Ward, who died this week, is remembered as one of the first people to write seriously about rock 'n' roll. He wrote for Rolling Stone and Creem and was Fresh Air's rock historian from 1987 until 2017.
Bechdel's new graphic memoir is about her lifelong obsession with exercise. She says she has a "predisposition of being extremely self-conscious and very caught up in my head" — and exercise helps.
Justin Chang says the captivating new drama, "The Disciple," is one of the best movies he's seen this year. The film won the best screenplay prize at last year's Venice International Film Festival. It tells the story of a young man from Mumbai who aspires to be a great classical Indian singer.
SUZANNE SIMARD says trees are "social creatures" that communicate with each other in cooperative ways that hold lessons for humans too. Simard grew up in Canadian forests as a descendant of loggers before becoming a forestry ecologist. She's now a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia. She explains her research on cooperation and symbiosis in the forest, and shares her personal story in the new memoir Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest.
Herrmann composed some of the best-known film music ever written — especially the scores he wrote for Alfred Hitchcock. Now a new CD shows another side of Herrmann that's equally memorable.
When Nicole Lynn Lewis got pregnant in high school, she thought it might end her dream of going to college and having a career. She felt ashamed, in part because of how people regarded her as a pregnant Black teenager. Lewis, who is now in her 40s, was named a CNN Hero in 2014. Last year, she was named one of the inaugural awardees of the Black Voices for Black Justice Fund in recognition of her work addressing structural and systemic racism in America. Her new memoir is called Pregnant Girl: A Story of Teen Motherhood, College, and Creating a Better Future for Young Families.
Collins, who died April 27, orbited in Apollo 11 while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made their historic moon walk. Speaking to Fresh Air in 1988, he described his solo orbit as "completely serene."
Winslet stars in the new HBO series, Mare of Easttown. She spoke to Fresh Air in 2020 about her breakout turn in Titanic when she was in her 20s. "I was learning on the fly," she says.
Film critic Justin Chang says the new film "strikes an exquisite balance between deadpan humor and acute despair, offset by the faintest glimmer of hope."
Mbue's novel was inspired in part by her own experiences growing up in Cameroon. Set in a fictional African village in the 1980s, it follows a group of villagers who take on an American oil company.
A CD set from Mosaic, full of singles and albums made between '46 and '66, confirms the variety of Armstrong's studio sides — and shows how much work went into making them sound casual.
You fall in love with a person, but you get a package deal. That's one of the big messages of two new novels that ruminate on love and family, particularly the family that's thrust upon you when you happen to mate with one of their kith or kin.
ATC creator Bill Siemering and Susan Stamberg who co-anchored ATC from 1972 to 1986 reflect on the early days of All Things Considered. Siemering says he wanted that first broadcast — and the ones that would follow — to offer a different take on the news: "I wanted to hear voices that aren't heard generally on the air and to have first-person accounts of these things."
Investigative journalist Michael Moss's 2013 book, Salt Sugar Fat, explored food companies' aggressive marketing of those products and their impact on our health. In his new book, Hooked, Moss updates the food giants' efforts to keep us eating what they serve — and how they're responding to complaints from consumers and health advocates.
Blanton describes many of the songs on her new album as "anti-fascist anthems." Critic Ken Tucker says Love & Rage doesn't sound like typical protest music — which makes it all the more effective.
The brutal and mesmerizing new film takes place in South Africa in 1981, where 16-year-old Nicholas is coming to grips with his homosexuality in an environment that couldn't be more hostile to it.
Yale professor Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff co-founded the Center for Policing Equity, which collects data on police behavior from 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the country.
