Terry Gross

McKay's songs lean on influences like vaudeville and hip-hop, and they display a sharp wit: Her debut album was called Get Away From Me. McKay has a new album of songs originally recorded by Doris Day, titled Normal as Blueberry Pie.

This interview first aired on Nov. 21, 2007.

New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg has reported that human excrement and dangerous chemicals are making their way into our waterways and then into our drinking water. Duhigg returns to Fresh Air to talk the problems with our nation's sewer system.

In his new album, If It Wasn't For the Irish and the Jews, Irish musician and folklorist Mick Moloney celebrates the musical collaboration of the Irish and Jewish songwriters and performers of vaudeville and Tin Pan Alley.

Jeremy Scahill has been investigating Blackwater, a military contractor with a long involvement in the Iraq war. His latest story, published Nov. 23 in The Nation, uncovers the contractor's involvement in a covert program in Pakistan run by the U.S. Joint Special Command.

The actor and director shares memories and discusses the work of his late father, journalist and novelist Dominick Dunne, who became famous for covering the lives and trials of celebrities. He died in August at the age of 83.

Tom Ford has put his creative sensibilities to work in the service of a Christopher Isherwood tale: A Single Man, which marks Ford's big-screen directorial debut.

The author talks about her blockbuster novel, The Lovely Bones, which features a surprising device: its main character, a young girl who has been murdered, narrates the book from the afterlife. Sebold's book is the basis for a new film by director Peter Jackson.

This interview was originally broadcast July 10, 2002.

In remote places along the southwest border of the U.S., the consequences of recent immigration crackdown have become evident. Journalist Tom Barry says that prisons here hold both legal and illegal immigrants for deportation, many far away from their homes and families.

Invictus director Clint Eastwood and star Morgan Freeman — who was Nelson Mandela's pick to portray him — talk about telling the story of one pivotal public gesture the former South African president made shortly after his election, hoping to make a big statement that would help ease decades of racial bitterness and injustice in his nation.

Jazz great Thelonius Monk had a unique sound that won him millions of fans — and it certainly stole the heart of the Baroness Nica de Koenigswarter. In a new documentary, The Jazz Baroness, filmmaker Hannah Rothschild explores the unusual friendship between the American jazz pianist and the Englishwoman, and the impact they made on modern music.