Government & Politics

The future of Libya has become a key part in the rapidly changing transformation of the Arab world. On today's Fresh Air, political scientist Marc Lynch explains why the United States and its allies decided to intervene -- and what's at stake for each side.

Frank Calabrese Jr. has written a memoir about brining down his father's murderous Chicago crime family. In Operation Family Secrets, Frank details how he helped the FBI convict his father of several murders by wearing a hidden wire and taping his father's conversations.

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.

New York Times labor and workplace reporter Steve Greenhouse explains why other states with large budget deficits are now also considering taking on public unions -- and how the standoff between organized labor and Republican governors is likely to play out.

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.

After the Civil War, the United States seemed poised to grant equal rights to blacks. But the Supreme Court's rulings in the late 19th century kept blacks segregated for decades, says constitutional scholar Lawrence Goldstone.

Journalist Charles Sennott recently returned from Tahrir Square, where he was filming a documentary on the revolution for PBS's Frontline. It focuses on the young members of the Muslim Brotherhood who played an important role in Egypt's revolution.

Aaron Katz's mumblecore flick Cold Weather is set in Portland, Ore.; Lee Chang-dong's Poetry is from South Korea. Critic John Powers says both films are wonderful, in part because the stories they tell are so unpredictable.

Matthew Alexander, a pseudonym for the author, was a military interrogator in Iraq who rejected previously used harsh techniques. He writes about how his team hunted down two key al-Qaida operatives in Kill or Capture.

Country music singer and songwriter Rodney Crowell brings his guitar to play some songs that relate to his new memoir, "Chinaberry Sidewalks." Crowell has been successful in the worlds of country music and alternative music. His songs have been hits for many singers, including Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings and Tim McGraw.

Lawrence Wright talks about the history of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group banned in Egypt by the regime of President Hosni Mubarak that could play an important role in the future of the country.

Journalist Thanassis Cambanis puts what has been going on in Egypt in a historical context — and explains what the popularity of other political parties, like Hezbollah, could mean for relations with Israel and the United States.

New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller explains why the paper decided to publish the classified dispatches and cables from WikiLeaks, the effect those documents had in Tunisia and Egypt, and why he came to regard WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as indifferent to the people whose lives were at risk.

The shootings put gun control back on the political radar screen. But political scientist Robert Spitzer says legislative changes are unlikely because of the relationship Congress has with the NRA.

Using a shared currency has made it difficult for Europe to recover from its economic crisis, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman says. He explains why the euro experiment may fail — and what that would mean for the global trading system.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg reflects on the recent shooting in Tucson, Arizona, arguing that traumatic events make people self-conscious about their language — and perhaps, rightfully so.

Sargent Shriver, the founding director of the Peace Corps and the architect of President Johnson's War on Poverty, died on Tuesday. He was 95. Shriver spoke to Terry Gross in 1995 about his role in the War on Poverty.

Debut author Siobhan Fallon writes about the lives of soldiers and their families in her new short story collection, You Know When the Men Are Gone. Families, she says, take the strangeness of deployment and learn how to create a new normal.