Places & Travel

The Late Late Show host talks about belting out songs with celebrities like Elton John, Steve Wonder and Adele. He tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross he doesn't know what he did to deserve this great gig.

A conversation with novelist Jay McInerney about finding fame as a young man, writing, New York City, and his new novel Bright, Precious Days about marriage, fidelity and middle age.

Critic at large John Powers says there's an explosion of literary talent coming from Mexico. He reviews two new novels by Mexican writers.

The New Orleans-based musician completed recording his final album a month before he died last November. Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead calls American Tunes a "fond last look" at Toussaint's talent.

Stephanie Danler drew on her own experiences to write her novel about a young woman working at an upscale restaurant in New York. "It's so physically punishing," she says of her work as a server.

The creator, the show-runner and the star of Silicon Valley talk about putting together the HBO comedy about the insular start-up tech world.

Rock historian Ed Ward remembers Jamaican singer Desmond Dekker, who died last week at the age of 64. His 1969 hit "Israelites" was for many Americans the first reggae they'd ever heard.

Pulitzer prize winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen says he wants to take the narrative of the Vietnam war created by Americans and retell it from the perspective of the Vietnamese. His family left Vietnam after the fall of Saigon when he was 4.

critic at large John Powers reviews A Bigger Splash, a "gripping slow-burn" film by the same Italian director behind the romantic hit I Am Love.

In Jennifer Haigh's new novel Heat & Light she examines what happens when fracking comes to a small Pennsylvania town. Maureen Corrigan describes the book as Haigh's "most ambitious - and compelling - novel yet."

The Pulitzer-Prize winning author of Empire Falls says his characters are inspired by his parents' working-class World War II generation. Russo's new novel is set in a small town in upstate New York.

Historian Frank Dikötter says newly opened archives offer fresh details about the chaos China experienced in the 1960s, when Chairman Mao urged students to take to the streets.

Growing up in the tribal region of Pakistan, Maria Toorpakai pretended she was a boy in order to compete as a weightlifter. Later she became an internationally known squash player.

The Irish director and screenwriter talks to Fresh Air's Ann Marie Baldonado about his new film, which tells the story of a young teenager in 1980s Dublin who discovers pop music and starts a band.

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.

At the age of 85, Edna O'Brien has just brought out one of her best and most ambitious novels yet. The Little Red Chairs is personal and political; charming and grotesque; a novel of manners and a novel of monsters.

Neon Bull is set amidst Brazil's version of rodeo, the vaquejada by film maker Gabriel Mascaro.

Arnaud Desplechin's new film centers on the memories of a middle-aged Frenchman who returns to Paris after years of living abroad. Critic John Powers says My Golden Days is "achingly romantic."

According to Adam Hochschild, about 2,800 Americans fought in the Spanish Civil War, and some were bombed by Nazis years before the U.S. entered World War II. His new book is Spain in Our Hearts.

Journalist Adam Hochschild tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that "it was by far the largest number of Americans before or since who've ever joined somebody else's civil war."

A new release by Legacy revisits the hits of Them, the band George Ivan Morrison played in before he became Van Morrison. Ed Ward remembers the band's brief existence.