NPR Staff

"There's something very primal about the slowing down at an accident scene," says Gyllenhaal. He plays a freelance cameraman, racing to get the grisliest footage, in the film Nightcrawler.

Income inequality has been on the rise in the U.S. for decades. The top 1 percent of earners in the U.S. now holds a much greater share of national income than three decades ago. At the same time, incomes for the bottom half of American households have remained virtually ...

In two years since releasing his major label debut, good kid, m.A.A.d. city, Lamar has moved into hip-hop's spotlight full time. Microphone Check's Frannie Kelley and Ali Shaheed Muhammad explain why.

Years ago, you spent hours dreaming up the perfect AOL Instant Messenger screen name. Many of you aren't so proud of your now-defunct handles today, but that didn't stop you from sharing them with us.

I'll Be Me follows the musician, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2011, on his final tour. The country-singing pop star faces his illness with humor, with the help of supportive audiences.

The author of L.A. Confidential discusses his favorite flicks, including a 1963 Akira Kurosawa film he says may be the greatest crime movie he's ever seen.

You know that opening riff to Led Zeppelin's 1971 hit "Stairway to Heaven"? It sounds very, very similar to the 1968 song "Taurus" by the band Spirit. A lawsuit about the issue is moving forward.

"When I first saw him he had a little bit of eye movement and that was really the only way he could communicate," says Eric Sellers, who helped a patient use a brain-computer interface to communicate.

Beiser gives some of her favorite rock and blues numbers a modern cello workover on her new album, Uncovered.

Gotham has been one of the fall's most successful television debuts. But earlier this month the show found itself in hot water when it hired a white stuntwoman as a body double for a black guest star.

'Tis the season for some holiday music. Don't worry, we're not cueing up Christmas carols quite yet — but Halloween is approaching and it got us to thinking about the soundtrack to this particular holiday. Sure, there's Michael Jackson's "Thriller," with that eerie Vincent Price voice-over, and if you want ...

Throughout history, witches have taken on many forms: As women with a mystical relationship to the natural world. Or as endearing characters in pop culture (cue the Bewitched theme song). But historian Katherine Howe's new book recalls a time when witchcraft wasn't just a crime, it was enough to get ...

Wayne Coyne says his band was dying to take The Beatles' masterpiece apart and see how it works.

At 5 foot 3, Muggsy Bogues holds the record as shortest player in NBA history. Criticism of his height started on the basketball courts of the Baltimore projects, and continued well into his career.

As a young man, Jim Woodring was looking for a sign — and he found it in a huge, green hallucinated amphibian. His new book of old drawings, Jim, includes many works inspired by such "apparitions."

StoryCorps' Military Voices Initiative records stories from members of the U.S. military who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Lance Cpl. Brian Parrello was the only member of his platoon who didn't make it home from Iraq. They were patrolling near the Haditha dam when Brian was killed by an IED, ...

Nuruddin Farah's novel Hiding in Plain Sight centers around Bella, a Somali living in Rome, who has become a famed fashion photographer. Her beloved half-brother Aar, a UN official, is murdered by extremists in Mogadishu and leaves behind two teenagers who are Bella's niece and nephew.

Bella's a globetrotter, with ...

Robert De Niro is one of the greatest actors of all time — period, no parenthesis or qualification, the kind of actor who creates icons like Travis Bickle, Jake LaMotta and James "Jimmy the Gent" Conway.

But for younger filmgoers today, this screen acting legend may be most familiar as ...

Every relationship has an origin story. For Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo, it all goes back to the moment in the late 1970s when Benatar signed a recording deal with Chrysalis Records — who immediately fired everyone in her band but the bass player.

"They brought in all these top ...

In her memoir, The Woman I Wanted to Be, Diane von Furstenberg says she owes her success to her mother, a strong, strict Holocaust survivor who called Diane her "torch of freedom."