NPR Programs: Fresh Air Podcast

The British import Doll & Em is another inside-Hollywood comedy from HBO; Emily Mortimer and her real-life friend Dolly Wells play outsize versions of themselves.

The mezzo-soprano discovered opera as a 22-year-old pre-med student. She took "a crack at a singing career" and has been at the Metropolitan Opera for 25 years. Now she's helping emerging singers.

The 19th century, Connecticut school sought to convert young men from Hawaii, China, India and the Native American nations and then send them home as Christian missionaries. It did not go as planned.

Musician Marty Ehrlich doesn't play much on his new album; instead, he conducts an ensemble that performs his compositions. He tells Fresh Air about his first album devoted to his orchestral music.

The son of one of America's wealthiest families disappeared off the island of New Guinea in 1961. Writer Carl Hoffman explains how he thinks Rockefeller died and why the truth was kept hidden.

Brenner appeared on The Tonight Show more than 150 times, often as the substitute host. The comic died Saturday at 78. He spoke to Fresh Air in 1990.

In Dancing Fish And Ammonites, the British writer reflects on growing older. She tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross about adjusting to her husband's death and losing the desire for new things.

The filmmaker discusses his latest project, The Grand Budapest Hotel; the once-futuristic concept is closer to becoming a reality; and author Brigid Schulte looks at the pressures on working moms.

The show's season-long crime story follows a busload of kids whose field trip gets detoured by kidnappers. Critic David Bianculli says it could wind up being just as good — and intense-- as 24.

With books like Stiff and Spook, Roach has built a reputation for making unpalatable subjects entertaining. In Gulp, she tackles the human digestive system, from the mouth on down.

Peter Lanza opened up to writer Andrew Solomon about Adam's life and how he tried to help him. Solomon says, "[Peter] would've liked to save the world and himself from the horror of what happened."

Starting in the late 1960s, the jazz saxophonist produced a series of recordings that came out on the musicians-owned Strata-East label. Those seven albums are now collected in a box set.

Fresh Air's classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz recently published a poem about friendship and loss on Poets.org.

The Grand Budapest Hotel takes place in the fictional European country of Zubrowka on the eve of war. Anderson shot much of the film in Germany, drawing inspiration from the surrounding landscape.

Olsen has often been called a folk singer, but Ken Tucker says her new album — her first with a backing band — takes her music into an unclassifiable realm.