NPR Programs: Fresh Air Podcast

The best-selling author and humorist has kept journals for 36 years. Those diaries have been the jumping-off point for the personal essays that appear in his collections, including Me Talk Pretty One Day and now Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls.

Joseph Kosinski's sci-fi adventure, starring Tom Cruise, is the most incoherent piece of storytelling since John Travolta's Battlefield Earth. It had critic David Edelstein crying, "What? What?" over the din of the explosions.

A new six-episode drama for the Sundance Channel follows a man who, after 19 years in prison, is exonerated by DNA evidence and returns to his family. Critic David Bianculli says it's a unique show, and a memorable one.

Animals and humans have a lot in common, including some of the health problems that plague them. In her book Zoobiquity, Dr. Barbara Natterson-Horowitz explores how studying animal illness — from cancer to sexual dysfunction — can help us better understand human health.

The leading man known for his good looks and lighthearted charm has made a comfortable career for himself in romantic comedies. Lately, however, he has been taking on more serious roles in films such as Bernie, Magic Mike and most recently Jeff Nichols' Mud.

Junger explores the life of his friend, photographer Tim Hetherington. "Accidental Racist" launched an Internet firestorm but shouldn't overshadow everything else on Wheelhouse. In 2003, a nurse named Charlie Cullen was arrested under suspicion of injecting patients with lethal doses of medications.

Author Dennis Lehane talks with Fresh Air's Terry Gross about his New York Times op-ed, "Messing with the Wrong City," which expressed his love for his hometown.

Charles Sennott, vice president, executive editor and co-founder of GlobalPost, talks with Fresh Air's Terry Gross about the ongoing manhunt in Boston. Seth Mnookin, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, describes live-tweeting the events at MIT.

In a new documentary premiering on HBO, the journalist explores the life of his friend, the war photographer Tim Hetherington. The two collaborated on the 2010 documentary Restrepo, and Junger was profoundly changed after Hetherington was killed by shrapnel in Libya in 2011.

Marathoner and Runner's World contributor Amby Burfoot talks about the vulnerability of running 26.2 miles of public space, the Boston Marathon as a holy grail and the importance of being cheered on. Burfoot won the Boston Marathon in 1968 and has run every five years since. He was there Monday.

"Accidental Racist" launched an Internet firestorm and threatened to overshadow everything else on the country singer's fine new album, Wheelhouse. Even in that polarizing song, Paisley's biggest sin is that he's well-meaning in a way that topples too easily into sentimentality.

In a cover story for The New Republic, journalist Jonathan Cohn examines the conundrum of day care in the United States. "On the one hand," he says, "improving the quality of child care ... is going to take more money. On the other hand, it already costs more than many families can pay."

A documentary airing tonight on PBS tells the story of the five young black and Latino men wrongly convicted of the 1989 assault and rape of a white female jogger in Manhattan's Central Park. Ken Burns made the film with his eldest daughter, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon.

In The Child Catchers, Kathryn Joyce explores the outsized influence of evangelical Christian groups on the overseas adoption industry. The adoption movement has orchestrated a boom-and-bust market that can exploit poor families in countries where regulations are weak and "orphans" may not actually be orphans.

Sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy talks with Fresh Air's Terry Gross about Monday's events at the Boston Marathon, the place the marathon holds in the life of the city, its importance in the international world of running, and the history of attacks at sporting events.