Fresh Air

The comic tells Fresh Air that after Season 3, he "aggressively forgot the show existed for a few months." Then he got back to work — for Louie's fourth season. Originally broadcast May 19.

In Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Roz Chast combines text, cartoons, sketches and photos to describe her interactions with her parents during the last years of their lives.

Humor is both a creative and a cognitive process, says Bob Mankoff, who has contributed cartoons to The New Yorker since 1977. His memoir is called How About Never — Is Never Good For You?

"Any successful lyricist has to be part playwright and has to be able to put himself into the minds and the hearts and the souls of the characters," Sheldon Harnick tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

David Edelstein finds some greats in a "depressing" year for films; Maureen Corrigan picks 12 books of the year; Ken Tucker names his top nine albums; David Bianculli says 2014 was a good year.

In 1986, a bomb planted by the Peruvian terrorist group Shining Path exploded in the luggage rack above Sam Baker. Somehow, during his long recovery, songs focused on empathy started coming to him.