Terry Gross

Research shows that teenagers' brains are not fully insulated, which means that signals move slowly. Frances Jensen, who wrote The Teenage Brain, explains. Originally broadcast Jan. 28, 2015.

Comic W. Kamau Bell finds humor in the parts of America that make him uncomfortable. Speaking to Fresh Air's Terry Gross, Bell likens his new CNN series United Shades of America to a travel show that takes him "to all sorts of different places that I [am] either afraid to go, or you wouldn't expect me to go."

Edward Humes describes his new book as a "transportation detective story" that chronicles the hidden characters, locations and machinery driving our same-day-delivery, traffic-packed world.

Growing up, comics Nadia Manzoor and Radhika Vaz never dreamed that they would one day co-star in a sketch-comedy series about two immigrant Muslim women in Brooklyn. But Manzoor who grew up in a Pakistani-Muslim community in London, and Vaz who grew up in India now star in the web series Shugs & Fats. The series won a Gotham Award for breakthru short form series.

At 46, former Daily Show correspondent Samantha Bee says she's not very concerned with what people think of her.

"Being in my late 40s has been absolutely freeing and liberating for me," Bee tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "I'm a married woman with kids. I'm a professional. People just can't [put me] me in a tiny box that makes sense to them, so now I just don't care that much what people think of me ... and now I do my own thing."

Dan Lyons was in his 50s when he lost his job reporting on the tech industry. He took a job at a start-up, where he was the old guy. His new book is Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble.

Forget "enhanced interrogation techniques" — Eric Fair says what he did as an interrogator in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was torture.

"The idea that there's interrogation, and then enhanced interrogation, and then torture — there is no middle ground," he tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "Torture is an enhanced interrogation."

Reporter John Seabrook talks about the state of the live concert business, and how it got that way. His article on the topic, in this week's issue of The New Yorker, is "The Price of the Ticket."

The Food Network draws more viewers than any of the cable news channels, but Americans are actually cooking less than ever. Food-culture writer Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma) ponders the phenomenon.

Vendela Vida's The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty is a novel about the sense of dislocation that often comes with traveling to another country. Originally broadcast on June 30, 2015.