Heroin abuse
'Fresh Air' Celebrates The 90th Birthday Of Jazz Improviser Sonny Rollins
Rollins recorded his first sessions in 1949, and played his last live shows in 2012. Kevin Whitehead offers an appreciation, then we listen back to a 1994 interview with the tenor saxophonist.
New Janis Joplin Biography Reveals The Hard Work Behind The Heart
In the 1960s, Janis Joplin was an icon of the counterculture, a female rock star at a time when rock was an all-boys' club.
From Convict To Criminal Justice Reporter: 'I Was So Lucky To Come Out Of This'
As a criminal justice reporter for the Houston Chronicle, Keri Blakinger has a special interest in covering the conditions of prisoners — in part because she spent nearly two years locked up in county and state correctional facilities herself.
Biographer Sought To Write The Kind Of Book Lou Reed 'Deserved'
Music critic Anthony DeCurtis has written a new biography of Lou Reed who was also his friend.
Released From Prison, 'Apologetic Bandit' Writes About Life Inside
Daniel Genis, son of Soviet emigre writer Alexander Genis, served 10 years for armed robbery. The crimes fueled his heroin addiction. "It was so obvious I didn't fit in," he says.
New Meds Block Heroin Craving, But Reporter Finds Treatment Centers Don't Use Them
The Huffington Post's Jason Cherkis investigated the heroin epidemic in Kentucky, and found that the abstinence-based approach used in most treatment centers was leading to many fatal relapses.
Dr. David E. Smith Discusses What's Behind the Current Heroin Epidemic.
Dr. David E. Smith is Founder and President of the Haight Ashbury Free Clinics in San Francisco. He is a specialist in treating drug addicts including heroin. He talks about the rise in heroin's popularity in the 1990's.
A Film About The Return of Heroin.
Filmmaker Steven Okazaki talks about his movie "Black Tar Heroin: The Dark End of The Street." It will show on HBO tomorrow night 4/14. The film tracks five teenage addicts in San Francisco over a two-year period. As a filmmaker, Okazaki won an Academy Award in 1991 for his film "Survivors" which retold the stories of several Hiroshima survivors. He also directed "Living on Tokyo Time" a comedy about a Japanese dishwasher . He lives in Berkeley, California.
A First Class Medical Mystery.
Neurologist William Langston. His work plunged him into a medical mystery, and a hot political controversy about the ethics of medicine. In 1982 Langston was called in to examine a number of "frozen" patients, young men and women in the San Francisco Bay Area who suddenly could neither move or speak, though conscious. Langston recognized the signs of Parkinson's disease, and determined that these patients had all used the same batch of tainted heroin. Langston prescribed L-dopa, a treatment for Parkinson's which only provided short-term relief.
Remembering Red Rodney.
Jazz musicians Red Rodney and Sonny Sharrock. They're both important jazz figures who recently died. We will rebroadcast previous interviews with both Rodney was a trumpeter and band leader. He rose through the big band ranks and played in Charlie Parker's quintet. He was known as one of jazz's best improvisers. And he was known for regaling journalists with his stories-- often of dubious veracity. (Rebroadcast of 6/15/1990)