Places & Travel

Imagine a room in war-ravaged Syria lined with bookshelves and filled with patrons reading books in Arabic and English, everything from poetry to American pop psychology. Now picture that, outside that library, city streets are reduced to rubble and bombs are a constant threat. That's the real-life scene journalist Delphine Minoui chronicles in her new book called "The Book Collectors."

Guest interviewer Sam Sanders interviews Aaron Sorkin about his new film 'The Trial of the Chicago 7.'

Since the release of the Mueller report in April 2019, it's been analyzed, praised and criticized — and cited by President Trump as proof that there was no collusion with Russia in the 2016 presidential election.

Andrew Weissmann was one of the lead prosecutors on special counsel Robert Mueller's team. In his new book, Where Law Ends, Weissmann looks back on where the Mueller investigation succeeded — and where it fell short.

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar centers his new novel on a Muslim man who, like Akhtar, is the son of Pakistani immigrants living in Wisconsin.

Historian David Nasaw tells the story of more than a million people stranded in defeated Nazi Germany after World War II. Some felt they couldn't return to their home countries under Soviet control. Others were Jewish survivors who had no homes to return to. Nasaw's book is 'The Last Million.'

The former model/actress is nominated for an Emmy Award for hosting Top Chef. Her new show, Taste the Nation, explores immigrant cooking. Originally broadcast July 6, 2020.

When the U.S military dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, the American government portrayed the weapons as equivalent to large conventional bombs. Military censors restricted access to Hiroshima, but a young journalist named John Hersey managed to get there and write a devastating account of the death, destruction and radiation poisoning he encountered. Author Lesley M.M. Blume tells Hersey's story in her book, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed it to the World.

With The Old Guard, Prince-Bythewood becomes the first Black woman to direct an adaptation of a comic book.

Hamill, who died Aug. 5, was a columnist and editor at the New York Post and the New York Daily News, covering wars, crime and the people of NYC's boroughs. Originally broadcast in '94, '08 and '11.

Michaela Coel says she initially wanted to create a series about sexual assault because of her own experiences. But as she heard from other people who had similar stories, she began to think more broadly. "I realized that many people had some sort of experience that was connected to mine," she says. "There were so many different ways to explore consent and how it affects us today. What better place for a story than one that I felt many people could find an identification in?"

As millions of people remain socially isolated and anxious about COVID-19, several U.S. governors are at least making plans to relax controls in their states and revive economic activity — against the advice of many public health professionals.

New York Times science and health reporter Donald G. McNeil Jr. warns that the push to reopen is premature. "We're nowhere near getting on top of this virus," he says.

Kramer, who died May 27, was an early advocate for aggressive research into the HIV virus. He co-founded both the Gay Men's Health Crisis and the protest group ACT UP. Originally broadcast in 1992.

Pelosi author Molly Ball says the key to the speaker's success is her mastery of the inside game in politics — building relationships, counting votes, plotting strategy and working around the clock.

Cogswell, who died April 20, was executive director of the Louis Armstrong House Museum, which houses journals, trumpets, tapes, photographs and other artifacts. Originally broadcast in 2001.

Growing up in San Francisco in the '70s, Alia Volz's family ran a booming weed-laced brownie business. "I had this understanding of my family as an outlaw family from the very beginning," she says.

While researching his new book, Notes from an Apocalypse, about people who are preparing for doomsday, author Mark O'Connell undertook what he calls "a series of perverse pilgrimages."

Chesa Boudin's radical leftist parents were imprisoned when he was a toddler. Now he's working to reduce the inmate population in San Francisco — and worrying about his dad, who remains in prison.