Date

The man in charge of Regent Law is a graduate of the University of Chicago's law school and the author of a 1999 book titled Is Higher Law Common Law? Readings on the Influence of Christianity in Anglo-American Law. Brauch talks to Terry Gross about Regent Law and about Savage's reporting.

Ever since word got out that Don DeLillo was working on a novel about Sept. 11, anticipation has been building. After all, DeLillo has claimed plots and conspiracies as his literary subject. Book critic Maureen Corrigan has a review of DeLillo's new novel, Falling Man.

Pulitizer Prize-winning journalist Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe. He's been writing about a Christian law school, founded by televangelist Pat Robertson, whose graduates have become influential in the Justice Department.

One of those Regent University graduates is Monica Goodling, former top aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Savage writes that Goodling has "drawn a harsh spotlight to the administration's hiring of officials educated at smaller, conservative schools with sometimes marginal academic reputations."

The Rev. Jerry Falwell, founder and pastor of Lynchburg, Va.,'s Thomas Road Baptist Church and an outspoken leader of the religious right, died yesterday at age 73; we remember him with an interview recorded in the early days of Fresh Air's national broadcast. In 1979, Falwell founded a movement he called the Moral Majority and helped return the Republican Party to power with the election of President Ronald Reagan. Falwell also founded Liberty University, an evangelical institution believed to be the largest of its kind. Rebroadcast from March 14, 1986.

Michael Chiklis stars as rogue detective Vic Mackey in the TV series The Shield; the Peabody Award-winning show is in its sixth season on the FX cable channel.

Previously, Chiklis starred in The Commish; over the years, he's also made guest appearances on Seinfeld, L.A. Law, Miami Vice, and Wiseguy.

Bobby Braddock is the award-winning country songwriter behind tunes including "He Stopped Loving Her today," "D-I-V-O-R-C-E," and "Did You Ever."

Now he's tackled a different kind of writing: His memoir, Down in Orburndale: A Songwriter's Youth in Old Florida, is out now from Louisiana State University Press.

Wondering what your pet is trying to tell you with that bizarre habit or that pleading look? Dodman is the best-selling author of The Dog Who Loved Too Much and The Cat Who Cried for Help. His latest is Puppy's First Steps: The Whole-Dog Approach to Raising a Happy Healthy, Well-Behaved Puppy.

A new box-set DVD collection of early musicals starring Hollywood's favorite wholesome blonde includes Romance on the High Seas, My Dream Is Yours, On Moonlight Bay, I'll See You in My Dreams, By the Light of the Silvery Moon and Lucky Me. Lloyd Schwartz has a review.

Melinda Merck literally wrote the book on investigating animal cruelty — a crime that's increasingly understood to be linked to domestic violence. Merck is co-author of Forensic Investigation of Animal Cruelty: A Guide for Veterinarians and Law Enforcement, and in June she will publish a textbook, Veterinary Forensics: Animal Cruelty Investigations. (A warning: Parts of this interview are disturbing).

As artistic director of the Encores series at New York's City Center, Jack Viertel is the go-to guy for one of New York's hottest musical-theater tickets. It's just the latest phase, though, in an impressive theatrical career.

The new album 3 showcases Lafayette Gilchrist's maximalist jazz piano in a trio setting rather than with his seven-piece New Volcanoes band. Even in the more intimate arrangement, Gilchrist isn't afraid to make the box shout; this is jazz from artists influenced by everything from hip-hop to the D.C. area's distinctive go-go sound.

In Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America 1789-1989, historian Michael Beschloss takes a look at nine crucial moments when a president risked his political career for the good of the country, often by taking an unpopular or controversial stand.

It's been eight years since Nathan Englander's award-winning short-story collection, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, was published. Since then, he's been working on a novel, and if nothing else, his knack for intriguing titles is intact: His debut novel, set in Buenos Aires during the Argentina's '70s-era "dirty war," is called The Ministry of Special Cases.

Garry Shandling parodied TV talk shows on The Larry Sanders Show, which ran on HBO from 1992 to 1998 and is now out in a four-DVD box set. It's called Not Just the Best of "The Larry Sanders Show" — in part because it features eight hours of extras, including essentially unedited conversations with stars who made guest appearances on the Larry Sanders sofa.

Since she began her recording career in the '70s, Patti Smith has never been shy about recording covers of her favorite songs, such as Van Morrison's "Gloria." Now she's released an album consisting entirely of other people's songs — a dozen covers, originally recorded by acts as diverse as the Doors, Nirvana and the Rolling Stones, under the simple title Twelve.

Think of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3 as a kind of Ben-Hur for our time — it delivers state-of-the-art spectacle, but it also yearns to throw a spotlight on the struggle between good and evil. It ends in deathbed conversions and churchy epiphanies, and it offers more homilies than the average Sunday sermon.

In 1961, an integrated group of self-proclaimed "Freedom Riders" challenged segregation by riding together on segregated buses through the Deep South. They demanded unrestricted access to the buses — as well as to terminal restaurants and waiting rooms — but pledged nonviolence.

Critic-at-large John Powers reflects on what he thinks is the single greatest movie ever made about the city of Los Angeles — Killer of Sheep, an independent film made in the late '70s by Charles Burnett. It's on the Library of Congress' National Film Registry; it will be showing in selected theaters in the next few months, and it comes out on DVD this September.

British writer Jon Savage wrote England's Dreaming, a landmark book on the punk era. Now, in Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture, he's chronicled what he calls the "prehistory of the teenager."