Los Angeles

Singleton, who died April 29, spoke to Fresh Air in 1991 about his semi-autobiographical movie, which centered on kids growing up surrounded by drug addiction and gang violence in South Central L.A.

The creator of the AMC comedy talks about strip mall culture, why he likes to write characters who are fools, and explains why he defines success as "just sticking around."

Homeboy Industries founder Father Greg Boyle has spent 30 years working in LA with gang members and young people transitioning out of prison. His new book is Barking to the Choir.

Adlon's FX series is based on her own experience raising three girls as a single mom. Her daughters are very much a part of the show, she says. Originally broadcast Sept. 6, 2016.

Actress and voice-over artist Pamela Adlon on deciding to base her new FX series Better Things, on her own life as a single mother of three daughters, and working with Louie C.K. who created the show with her. She also worked on his show Louie.

In his new memoir, Under The Big Black Sun: A Personal History Of L.A. Punk, John Doe of the band X brings together his own essays and stories from other musicians and scene-makers of that time. A conversation with Doe, with his bandmate Exene Cervenka, and with Dave Alvin of the Blasters who played with X for a short time.

In her new book, journalist Jill Leovy studies the epidemic of unsolved murders in African-American neighborhoods and the relationships between police and victims' relatives, witnesses and suspects.

A new film from Sofia Coppola, who made Lost in Translation and Marie Antoinette, is based on the real-life story of a group of Southern California teens who, in 2008 and 2009, began breaking into the homes of celebrities and stealing everything from designer clothing to watches and jewelry.

It's hard to believe today, but in the mid-1950s, Los Angeles didn't mean much in terms of popular music. But the coming of rock 'n' roll meant an infusion of tiny record labels -- and one was Dore, run by a happy-go-lucky guy named Lew Bedell. Ed Ward tells its short, crazy story here.

Drive is what Driver does, and driven is how audiences will feel after a screening of Nicholas Winding Refn's brutally moving thriller, which stars Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston and Albert Brooks. (Recommended)

Singer Margaret Whiting, who collaborated with lyricist Johnny Mercer and performed classic standards like "Moonlight in Vermont," died Monday. Fresh Air remembers Whiting with highlights from a 1988 interview, where she explained how Mercer taught her to read a lyric.

Filmmaker Sofia Coppola's latest movie, Somewhere, is about an aimless Hollywood actor, played by Stephen Dorff, who re-examanes his superficial life after a visit from his 11-year-old daughter. Coppola discusses the film -- and her relationship with her own father, Francis Ford Coppola.

For 20 years, the Rev. Gregory Boyle has run Homeboy Industries, an anti-gang program that employs and is run by ex-gang members in Los Angeles. Boyle recently had to lay off most of his staff because of financial problems. He recounts the decades he's helped ex-gang members turn their lives around in a new memoir, Tattoos on the Heart.

Novelist and playwright Dan Fante writes about alcoholism, drug addiction and failed attempts at literary success — all of which he has experienced himself. He discusses the process of reliving his past on paper.

The volatile and eclectic music scene of 1960s Los Angeles comes together in a new box set issued by Rhino Records. Critic Ed Ward gives it a listen.

Thomas Pynchon's latest novel, Inherent Vice, is a detective romp set at the end of the 1960s psychedelic era. Critic-at-large John Powers has a review.

He's not referred to as a Terminator anymore, but back in 1984, a sci-fi thriller made a star out of a cyborg assassin from the future. Film critic David Edelstein reviews the franchise's fourth film.

Radical bombers battle strikebreaking capitalists while Clarence Darrow squares off against the "American Sherlock Holmes" in this very popular history of a trial that mixed murder, politics and celebrity in 1910 Los Angeles.

Fresh Air book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Relentless Pursuit: A Year in the Trenches With Teach for America, by Donna Foote.