Crime

It's been five years since New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey first wrote about Harvey Weinstein's history of sexual assault allegations and helped ignite the #MeToo movement. Now there's a new movie called "She Said," based on their Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation and their subsequent book about their investigation. The movie stars Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan and opens this week in theaters.

The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Hua Hsu defined himself as a teen by the music he loved. The murder of a close friend when he was in college changed the course of his life. His memoir is Stay True.

In 2010, Jay-Z reflected on growing up in Brooklyn surrounded by drugs and violence. "One day, your best friend could be killed. The day before, you could be celebrating him getting a brand-new bike."

Whitehead says his novel was inspired by his love of heist movies. The story centers on a furniture store owner who has a side hustle trafficking in stolen goods. Originally broadcast Sept. 15, 2021.

Veteran cold case investigator Paul Holes talks about pursuing killers and the emotional toll of obsessing over crime scenes and talking to victims of horrific crimes. He has a new memoir called Unmasked.

Filmmaker Ramita Navai Navai chronicles the Taliban's treatment of women in the new PBS Frontline documentary, Afghanistan Undercover, which she started researching in early 2020.

Stockholm-born actor Alexander Skarsgård says he had to work against his natural tendencies for his latest movie, The Northman, a violent epic set about 1,000 years ago.

White Lies author A.J. Baime tells the story of Walter White, a light-skinned Black man whose ancestors had been enslaved. For years White risked his life investigating racial violence in the South.

Comic W. Kamau Bell takes Bill Cosby's fall from "America's dad" to sexual predator personally. In the four-part Showtime documentary series, We Need to Talk About Cosby, Bell grapples with Cosby's tainted legacy and his larger betrayal of the Black community.

Russell Shorto's grandfather was a mob leader in the industrial town of Johnstown, Pa. He spoke to Fresh Air in 2021 about the havoc that resulted from his grandfather's business dealings.

Activist Tarana Burke is the founder of the #MeToo Movement and has worked with Black and brown girls who are survivors of sexual violence. She originated the phrase and concept Me Too in 2006, as a way for victims to share their stories and connect with others. The Me Too hashtag went viral in 2017, in response to the Harvey Weinstein allegations of sexual assault.

Journalist Julie K. Brown's 2018 series for the Miami Herald generated national attention and spurred an investigation that put wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein behind bars on federal charges. He died there, from an apparent suicide. She has a new book.

Seven years into his 60-year sentence, Yutico Briley wrote a letter to Emily Bazelon, who writes about the criminal justice system. They both reflect on Briley's long path to exoneration.

The new novel Falling is a thriller and the debut of writer T.J. Newman who is a former flight attendant. It's about an airline pilot who faces a terrible choice.

Ford's new memoir, Somebody's Daughter, details her childhood growing up poor in Indiana and her complicated relationships with her mother, her grandmother and her own body.

New York Times investigative reporter Michael Schwirtz gained access to the dashboard of DarkSide, a Russian ransomware operation that's pulled in more than $90 million since it began last August.

Promising Young Woman marks the directing debut of Emerald Fennell. The movie has been nominated for five Academy Awards, including best director and best original screenplay. Fennell describes the film as "a kind of fantasy — with wish fulfillment" but also as something "much darker and, I hope, more honest than that."

Sociologist Reuben Jonathan Miller writes about the aftereffects of mass incarceration in his new book, Halfway Home. The book is based on 15 years of research in which he followed the lives of about 250 incarcerated and formerly incarcerated men and women, and spoke with their family and friends.

Eliot Higgins is the founder of an online collective that picks apart conspiracy theories and investigates war crimes and hate crimes using clues from the Internet. His new book is We Are Bellingcat.

Law professor and human rights activist Rosa Brooks wanted to better understand police violence and the racial disparities in America's criminal justice system, so she decided to join the police force as a volunteer.