Terry Gross

A jazz pianist and bandleader, Iyer is one of the most critically acclaimed musicians of the past decade. He also has a masters in physics. Here, he explains why he decided to switch to a full-time career as a jazz musician, and describes what influenced his latest album, Solo.

Roth, who has been writing novels for more than a half-century, explains how he comes up with his ideas — and why he continues to write every day. In his latest work, Nemesis, he imagines a fictional polio outbreak set in his hometown of Newark, N.J., during the 1940s.

In the Oct. 18 issue of The New Yorker, historian Sean Wilentz argues that the rhetoric expressed by both Glenn Beck and the Tea Party is nothing new -- and is rooted in an extremist ideology that has been around since the Cold War.

The AK-47 was created by the Soviets after World War II and changed the way war is fought. Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent C.J. Chivers explains how the gun became the weapon of choice for insurgents, terrorists and child soldiers.

Solomon Burke, the Grammy Award-winning singer who wrote the hit track "Everyone Needs Somebody to Love," died Sunday at 70. Fresh Air remembers the "King of Rock and Soul" with excerpts from a 1986 interview.

Abraham Lincoln always thought slavery was unjust — but struggled with what to do once slavery ended. Historian Eric Foner traces how Lincoln's thoughts about slavery — and freed slaves — mirrored America's own transformation in The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery.

Many of McCartney’s song lyrics were collected in the book called Blackbird Singing which also included samples of his old and new poems. Terry Gross spoke with McCartney in 2001, when the book came out. She asked him about one of poems, Here Today, that he wrote for John Lennon.

Before Lennon's murder in 1980, John, Paul, George and Ringo had agreed to reunite for a television mini-concert. The performance was to follow the broadcast of a retrospective Beatles documentary. But it wasn't until 1995 that The Beatles Anthology was finally broadcast as a television mini series.

In 1971, the FBI put John Lennon under surveillance because of his anti-war activities. The INS tried to deport him a year later. Historian Jon Wiener spoke to Terry Gross in 2000 about the Nixon administration's campaign to deport Lennon — and then Wiener's own fight to get the FBI to release Lennon's files.

This discussion with Jon Wiener was originally broadcast on Jan. 25, 2000.

Saturday would have been John Lennon's 70th birthday. Fresh Air remembers the legendary musician by excerpting interviews conducted with those who knew him, including a 1985 discussion with his first wife, Cynthia Lennon.