British blue-eyed soul singer Nick Lowe played London's pub scene in the '70s in the band Brinsley Schwarz, produced five albums for Elvis Costello, and played with Ry Cooder and Jon Hiatt in Little Village. Now he's back with a solo album, his ninth, called At My Age, and he joins Terry Gross for an interview and an in-studio performance.
Fresh Air's resident rock historian remembers soul singer Lorraine Ellison, who recorded a handful of albums and dozens of singles in the '60s and '70s; though she charted a few R&B hits, she never quite broke through to stardom.
Ellison's biggest success was with the string-saturated ballad "Stay With Me," which topped out at No. 11 on the R&B charts and has since been covered by everyone from Bette Midler to teenybopper idol Rex Smith.
Fresh Air's TV critic reviews two new cable shows featuring strong female leads: TNT's Saving Grace, starring Holly Hunter as a troubled detective, and the FX channel's Damages, starring Glenn Close as a powerful and ruthless attorney.
Mohammed Hafez, author of Suicide Bombers in Iraq: The Strategy and Ideology of Martyrdom, says the overwhelming majority of suicide bombers in Iraq are non-Iraqi volunteers. He says the war has unleashed a new generation of Muslim militants who care little about national boundaries. They're driven instead, he says, by the ideal of defending Muslims whoever and wherever they are.
Hafez is a visiting professor of political science at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. He's also the author of Manufacturing Human Bombs: The Making of Palestinian Suicide Bombers.
Tammy Faye Messner, the onetime first lady of TV evangelism, died Friday at the age of 65; she had battled cancer for years. Terry Gross interviewed the former Tammy Faye Bakker on January 15, 2004, about the rise and fall of the ministry she led with ex-husband Jim Bakker, the puppet show that gave them their start, and her surprising later life as a gay icon.
There's something about the journey of John Waters' Hairspray to its current incarnation as a candy-colored, big-budget movie musical that I can't quite believe.
Poet Sekou Sundiata died this week at age 58; the cause was heart failure. Sundiata, who taught literature at New York City's New School University for many years, was considered one of the fathers of the spoken-word movement. He wrote the plays Blessing the Boats, The Circle Unbroken is a Hard Bop, The Mystery of Love, Udu, and the 51st (dream) state. His albums include Longstoryshort and The Blue Oneness of Dreams. We remember him with excerpts from interviews that originally aired in May 1994, April 1997, and November 2002.
John Waters' movie Hairspray, about a full-figured teen who bops her way to popularity (and fights for racial integration) on a TV dance show in '60s Baltimore, was a cult camp classic that became a hit Broadway musical. Now that stage musical has been re-adapted into a film — starring John Travolta, no less, in the role created by Waters' drag-queen muse Divine.
We talk with director and choreographer Adam Shankman, who directed The Wedding Planner and choreographed Boogie Nights — not to mention the legendary musical episode of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.
"There is a madness in Gaza now." So says New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Steven Erlanger, who joins Terry Gross to talk about the Palestinian power struggle that's erupted recently and how the battles between the Hamas and Fatah factions are affecting life in the West Bank and Gaza.
Erlanger has reported from all over the world, serving in Moscow, Bangkok, Prague and other cities. Prior to his tenure at the Times, he wrote for The Boston Globe.
Fresh Air's critic-at-large reviews a new DVD set featuring two masterpieces by French filmmaker Chris Marker: 1962's La Jetee and 1984's Sans Soleil.
The first is a science-fiction story set in a post-apocalyptic Paris; except for two seconds of motion, the entire story is told in still photographs.
The brilliantly perceptive Sans Soleil's narrator tells viewers about the letters she's received from a globetrotting friend; her monologue is accompanied by footage from around the world.
Natasha Trethewey was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Native Guard, her most recent collection of poetry. The title refers to a regiment of African- American soldiers who fought for the Union in the Civil War.
Trethewey grew up the child of a racially mixed marriage in Mississippi. Her mother was murdered by her stepfather; these, along with the South and its singular ways, are recurring themes in her poetry.
Trethewey teaches creative writing at Emory University. Native Guard is her third collection.
It's been a year since the start of last summer's war between Israel and Hezbollah. We'll discuss life in Lebanon, and the conflict's unintended consequences, with Timor Goksel, former spokesperson and senior adviser for the United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon. Goksel now teaches at the American University of Beirut.
Kasi Lemmons' film Talk to Me, which opens this weekend, centers on the radio DJ, television personality and activist Ralph Waldo "Petey" Greene Jr. (played by Don Cheadle). Greene was a driving force in the black community of Washington D.C.; we talk with Lemmons and with Dewey Hughes, who first hired Greene at the D.C. radio station WOL-AM.
Russian arms dealer Victor Bout has armed Islamic extremists and sold weapons to some of the Third World's most abusive and murderous dictators and warlords — and he's known for fueling both sides of conflicts.
His success is rooted in the legacy of the Cold War, whose messy unraveling left him with easy access to massive inventories of weapons and ammunition built up by the Soviets. We talk about Bout with journalists Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun, who've co-written a book about him: Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible.
Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, ranks as one of the U.S.'s leading addiction researchers. She's helped demonstrate that addiction is in fact a disease — a disease of the brain — and that all addictions, whether it's to drugs, alcohol, tobacco, sex, gambling or even food, are more alike than was previously thought.
Volkow, who's the great-granddaughter of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, grew up in Mexico City — in the house where her famous ancestor was assassinated.
Food scientist Massimo Marcone travels the world's remotest corners to investigate bizarre food "delicacies" — cheese infested with squirming maggots, coffee brewed from coffee beans extracted from the feces of a cat-like creature, salad oil made from nuts excreted by goats, and so on.
Marcone teaches food science at the University of Guelph, in Ontario. His new book is In Bad Taste? The Adventures and Science Behind Food Delicacies
Chu Berry, otherwise known as Leon Berry, was a tenor saxophonist who backed singers like Billie Holiday and Mildred Bailey in the 1930s, and jammed with Fletcher Henderson's and Cab Calloway's bands. He died in 1941, at the age of 33, in a car accident.
Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews a sprawling limited-edition box set from Mosaic, titled Classic Chu Berry Columbia and Victor Sessions.
Jonathan Oberlander, a political scientist with an expertise in health-care politics and policy, discusses problems with the U.S. health-care system and considers how other countries handle health care. He'll also give us a critique of Michael Moore's documentary Sicko. Oberlander is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
