Terry Gross

The Danish film In a Better World won the 2011 Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film. Director Susanne Bier explains how stories from her family's escape from the Holocaust inform her work.

In There is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America, journalist Philip Dray follows the labor movement as it grew out of 19th century uprisings in textile mills. There are several parallels between those historical battles and what is currently going on in Wisconsin, he says.

Former CIA operatives Robert and Dayna Baer met on the job and fell in love. They talk about their relationship and some of their assignments in The Company We Keep: A Husband-and-Wife True-Life Spy Story.

Shock rocker Alice Cooper is a member of the incoming class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2007, he spoke to Terry Gross about the creation of the Alice Cooper persona, his early stage shows and his vaudevillian humor.

On March 14, Tom Waits will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Fresh Air honors the gritty vocalist with highlights from a 2002 interview, in which he discussed his musical influences and his longtime collaboration with his wife, Kathleen Brennan.

Two years after opening his award-winning Chicago restaurant Alinea, chef Grant Achatz was diagnosed with tongue cancer. He describes losing and regaining his taste in Life, on the Line. "My palate developed just as a newborn," Achatz says. "i don't recommend it, but I think it made me a better chef."

The worldwide lion population has declined a staggering 90 percent in the past 50 years. In their documentary The Last Lions, conservationists Beverly and Dereck Joubert track the giant hunters across Botswana and warn that without intervention, lions may soon go extinct.

Dirk Vandewalle, an associate professor of government at Dartmouth College, gives an inside look at Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and his 42-year rule. Vandewalle has studied and written about Libya since the 1980s. In 1986 he lived in Libya for 14 months, the only Western scholar there at the time.

Melissa Leo isn't that much older than actors Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale. But the acclaimed character actress plays their mother in David O. Russell's boxing drama The Fighter. She discusses her role, which has earned her an Academy Award nomination.

Frank Loesser wrote the musicals Guys and Dolls and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying — in addition to over 700 other songs. On today's Fresh Air, we discuss Loesser's musical legacy.