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Former South African President Nelson Mandela is universally admired but there was a time when he was caught up in controversy. Steve Inskeep talks to Bill Keller, a columnist for The New York Times, about Mandela's controversial past.

There are two speeches delivered by the late Nelson Mandela that changed the course of history and cemented his legacy as one of the most revered leaders of our time.

The unemployment rate fell to 7 percent and employers added 203,000 jobs to payrolls in November, according to the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The largely positive data could build anticipation that the Federal Reserve might move to taper its stimulus program.

Some Californians are choosing plans that don't comply with the Affordable Care Act to save money. They have only a few weeks left to pick coverage that will last a year. It will eventually be replaced by health insurance that includes a full range of essential benefits, but at a higher cost.

The world is reacting to news that Nelson Mandela has passed away. Ebrahim Rasool, South Africa's Ambassador to the United States, met Mandela in prison and he's been inspired by him ever since. Rasool speaks to host Michel Martin about Nelson Mandela's life and legacy.

On this week's round-table podcast, we talk about the charm and peril of live events, we take a quiz on the most regrettable television currently circulating, and we talk about what's making us happy this week.

The New York Times calls Stephen Sondheim the "greatest and perhaps best-known artist in American musical theater." Sondheim composed the music and lyrics for, among others, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods and Company. In 2010 he joined Fresh Air to discuss his career in musical theater.

Drawing from research presented at this year's Acoustical Society of America conference, psycholinguist Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel untangles tongue twisters to look at speech planning patterns, and professor Amalia Arvaniti discusses the "Valley Girl" dialect.

For 25 seasons, The Simpsons writers have been smuggling math onto Americans' TV screens. Author Simon Singh helps Ira decode the show's numberplay, while former Simpsons writer David X. Cohen remembers how he helped Homer solve Fermat's Last Theorem (sort of).

That difference translates to about $550 a year, according to a new meta-analysis of studies evaluating the retail costs of food, grouped by healthfulness. It's chump change for middle-class eaters, but a big gap for low-income families. Researchers say that's a problem that can be solved.