Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's new memoir, Lovely One , gives us a rare glimpse into her legal mind. And she gets personal about her childhood, marriage and her time as a public defender. Also, we hear from writer Danzy Senna, who writes about the experiences of being biracial in America and the meaning of race itself. Her new novel Colored Television. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Sep 07, 2024•48 min
25 years ago, The Sopranos premiered on HBO and changed expectations of what TV could be. There's a new two-part documentary, called Wise Guy , about the making of the show, centering on the series creator and executive producer, David Chase. We're using that as an excuse to revisit our interviews with Chase, as well as Lorraine Bracco, who played Tony's psychiatrist, Dr. Melfi, and Michael Imperioli, who played Tony's impetuous nephew. Film critic Justin Chang reviews Beetlejuice Beetlejuice . ...
Sep 06, 2024•47 min
New Yorker writer David Kirkpatrick says anti-fascists are using extra judicial methods to do what the FBI can't, by infiltrating white nationalist groups to expose them and their planned attacks. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Sep 05, 2024•44 min
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson talks with Tonya Mosley about her teen years, her time as a public defender, and the poem she keeps in her office. Her new memoir is called Lovely One . Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Sep 04, 2024•44 min
Novelist Danzy Senna spoke with Terry Gross about racial identity, growing up with a Black father and white mother in an era when "mixed-race" wasn't a thing. "Just merely existing as a family was a radical statement at that time," she says. Her new book is Colored Television . Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Sep 03, 2024•45 min
To wrap up our series, we're closing with director Spike Lee and actor Samuel L. Jackson. Lee spoke with Terry Gross in 2017 about growing up in Brooklyn and his acting and directorial debut, the 1986 movie She's Gotta Have It . In 2000, Jackson talked about playing tough guys, watching movies in segregated theaters, and nearly dying on the New York subway. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Sep 02, 2024•47 min
In 2022, E.T. and Jaws director Steven Spielberg talked about how he fell in love with film, and how he was afraid of everything as a kid. We'll also revisit our 2016 interview with actor Carrie Fisher about what it was really like to become a sex symbol as Princess Leia. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Aug 31, 2024•49 min
The 1964 spaghetti Western A Fistful of Dollars turned Clint Eastwood into a star. He had a famous squint in his closeups, but he told Terry Gross in 1997, it wasn't necessarily character driven. "They bombed me with a bunch a lights, and you're outside and it's 90 degrees, and it's hard not to squint." We'll also hear from Eastwood's co-star in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Eli Wallach, who went on to play a bandit in several Westerns. Cultural historian Christopher Frayling tells us how the ...
Aug 30, 2024•47 min
We continue our Classic Films and Movie Icons series and feature archival interviews with Dennis Hopper and Isabella Rossellini. They co-starred in the movie Blue Velvet , and after it became a hit, both of their careers were redefined. Later, on the centennial of singer Dinah Washington's birth, jazz historian Kevin Whitehead has appreciation. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Aug 29, 2024•47 min
Our special series of archival interviews continues with two of the GOATs: Meryl Streep, the actor with the most Oscar nominations in history, spoke with Terry Gross in 2012 about playing Margaret Thatcher. And Sidney Poitier, the first Black man to win best actor, in 2000 talked about how the radio helped him learn an accent for auditions. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Aug 28, 2024•47 min
We continue our Classic Films and Movie Icons series with two performers who gained fame as kids: Breakfast Club actor Molly Ringwald and Freaky Friday actor Jodie Foster. We'll also discuss Foster's Oscar-winning role as an FBI agent in The Silence of the Lambs and hear from her co-star who played serial killer Hannibal Lector, Anthony Hopkins. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Aug 27, 2024•45 min
From now through Labor Day we're featuring interviews from our archive with great actors and directors. Robert Duvall talks about his role in the Godfather films as Tom Hagen, the Corleone family lawyer — and about speaking the most famous line in Apocalypse Now . And we'll get some insights into acting from Michael Caine, including why you don't need to raise your voice to be intimidating, and why he hates doing love scenes. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices...
Aug 26, 2024•45 min
We begin our series celebrating classic movies with Terry Gross' 1988 interview with On the Waterfront director Elia Kazan, as well as a 2020 interview with his granddaughter, actor Zoe Kazan. Plus, we'll hear from the film's romantic lead, actor Eva Marie Saint, who told Fresh Air in 2000 that she got the part after improvising with Marlon Brando. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Aug 24, 2024•49 min
We remember Phil Donahue, the daytime talk show host who pioneered thoughtful discussions on controversial issues, and paved the way for Oprah and others. And we remember actress Gena Rowlands, who best known for her often improvised independent film collaborations with her husband John Cassavetes. Also, Justin Chang reviews the film Close Your Eyes . Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Aug 23, 2024•46 min
Georgetown professor and foreign policy analyst Daniel Byman discusses Ukraine's daring offensive into Russian territory. And he reflects on the future of Gaza, after Israel's military operation ends. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Aug 22, 2024•45 min
Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter David Rohde argues that since 2016, Trump has used conspiracy theories, co-option and threats to bend Justice Department and FBI officials to his will. Rohde's new book is Where Tyranny Begins . Maureen Corrigan reviews Paradise Bronx by Ian Frazier. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Aug 21, 2024•45 min
As 50,000 people attend the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, we look at the history of politics, protest and play in American stadiums. "We fight our political battles in stadiums," Columbia historian Frank Andre Guridy says. "They become ideal places to stake your claims on what you want the United States to be." His new book is The Stadium. Also, as part of his series celebrating albums turning 50 this year, Ken Tucker revisits Neil Young's On the Beach . Learn more about sponsor mes...
Aug 20, 2024•44 min
In The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat , Ellis-Taylor plays the outspoken ringleader among three women whose friendship spans several decades. Her previous films include Origin and King Richard . She talks with Tonya Mosley about growing up in rural Mississippi, buying two billboards, and getting into acting to stave off adulthood. Also, Maureen Corrigan reviews A Wilder Shore, by Camille Peri. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Aug 19, 2024•45 min
Pediatric surgeon and founder of the Black Doctors Consortium Dr. Ala Standford talks with Terry Gross about how, at the height of the pandemic, she dedicated herself to addressing health inequities in Black and Brown communities. She set up shop in parking lots and churches providing tests and vaccines to tens of thousands of people. Also, we'll talk with brain surgeon Dr. Theodore H. Schwartz, author of the new book Gray Matters . He'll talk about how brain surgery has been transformed by new ...
Aug 17, 2024•49 min
Homicide: Life on the Streets, the critically acclaimed police procedural set in Baltimore, is coming to streaming (Peacock) for the first time. The show, which ran for seven seasons, is based on a book by David Simon, from before he created The Wire . In an appreciation of the show, we're listening back to interviews with some of the people behind it: Executive producer and writer Tom Fontana, actor Andre Braugher, and actor Clark Johnson. And film critic Justin Chang reviews Alien: Romulus . L...
Aug 16, 2024•47 min
As democrats prepare for their national convention in Chicago next week, we take stock of a presidential race transformed. New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos tells us about the enthusiasm and energy he's seen on the campaign trail with Vice President Kamala Harris and running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Later TV critic David Bianculli reviews Bad Monkey , the new mystery series starring Vince Vaughan. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Polic...
Aug 15, 2024•46 min
Casey Michel shines a light on Americans lobbying for foreign governments in Washington, in many cases representing brutally repressive regimes and countries that oppose U.S. interests. Laws requiring registration of lobbyists and disclosure of their efforts have been little-enforced, and thus ignored by countless agents who've reaped huge profits from their work. Michel's new book is Foreign Agents. Also, Carolina Miranda reviews a YouTube documentary about the spectacular failure of a Star War...
Aug 14, 2024•44 min
Poet and writer Safiya Sinclair grew up in a devout Rastafari family in Jamaica where women were subservient. When she cut her dreadlocks at age 19, she became "a ghost" to her father. Her memoir, How to Say Babylon , is out in paperback. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Aug 13, 2024•44 min
Joe Moore, a former Army sniper turned FBI informant, shares how he infiltrated the KKK and helped foil a plot to assassinate then Sen. Barack Obama. Moore explains how hate groups are growing. His new book is 'White Robes and Broken Badges.' Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Aug 12, 2024•43 min
In 1982, eight science fiction films were released within eight weeks of each other. Chris Nashawaty, author of The Future Was Now , tells Tonya Mosley how those movies shaped the genre and the movie industry. Plus, Brittany Howard, the former Alabama Shakes singer/guitarist, tells Terry Gross that growing up, she was told repeatedly she didn't look like a lead singer. "It made me sing ... louder and perform just as hard as I could," Howard says. Her new album is What Now. Learn more about spons...
Aug 10, 2024•48 min
We commemorate the 79th anniversary of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, by revisiting a haunting question: Was the U.S. decision to destroy two Japanese cities with atomic weapons really necessary to end World War II? Author Evan Thomas discusses the motivations of key U.S. leaders, and of Japanese commanders and diplomats. His book is The Road to Surrender . Plus, John Powers reviews The Instigators , a new action comedy starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck. Learn more about sponsor...
Aug 10, 2024•45 min
Filmmaker Greg Kwedar and formerly incarcerated actor Clarence "Divine Eye" Maclin discuss their new film, which centers on the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts program founded at Sing Sing prison. Plus, Justin Chang reviews the film Good One. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Aug 08, 2024•44 min
When the pandemic hit, Dr. Ala Stanford set up shop in parking lots, churches and mosques where she provided tests and vaccines to underserved Philadelphia communities like the one she grew up in. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Aug 07, 2024•44 min
Each year, nearly half a million migrants cross the perilous stretch of jungle between South and Central America. Many face snakes, flash floods, sweltering heat, sexual violence, and death. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Caitlin Dickerson talks to Tonya Mosley about what she saw and the migrants she followed for the September Atlantic cover story. John Powers reviews the Apple TV+ series Women in Blue , about women cops in '70s Mexico City. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastch...
Aug 06, 2024•45 min
Dr. Theodore Schwartz has been treating neurological illnesses for nearly 30 years. He says being a brain surgeon requires steady hands — and a strong bladder. His new book is Gray Matters. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Aug 05, 2024•45 min
