The author's new memoir, Winter Journal, is a history of his body — scars, panic attacks and near-death experiences. He tells Fresh Air how he got a reputation as a dirty fighter, why he doesn't drive and how hard it was to see his mother's dead body.
This weekend will be Hader's final romp on Saturday Night Live. He joined the cast in 2005 and has been nominated for an Emmy for his character Stefon, an obsessive clubgoer. Hader talks about not understanding how people do standup and about watching old films, which sparked his interest in Hollywood.
Comedian Phyllis Diller died Monday at the age of 95. In a 1986 interview with Fresh Air, Diller explains her routine when starting out, before she developed her persona as a crazed housewife.
Journalist Seth Rosenfeld spent three decades pursuing government documents about the FBI's undercover operation in Berkeley, Calif., during the student protest movements in the '60s. His new book details how the FBI "used dirty tricks to stifle dissent on campus" and influenced Ronald Reagan's politics.
In the movie Robot & Frank, the actor plays an aging ex-burglar who learns to take advantage of his robot caretaker. Langella, 74, tells Fresh Air why he was drawn to the role, and discusses the ups and downs of his long career.
There are lots of stories about the band that got away. For rock historian Ed Ward, one of those groups has always been Autosalvage, a New York quartet who made one album and then stopped playing.
Thirty-three states now have voter ID laws requiring identification for voting. Some new laws requiring photo ID are being challenged in court or reviewed by the Justice Department. One supporter says these laws will prevent fraud. A critic says the claims are overblown.
Garbarek helped the ECM label find its emerging voice 40 years ago. A new box set of early albums captures the saxophonist's forming sound — austere and astringent.
"We've had time to act — and essentially we haven't acted," says science journalist Michael Lemonick. He describes the threats posed by climate change in his new book, Global Weirdness: Severe Storms, Deadly Heat Waves, Relentless Drought, Rising Seas, and the Weather of the Future.
The Republican vice presidential pick wants to take another look at programs like Medicare and Social Security. Fresh Air's resident linguist parses the word "entitlement" in its political and nonpolitical contexts.
In Peter Heller's debut novel, The Dog Stars, a man named Hig survives a superflu that kills most of humanity. Heller, a travel and adventure writer, says that when his novel took a post-apocalyptic turn, he found himself relying on his real-life scrapes and survival skills.
Writer and humorist David Rakoff, who died Thursday at the age of 47, wrote with a perfect balance of wit and gravity about the cancer that would ultimately take his life. Fresh Air remembers Rakoff with excerpts from two interviews in 2001 and 2010.
The stand-up comedian says it's hard to pull off jokes about being rich, but "just because you're doing well in life doesn't mean you can't complain, too." Rock's latest project is a film called 2 Days in New York, in which he plays half of an interracial, multinational couple hosting relatives from France.
In Hope Springs, Kay (Meryl Streep) and Arnold (Tommy Lee Jones) seek out a couples therapist (Steve Carell) to try to rekindle the spark in their marriage. Critic David Edelstein says it's a post-reproductive chick flick for audiences who are no longer spring chickens.
In The Long Road to Antietam, historian Richard Slotkin traces how both Northern and Southern strategies changed in the summer of 1862, when both sides committed to an all-out total war, and Lincoln squared off against Gen. George McClellan.
Most people's after-midnight mishaps are nothing compared with what David K. Randall describes in his new book. From people committing murder while supposedly sleepwalking, to what sleep was like in medieval times, Dreamland provides a lively overview of the world's most popular nocturnal pastime.
Keegan spent his life studying war, but he never fought in one and described himself as more or less a pacifist. The British military historian, who died last week at age 78, chronicled the history of warfare from Alexander the Great to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
