NPR Programs: Fresh Air Podcast

A new documentary looks at obsessive fans of Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror film The Shining, starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall. These fanatics look for hidden meanings in the movie, and while some of their theories sound outrageous, it's too simple to call such thinking deranged.

In the movie Robot & Frank, the actor plays an aging ex-burglar who learns to take advantage of his robot caretaker. Langella, 74, tells Fresh Air why he was drawn to the role, and discusses the ups and downs of his long career.

Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell have been friends and collaborators since they first met in 1974. While they always wanted to make an album together, they never got around to it until now. Old Yellow Moon includes songs by Crowell, Patti Scialfa, Johnny Cash, and Kris Kristofferson among others.

The rich and good-looking get a taste of life among the 99 percent in Jonathan Dee's novels. In A Thousand Pardons, his protagonist, Helen Armstead, finds a secret talent for getting powerful men to apologize after her marriage falls apart and she is forced to enter the working world.

After hosting his Sunday morning show on MSNBC for the past year and a half, Hayes is making the move to a weeknight news show that premieres April 1. At 34, Hayes will be the youngest prime-time anchor on any of the major cable news channels.

Anthony Lewis, the New York Times columnist and reporter who covered the Supreme Court in the late 1950s and early 1960s, died Monday. Fresh Air remembers him by listening back to a 1991 interview in which Lewis talks about the responsibilities of a columnist and the importance of a correctly-spelled name.

World War II is often thought of as a good and just war — a war the U.S. had to fight. But it wasn't that simple. Public debate was heated between interventionism, which President Roosevelt supported, and isolationism, which aviator Charles Lindbergh became an unofficial spokesman for.

To remember Chinua Achebe who died last Thursday, Fresh Air listens back to an interview with the great African writer that originally aired on May 10, 1988. In it, Achebe talks about the literary trope of the white explorer or missionary living amongst the savages, and the importance of struggle.

In a new book about movie stardom and fame, Boston Globe film critic Ty Burr looks at the evolving history of the relationship between movie stars and the people who love them, and at how changing technology influences the kinds of stars the public wants.

In The Still Point of the Turning World Rapp writes about caring for a terminally ill child. Phil Spector is based on the music producer, but it's fiction. Philip Roth is the subject of a PBS documentary. Tom Waits, Patti Smith and others appear on a new compilation of sea songs from Hal Willner.

This macho action film starring Gerard Butler and Morgan Freeman is a vigilante fantasy about terrorists and turncoats invading the United States. It's a popular genre, but critic David Edelstein says he's tired of the American addiction to these tropes.

In What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, Nathan Englander writes about his own faith — and what it means to be Jewish — in stories that explore religious tension, Israeli-American relations and the Holocaust.

Justin Timberlake rocketed to stardom as a teen heartthrob in the band 'N Sync. He has gone on to be a successful solo artist — and expanded his career into both comedic and dramatic roles on-screen. He discusses his long career in showbiz, his SNL digital shorts and his transition to film.

David Mamet, the writer and director of the new HBO movie Phil Spector starring Al Pacino and Helen Mirren, includes a disclaimer at the beginning of the film: While the movie might be based on the controversial music producer, "This is a work of fiction. It's not 'based on a true story.' "

Tom Waits, Patti Smith, Marc Almond, Marianne Faithfull, Shane MacGowan and others appear on a new two-disc compilation of pirate ballads and sea songs called Son of Rogues Gallery. Here, Terry Gross talks with Hal Willner, the project's producer, about some of the stories behind the project.