Religion & Spirituality

n her new memoir, On Living, Kerry Egan describes her hospice work and the impact it's had on her own life. She says that despite the sadness and loss that is implicit in her work, there is also great joy.

Robert Walker, a retired congressman from Pennsylvania who served as chairman of the Science Committee, responds to allegations that the Bush administration has mishandled scientific issues. Walker now serves as chairman of Wexler & Walker, a lobbying firm in Washington, D.C.

In his new book The Republican War on Science, journalist Chris Mooney contends that the Bush administration has distorted research and misinformed the public on issues ranging from stem-cell research to global warming. The motivation, Mooney argues, is political power.

The stated purpose of D. James Kennedy's religious network is to reclaim America for Christ, closing the gap between church and state that is written into the Constitution. The evangelist minister, who preaches from the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Coral Ridge, Fla., has radio and TV shows that are heard around the world.

After a cancer diagnosis, and treatment soul singer Sharon Jones has returned to performing. She's the subject of a new documentary Miss Sharon Jones! by academy award winning film maker Barbara Kopple.

The British actor plays a grandfather in the new Sundance Channel drama series, The A Word, about a family coping with a boy's autism diagnosis. He also co-starred in the HBO series, The Leftovers.

One hundred years ago, Brandeis became the first Jewish justice on the Supreme Court. Author Jeffrey Rosen says that Brandeis was also the most far-seeing progressive justice of the 20th century.

Susan Silverman, on her sister comic Sarah Silverman, growing up secular Jewish and becoming a rabbi, adopting two Ethiopian boys, and how she was affected by the death of a sibling when she was very young.

Journalist Susan Jacoby tells Fresh Air that more than half of Americans will change religion at least once in their adult life time. Her new book is Strange Gods: A Secular History of Conversion.

Paul Goldberg's debut novel is an ambitious historical fantasy about Stalin's 1953 plan to purge Jews from the Soviet Union. Critic Maureen Corrigan says The Yid is a wildly inventive "what if" story.

The Seven Good Years spans the time between the birth of his son and the death of his father. Keret says his father, who was a Holocaust survivor, taught him to "look reality straight in the face."

Astronomer Chris Impey discusses the future of space travel, sex in space and the connection between science and Buddhism. Impey is the author of Beyond: Our Future in Space.

Kevin Kruse's book looks at how industrialists in the '30s and '40s recruited clergy to preach free enterprise. And under the Eisenhower administration, Christianity and capitalism moved center stage.

Sante Fe's most famous ghost is Hannah Nordhaus' great-great-grandmother. Her new book, American Ghost, is mix of memoir, cultural history, genealogical detective story and paranormal investigation.

In Daniel Torday's The Last Flight of Poxl West, a Jewish refugee tells his heroic World War II story in a best-selling — and partly fabricated — memoir.

Hesburgh died Thursday. He was 97. He was an author, theologian and activist who took on the Vatican over issues of academic freedom. Hesburgh spoke with Terry Gross in 1990.

The film is set in 1962 in Poland where director Pawel Pawlikowski lived until he was 14. Up for an Oscar for best foreign language film, Ida is about identity, faith, guilt and socialism.

The movie, one of five Academy Award nominees for best foreign language film this year, is about radical Islamists occupying the city in Mali. Remarkably, it's often on the verge of being comedic.

The anthology includes ancient and contemporary interpretations of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Daoism. Editor Jack Miles discusses primary texts, extremism and death.

John Michael McDonagh's new movie stars Brendan Gleeson as a priest who must eventually face off against a killer. It's excruciatingly obvious and inept, but Gleeson brings it alive.