Terry Gross

The Indiana-born singer-songwriter's latest album, No Better Than This, was produced using vintage recording equipment at historical locations in order to capture the essence of old folk, country and blues. Mellencamp shares the stories behind some of his most famous songs -- and sings several in a studio session on Fresh Air.

This interview was originally broadcast on March 31, 2009.

In a new memoir, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey revisits her own memories of the Gulf Coast region, and details how members of her family worked to rebuild their lives after the storm. She asks how the identity of the Gulf will be remembered — and how the region's stories will be told.

Writer Sue Diaz was surprised when her son Roman told her that he was joining the Army. She writes about the emotional roller coaster her family experienced when her son left for war — and how her relationship with Roman changed — in Minefields of the Heart.

Neurobiologist Susan R. Barry was born cross-eyed, and for most of her life, she saw the world in two dimensions, instead of three. But in her late 40s, Barry retrained her brain and her eyes to perceive the world in a new way. She explains how her vision -- and her whole sense of self -- changed in her memoir, Fixing My Gaze.

Everything you wanted to know about bug sex (but didn't bother to ask) is explained in a new book. Insect expert Marlene Auk describes how ants learn, why some crickets don't chirp and how various bugs mate in Sex on Six Legs: Lessons on Life, Love and Language from the Insect World.

The long-running movie chat show, created by Chicago critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel 35 years ago, is calling it quits this weekend. Fresh Air bids farewell by replaying an archival interview from 1996.

This interview was originally broadcast on March 21, 1996.

The Vidocq Society is a Philadelphia-based group of criminologists and forensic experts; they gather together once a month to solve cold cases. Writer Michael Capuzzo explains what it was like to shadow the crime-fighters in The Murder Room.

In Crude World, journalist Peter Maass argues that our relentless pursuit of oil has created a host of problems in the world — particularly in the countries that hold the most deposits. He explains why our dependence on the fossil fuel is not without social and environmental costs.

During the summer of 1896, a 10-day heat wave killed nearly 1,500 people across New York City — many of them tenement-dwellers. In Hot Time in the Old Town, historian Ed Kohn describes the disaster — and how a little-known police commissioner named Theodore Roosevelt championed the efforts to help New Yorkers survive the heat.

Vanity Fair's Todd Purdum followed President Obama and his advisers around for a day this summer. He says the modern-day presidency would be unrecognizable to previous chief executives -- "thanks to the enormous bureaucracy, congressional paralysis, systematic corruption and disintegrating media."