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Irish singer-songwriter Glen Hansard died today in a motorcycle crash in Ireland at the age of 56. We sat down with him in April to talk about his storied career and his final album, "Don+t Settle – Transmissions East and West." Here's what we wrote about that conversation at the time.–The song “Falling Slowly” first debuted in the 2007 indie romance film “Once” starring Irish singer-songwriter Glen Hansard and Czech-Islandic singer-songwriter Markéta Irglová. It tells the story of a dramatized version of their own musical partnership.That song won an Oscar for best original song and the musical duo became a hit in the U.S. when they recorded and toured as The Swell Season.But long before any success stateside, Hansard was a fixture of the Irish music scene, first busking on Dublin streets at age 13. And in 1990 he formed the Irish rock group The Frames.Today, Hansard is reflecting on his decades of music-making and looking ahead. His new two-part album is called “Don+t Settle – Transmissions East and West.” He sits down with us to talk about the first part.Find more of our programs online. Listen to 1A sponsor-free by signing up for 1A+ at plus.npr.org/the1a.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Navigating a challenging moment in a friendship. Weighing a new job or changing your career. Seeing news about instability in our politics. A confusing diagnosis at the doctor’s office. Tending to a loved one in the hospital or in hospice.Uncertainty strikes us in every part of our lives, big and small. And about three quarters of the world’s more than 8 billion people turn to faith.In this edition of our series, “Pending,” we look at faith. When can it help with uncertainty? And how can we use it, whatever that means for us, in the face of problems we think we can’t solve?Find more of our programs online. Listen to 1A sponsor-free by signing up for 1A+ at plus.npr.org/the1a.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

At least 18 American service members have been killed and hundreds more wounded since the start of the Iran war.On Tuesday, President Donald Trump spoke little of the troops who’d recently been killed before giving updates on the war:We feel very badly, but you know those great people, those great patriots who are out there fighting that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Iran has been very, very badly damaged. They’ve lost everything almost militarily. They’ve got very little left. They’ve got some missiles. They’ve got some drones. They’ve got some manufacturing ability, not much. We control the strait. They don’t control anything, so we’ll see what happens.We get into funding – whether Congress will exercise its powers over the flow of money and the president’s war powers.The Pentagon is shutting out the free press and even downplaying troop deaths. Those four service members killed in Jordan and Iraq last weekend? The Pentagon scrubbed them from the war casualty record less than a week later. The Trump administration said their deaths don’t count toward the official Iran war death toll because they were killed after the president declared a ceasefire in April.Over the weekend, after facing backlash from veterans and military families, the Pentagon restored those four soldiers killed in Iranian strikes last weekend to their casualty database and added more than 140 new wounded soldiers.Today on 1A, what responsibility does the Pentagon have to communicate transparently with the media and the American public?Find more of our programs online. Listen to 1A sponsor-free by signing up for 1A+ at plus.npr.org/the1a.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy