Health & Medicine

Humans have had to face death and mortality since since the beginning of time, but our experience of the dying process has changed dramatically in recent history.

Anna Lembke's new book, Drug Dealer, MD, explores the origins of the prescription drug epidemic from a doctor's perspective.

Kenneth Lonergan's new film is about a janitor, crippled by guilt and grief, who returns to his hometown after the death of his brother.

Longtime activist Cleve Jones reflects on his decades in the LGBT movement, beginning with the 1970s when he first moved to San Francisco.

Actress Carrie Fisher talks about staring in Star Wars, her affair - back then - with co-star Harrison Ford, her mother Debbi Reynolds, and her own struggles with being bi-polar.

Before he died earlier this month, Cohen released a new album with songs that wrestled with mortality, transcendence and the question of God — themes he touched on in this 2006 Fresh Air interview.

The 82-year-old songwriter mixes serious contemplation with mordant humor on his new album. Critic Ken Tucker says You Want It Darker features some of Cohen's simplest, most effective lyrics.

Enter Me

A genuine and funny comic, Chris Gethard talks about how he decided to bring his struggle with depression and suicide into his comedy act, and how improv changed his life.

We remember the comedian Richard Pryor, who died on Saturday. This interview originally aired on May 22, 1995.

John Hudak examines the history of attitudes and policy toward marijuana in the U.S.

Eric Newman, the executive producer of Narcos, the netflix series about drug kingpin Pablo Escobar and the Columbian drug wars tells us about the series which is told in part from the point of view of an American DEA agent.

Married couple Rennie and Brett Sparks have been making songs together as The Handsome Family for 21 years. In 2014, they gained much wider fame when their haunting song, "Far From Any Road," became the theme for the first season of HBO's True Detective.

In her new memoir, Forward, Abby Wambach writes about playing soccer, growing up as the youngest of seven children, her romantic relationships and her struggles with alcohol and prescription drugs.

Enter Me

Ed Yong, author of I Contain Multitudes, says someday we might be able to improve our health by taking probiotics, but "we are still in the very early stages of working out how to do this."

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and essayist William Stanley Merwin was known in the 1960s as an anti-war poet. Now an environmental activist, Merwin has published a new book of poems, The Shadow of Sirius, which addresses themes of memory and mortality.

Dean Burnett says the human brain is like a computer that files information in a way that defies logic. According to Burnett, brains can alter memory, cause motion sickness and affect intelligence.

The energetic lead singer for The Dap-Kings spoke to Fresh Air in '07 and again in '16, after she'd been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. "I want to perform," she said in July. Jones died on Nov. 18.