News & Media

Supporters and detractors alike can't seem to get enough of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Anchorage Daily News columnist Michael Carey discusses the woman who promises to bring "a little bit of reality from Wasilla Main Street" to Washington, D.C.

Critic at large John Powers remembers film critic and artist Manny Farber, who died Aug. 18 at the age of 91.

Documentarian Rory Kennedy, who's won acclaim and awards for her documentaries American Hollow and The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, turns her lens on legendary White House correspondent Helen Thomas. David Bianculli has a review.

Russia and Georgia have signed a cease-fire, but the conflict continues. Journalist James Traub, author of The Freedom Agenda: Why America Must Spread Democracy (Just Not the Way George Bush Did), discusses the latest developments.

Hostile womanizer, crack addict, New York Times journalist — David Carr has been all of those, sometimes simultaneously. For his memoir The Night of the Gun, Carr put on his investigative-reporter hat — to reconstruct his various sordid lives.

Journalist Mike Chinoy, author of Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis, discusses North Korea's development of nuclear weapons and America's attempts to stop their program.

Why is it that government has expanded under an administration that claims to be against big government? Social critic Thomas Frank poses this question in his new book, The Wrecking Crew.

As a journalist, John Darnton spent 40 years at The New York Times. As a novelist, he writes colorful mysteries. His newest murder yarn, set in a big-city newsroom that seems awfully familiar: Black and White and Dead All Over.

The documentary Gonzo remembers the strange and wild life of writer Hunter S. Thompson. Critic John Powers reviews the film.

According to investigative journalist Jane Mayer, the war on terrorism may have done as much political and social damage to the United States as terrorism itself. Mayer writes for The New Yorker, and she recently published The Dark Side.

Barack Obama has been portrayed as an outsider candidate — an idealist not mired in the political game. But Ryan Lizza says that a look at Obama's political history in Chicago might offer a different view of the candidate. Lizza is the Washington correspondent for The New Yorker, and has been tracking the Obama campaign.

Fresh Air's TV critic has a look at the new HBO miniseries, created by The Wire's David Simon and Ed Burns. Generation Kill focuses on a unit of Marines during the first 40 days of the Iraq war.

Journalist James Glanz is Baghdad bureau chief for The New York Times; he's just reported on a government study criticizing the Bush administration for broadly overstating certain gains in Iraq.

In July 2007, Brent Stirton shocked the world with a photo of a murdered mountain gorilla — one of seven killed, execution-style, in their jungle preserve. This year, Stirton returned to the Congo to help answer a question many had asked: Who killed the Virunga gorillas?

David Bianculli discusses some of the TV tributes to Tim Russert, who died last Friday, and offers one of his own.

Digital media — including MP3 players, peer-to-peer networks and music websites — are changing how we discover, listen to and share music. Wired.com journalist Eliot Van Buskirk joins Fresh Air to discuss the new, digital landscape of music, and the resulting changes in the music industry.

Iran's president was relatively unknown on the international stage before he was elected, but he's a standard-bearer for a new generation of hardliners. In a new biography, journalist Kasra Naji explores Ahmadinejad's rise to power, his complex character and his motivations.

The celebrated Irish memoirist, who had been battling lung cancer, died May 9. Her 1996 memoir — about growing up poor in the Ireland of the '40s and '50s — became a best-seller. Terry Gross talked to her in 2001.

Three years ago, journalist Steve Lopez met a homeless musician on skid row in Los Angeles. He soon learned that the man, Nathaniel Ayers, had once been a promising violinist, and that he had left the Juilliard School because of his struggle with mental illness. Ayers is the subject of Lopez's new book, The Soloist.