Government & Politics

As protesters in the Middle East use social media to communicate, the regimes they're battling are using sophisticated technology to intercept their emails and text messages. Journalist Ben Elgin details how Western companies are providing software and equipment to help Middle Eastern governments crack down on dissidents.

The star of Showtime's bloody crime drama talks about the show's eventual plans for an ending — and also about matters both professional and personal, from how he plays an emotionless killer to how Hall himself, while filming Dexter, has dealt with both cancer and a divorce.

Newt Gingrich made a fortune from the businesses he started after leaving Congress in 1999. Washington Post reporter Karen Tumulty explains how Gingrich "transfigured himself from a political flameout into a thriving business conglomerate."

The recent film portrays former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as a man who had to keep his sexual orientation a secret — while collecting other people's secrets to use against them. Screenwriter Dustin Lance Black explains how he researched the film, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio.

Technologies like GPS and social media are posing new challenges to interpreting the Constitution's guarantees of privacy and free speech. Law professor and journalist Jeffrey Rosen says we're now in an era the Founding Fathers could never have imagined, in which private companies are determining the rules for what can be shared.

Tim Arango, the Baghdad bureau chief for The New York Times, shares personal stories from his time covering the war, including how he tracked down the subject of a famous photograph. He also talks about what the U.S. troop withdrawal means for the future of Iraq -- and what will happen after the troops are gone.

David Coleman Headley was one of the leaders of the 2008 terrorist attack on Mumbai. A new Frontline documentary chronicles how the son of a Pakistani father and an American mother became a radicalized Islamic militant while working as an informant for the U.S. government.

The Roosevelts' unorthodox marriage was equitable, sexually open — and spanned four decades. Hazel Rowley profiles the uncommon union of a four-term president and his first lady in Franklin And Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage.

Rolling Stone political correspondent Tim Dickinson says the tax policies pursued by the Republican Party have benefited the top 1 percent of income earners. "The people at the very top of the income [bracket] are taking off like a rocket," he says.

Historian Jill Lepore writes about the early history of the birth control and abortion movements in this week's New Yorker. "I think it's easy to lose perspective [that] actually the arguments made by one side or another have switched sides over time more than once," she says.

In 14 years on Saturday Night Live, Darrell Hammond did many impressions, including Bill Clinton and Al Gore. But few of his cast members knew that Hammond struggled with drugs, alcohol and self-cutting as a result of systematic childhood abuse.

Criminologist David M. Kennedy's strategy for reducing gang violence has dramatically reduced youth homicide rates nationwide. In his new memoir, Don't Shoot, Kennedy outlines his community meetings and interventions have worked to curb youth violence in more than 70 cities.

At its core, John le Carre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy isn't really about espionage, says critic John Powers. The 1974 novel, adapted for the screen in 1979 by the BBC, is actually about secrets and lies and shifting identities -- which is to say, a metaphor for our own daily lives.

Since 2006, 40,000 people have been murdered in Mexico as drug cartels battle each other and the Mexican military. Journalist Ioan Grillo traces how Mexico came to control drug trafficking in El Narco.

More than half of all employed people worldwide work off the books. And that number is expected to climb over the next decade. Investigative journalist Robert Neuwirth examines how the underground economy works in his book, Stealth of Nations.

In a new book, medical ethicist Harriet Washington details how genes and tissues are increasingly being patented by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Those firms, she argues, are focused more on their profits than on the medical needs of patients.

After 35 years as a Supreme Court justice, John Paul Stevens retired last year. His newly released memoir is about his time on the bench and the five Supreme Court chief justices he personally knew. He details his views of those justices and how his viewpoints on various issues evolved over the years.

Stevens, who died Tuesday, was appointed by President Ford and served on the court for 35 years before retiring in 2010. He spoke to Fresh Air in 2011 about his memoir, Five Chiefs.

More soldiers are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with wounds that would have been fatal a decade ago. The injuries have led to advances in combat medicine but have challenged the health care systems meant to help veterans back home. War reporter David Wood talks with Fresh Air about the hurdles facing these troops and their families.

Long before the policy barring gays from serving openly in the military ended, Air Force 1st Lt. Josh Seefried started OutServe, a network of gay troops on Facebook. Seefried and his partner talk about what it's like being a gay couple in the military — and about new challenges facing gay troops.