California--Los Angeles

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.

Filmmaker Sofia Coppola's latest movie, Somewhere, is about an aimless Hollywood actor, played by Stephen Dorff, who re-examanes his superficial life after a visit from his 11-year-old daughter. Coppola discusses the film -- and her relationship with her own father, Francis Ford Coppola.

For 20 years, the Rev. Gregory Boyle has run Homeboy Industries, an anti-gang program that employs and is run by ex-gang members in Los Angeles. Boyle recently had to lay off most of his staff because of financial problems. He recounts the decades he's helped ex-gang members turn their lives around in a new memoir, Tattoos on the Heart.

Novelist and playwright Dan Fante writes about alcoholism, drug addiction and failed attempts at literary success — all of which he has experienced himself. He discusses his novel, 86'd, battling his own emotional demons, and the process of reliving his past on paper.

The story was first broadcast September 29, 2009.

Novelist and playwright Dan Fante writes about alcoholism, drug addiction and failed attempts at literary success — all of which he has experienced himself. He discusses the process of reliving his past on paper.

The volatile and eclectic music scene of 1960s Los Angeles comes together in a new box set issued by Rhino Records. Critic Ed Ward gives it a listen.

Thomas Pynchon's latest novel, Inherent Vice, is a detective romp set at the end of the 1960s psychedelic era. Critic-at-large John Powers has a review.

He's not referred to as a Terminator anymore, but back in 1984, a sci-fi thriller made a star out of a cyborg assassin from the future. Film critic David Edelstein reviews the franchise's fourth film.

Radical bombers battle strikebreaking capitalists while Clarence Darrow squares off against the "American Sherlock Holmes" in this very popular history of a trial that mixed murder, politics and celebrity in 1910 Los Angeles.

Fresh Air book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Relentless Pursuit: A Year in the Trenches With Teach for America, by Donna Foote.