Arts

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.

      

Inspired by the missing Malaysia Airlines flight, author Jonathan Evison recommends the novel Songs for the Missing, by Stewart O'Nan, as a book with something to say about mysterious disappearances.

Voiceover artist Hal Douglas died recently at age 89. Filmmaker Casimir Nozkowski discusses the life and work of the prolific speaker, who narrated thousands of movie trailers in a gravelly baritone.

After a week spent searching for and wondering about the missing plane, author Alan Heathcock revisits the young adult novel Hatchet, and Jonathan Evison suggests Songs for the Missing.

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.

Today on the show we'll explore the world of an international recording artist and a professional basketball player. Spoiler alert: she's the same person! Then Mary Dalton gets girly Behind the Scenes with an insider's look at HBO's hit series “Girls”. Bethany Chafin is here to chew on life's big questions with Soul Pancake's Rainn Wilson. You may know him as the ever nerdy and sometimes lovable Dwight Schrute from The Office, but Rainn's real personality comes out on his website Soul Pancake where the search is on for what it means to be human. And speaking of being human, few things speak to the human condition better than the arts. So when NASA sent off the Voyager to contact life elsewhere in the universe, they included a golden record with (among other things) music from around the world. Two of those hot tracks on the Voyager Golden Record were by Johann Sebastian Bach. Today on the show keyboard artist Peter Sykes fills us in on what made J.S. Bach's music the bee's knees. And, don't forget Bach's musical son C.P.E. It's his 300^th birthday celebration at Old Salem.

In their memoir Sliver of Light, Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal explain how they were captured on a road that bordered Iran, accused of spying and imprisoned for two years.