Dierks Bentley has a nice, deep voice; an open, friendly demeanor; and a knack for working in a variety of country-music genres, from bluegrass to power ballads. For all that, it's always been difficult to pin down what Bentley aims to do. Although he's only in his 30s, Bentley sounds as though he's working through a bit of a midlife crisis on his new album Home. Take, for example, the single "Am I the Only One," a novelty tune about going out to party with a twist — not many of Bentley's pals want to join him, because they've settled into adulthood, and he hasn't.
Routines are made up of a three-part "habit loop": a queue, a behavior and a reward. Understanding and interrupting that loop is key to breaking a habit, says journalist Charles Duhigg.
Credit Elizabeth Alter / Courtesy Random House
Charles Duhigg writes for the business section of The New York Times.
Think about something it took you a really long time to learn, like how to parallel park. At first, parallel parking was difficult and you had to devote a lot of mental energy to it. But after you grew comfortable with parallel parking, it became much easier — almost habitual, you could say.
Fresh Air Weekend highlights some of the best interviews and reviews from past weeks, and new program elements specially paced for weekends. Our weekend show emphasizes interviews with writers, filmmakers, actors, and musicians, and often includes excerpts from live in-studio concerts. This week:
At the far end of town Where the Grickle-grass grows And the wind smells slow-and-sour when it blows And no birds ever sing excepting old crows ... Is the Street of the Lifted Lorax.
In the new NBC drama Awake, Jason Issacs plays Michael Britten, a man who survives a car accident along with one of his loved ones — but which one?
Credit Lewis Jacobs / NBC
Michael Britten (Jason Isaacs) continues to work police cases after his accident with his colleagues Detective Efrem Vega (Wilmer Valderrama) and Detective Isaiah "Bird" Freeman (Steve Harris).
The premise of NBC's new detective series, Awake, is about as high concept as it gets. Jason Isaacs, one of the leads of Showtime's Brotherhood, stars as Michael Britten, who survives a horrible car crash intact. Well, his body is intact — but his mind, or at least his subconscious, is split.
In 1968, Hugh Masekela was not quite 30 years old and though he was in exile from his homeland of South Africa, he seemed ready to become at home on the American jazz and pop markets. That summer, he had scored a number one single, "Grazing in the Grass." A year earlier, he'd been one of the few international performers at the 1967 Monterrey International Pop Festival and had appeared in its D.A. Pennebaker documentary. Yet strangely enough, over the next 45 years Masekela never quite found his sweet spot.
Robert De Niro (left) plays Jonathan Flynn, the father of writer Nick Flynn (played by Paul Dano) who shows up at his son's workplace: a homeless shelter.
Credit David Lee / Focus Features
Director/screenwriter Paul Weitz (left) adapted Nick Flynn's 2004 memoir, Another B------- Night in Suck City.
Writer Nick Flynn was working in a homeless shelter in his 20s when his father – an alcoholic and self-proclaimed writer who left when Flynn was a baby – showed up as a client. Flynn wrote about the experience in his 2004 memoir, Another B------- Night in Suck City.
His story is now a movie called Being Flynn, starring Paul Dano as the young Nick Flynn and Robert De Niro as his father, Jonathan.
On Wednesday's Fresh Air, Nick Flynn and Paul Weitz, the film's director, talk about adapting Flynn's memoir for the big screen.
Jim Yardley is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has served for eight years as a New York Times foreign correspondent and bureau chief in China and India. He is also an avid basketball fan.
"Linsanity" is the magical byword of this basketball season. As anyone who is even semi-conscious knows, Jeremy Lin, the NBA's first Taiwanese-American player by way of Harvard, was passed over for college athletic scholarships and ignored in NBA drafts. Then, he landed with the New York Knicks and has since proved to everybody that athletic prejudice against Asians is Lincredibly stupid. Except, as journalist Jim Yardley points out in his new book on basketball fever in China, Chinese players and coaches happen to endorse that prejudice.
Unlike Ebola, which infects and kills people quickly — and then disappears just as quickly — the HIV epidemic has become so good at killing people in part because it moves so very slowly, says journalist Craig Timberg.
