Terry Gross

Brian Castner commanded two Explosive Ordnance Disposal units in Iraq, where his team disabled roadside IEDs and investigated the aftermath of roadside car bombings. He returned home a completely different man, which he details in his memoir, The Long Walk.

For nearly 50 years, neuroscientist Suzanne Corkin worked with Henry Molaison, who lost most of his memory in 1953 after experimental surgery for severe seizures. Their work together taught us much of what we know today about memory, and she writes about Mollison and their work in her new book.

Seven years after Fox canceled the cult-favorite sitcom, a fourth season of Arrested Development is streaming on Netflix. The show's creator, Mitch Hurwitz, tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that if the show doesn't get the right ratings this time, he can't blame the time slot.

The civil war in Syria is attracting fighters from all over, threatening the region's tenuous stability. Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group tells Fresh Air that "a war in Syria with regional spillover has now become a regional war with a Syrian focus."

In her new memoir, Fairyland, Alysia Abbott describes her childhood as the daughter of an openly gay father in San Francisco while the gay liberation movement was gaining strength. Her book is based largely on her father's journals, which she found after his death in 1992.

In Richard Linklater's third film about Jesse and Celine, the two have officially coupled up, but it's no fairy tale. The love is still there, but the daily grind is getting in the way of communication. Linklater, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy join Fresh Air's Terry Gross to talk about the new film.

New York Times reporter Barry Meier's new e-book explores opiate painkillers and the consequences that come with long-term use. He focuses in particular on OxyContin, how it came to be prescribed for chronic pain, what the consequences have been, and how it became a street drug.

"The more carny it got, the better I liked it," King says of his new thriller, Joyland. The book, set in a North Carolina amusement park in 1973, is part horror novel and part supernatural thriller. King talks with Fresh Air's Terry Gross about his career writing horror, and about what scares him now.

Soldier Brian Turner is no silent witness to war. Instead, he used verse to chronicle his time in the U.S. Army, publishing a book of collected poems titled Here, Bullet. (Originally broadcast on July 22, 2008.).