We talk about the cultural phenomenon of Wicked with star Ariana Grande. She's nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Grande talks about some of the underlying messages in the film about belonging and good versus evil, and how growing up as a theatre nerd prepared her for this role. Also, writer and professional dominatrix Brittany Newell joins us to talk about her new novel Soft Core , which explores the underworld of San Francisco's dive bars, strip clubs, and BDSM dungeons. Maure...
Feb 08, 2025•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast Discovered at a Rolling Stones party at the age of 17, Marianne Faithfull broke out in the early '60s with the Jagger/Richards song " As Tears Go By ." Faithfull's liaison with Mick Jagger kept her in the public eye. In the '70s, she struggled with addiction, but she made a triumphant comeback in her 30s, and became a critically acclaimed rock cabaret singer. Also, critic-at-large John Powers reviews the Brazilian film I'm Still Here , which he describes as a "moving, inspiring, beautifully made...
Feb 07, 2025•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast After publishing her first novel when she was 21, Brittany Newell started working as a dominatrix. The job gave her time to write — and plenty of material to draw from. "I always like to say that what makes a good writer is also what makes a good dominatrix, which is empathy and curiosity and bravery," she says. Newell's new novel is Soft Core . Also, David Bianculli reviews the comedy TV series Clean Slate starring Laverne Cox. And Maureen Corrigan reviews two quintessential New York books. Lea...
Feb 06, 2025•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Last night, President Trump proposed a plan to displace all the Palestinians from Gaza, and get Jordan and Egypt to take them in, while the U.S. takes ownership of Gaza and rebuilds it into a Middle East Riviera. We'll talk with New Yorker staff writer Dexter Filkins about the impact of this proposal. We'll also talk with him about the recruitment crisis in the U.S. military, which has led military leaders to ask: can our country defend itself if not enough people are willing or able to fight? I...
Feb 05, 2025•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast As a kid, Ariana Grande loved singing karaoke with her family. "I looked up to Whitney and Mariah and Celine endlessly," she says. "I think that's a large part of the reason why I learned to sing." She spoke with Tonya Mosley about auditioning for and landing the role of Glinda in Wicked , her signature whistle register, and how she quiets the voice of self-doubt. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Feb 04, 2025•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sarah Wildman's daughter Orli died from cancer when she was 14. "She would sometimes ask me, 'What do you think I did to deserve this?' And of course, that's not an answerable question," Wildman says. The NYT Opinion writer spoke with Terry Gross about her daughter's treatment and death and living with grief. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Feb 03, 2025•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson is the co-director of a new documentary about the music of Saturday Night Live over the last 50 years. It's called Ladies & Gentlemen and it's streaming on Peacock. We'll also hear from author and scholar Imani Perry. Her new book Black In Blues explores the significance of the color blue in Black life, from the indigo trade to the birth of blues music. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Feb 01, 2025•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Apple TV+ drama series Severance is back for its second season. It's a dystopian take on work-life balance — where characters have their personal and professional lives surgically separated. He spoke with Ann Marie Baldonado in 2022 about the making of the series. Also, Justin Chang reviews one of this year's most talked-about Oscar nominees for Best Documentary Feature, No Other Land . It was directed by a collective of two Palestinian filmmakers and two Israeli filmmakers. Book critic Maur...
Jan 31, 2025•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Author Ricky Riccardi says Louis Armstrong's innovations as a trumpeter and vocalist helped set the entire soundtrack of the 20th century. His new book about Armstrong's early life is Stomp Off, Let's Go. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Jan 30, 2025•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast Research shows we're spending more time alone than ever before. Atlantic writer Derek Thompson says all this "me time" has a profound impact on our relationships and politics. Also, David Bianculli reviews the documentary Without Arrows . Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Jan 29, 2025•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast Award-winning author and scholar Imani Perry traces the history and symbolism of the color blue, from the indigo of the slave trade, to Coretta Scott King's wedding dress, to present day cobalt mining. Her new book is Black in Blues. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Jan 28, 2025•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast Questlove's documentary, Ladies & Gentlemen... 50 Years of SNL Music, airs tonight on NBC . It highlights some of the show's most iconic musical performances and comedy sketches — from break-out stars to lip-syncing controversy. Our TV critic David Bianculli reflects on the documentary, and then Questlove joins Terry Gross to talk about some of the highlights. Also, Ken Tucker reviews Ringo Starr's new country album, Look Up . Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoice...
Jan 27, 2025•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jesse Eisenberg talks about writing, directing and starring in the film A Real Pain . Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin play cousins who go to Poland on a Jewish Heritage Tour. One of the stops is the Majdanek death camp. He spoke with Terry Gross about questions the film raises. Also, we hear from Pamela Anderson. In the new film, The Last Showgirl , she stars as a veteran Vegas dancer who must face the end of her legendary show. She talked with Tonya Mosley about her big career comeback. Learn more ...
Jan 25, 2025•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Filmmaker and painter David Lynch died January 15 at age 78. He spoke with Terry Gross in 1994 about making his surrealist first movie, Eraserhead , leaving things up for interpretation, and where he finds inspiration. Also, we'll hear from Isabella Rossellini who starred in Lynch's Blue Velvet as a nightclub singer, and Nicolas Cage, who worked with him in Wild At Heart . And our TV critic David Bianculli shares an appreciation. Also, Justin Chang reviews the new film supernatural thriller Pres...
Jan 24, 2025•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast Bloomberg investigative reporter Zeke Faux says the Trump family's new crypto businesses have earned them tens of millions, while raising questions about political influence and ethics. Also, we remember Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, playwright and screenwriter Jules Feiffer. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Jan 23, 2025•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Pamela Anderson's role as a lifeguard on Baywatch made her a global sex symbol in the '90s. But she longed to be taken seriously as a performer and person. "I've always been carrying this secret. I feel like I've known I was capable of more, but I didn't know what," she says. She now stars in The Last Showgirl . She spoke with Tonya Mosley about her career comeback, crafting her persona, and ditching makeup. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Polic...
Jan 22, 2025•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast Eisenberg's film, A Real Pain , follows two cousins on a Jewish heritage tour of Poland, which includes a stop at the Majdanek death camp. Eisenberg spoke with Terry Gross about tragedy tourism, and his own relationship to Judaism. The "Hebrew school dropout" says the suburban bar mitzvah scene made his 12-year-old stomach turn. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Jan 21, 2025•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast NYT columnist and sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom and scholar Eddie Glaude Jr. reflect on the struggle for civil rights and what it means to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the same day that President Donald Trump is sworn into office. "Perhaps the juxtaposition of seeing Donald Trump preside over the official state memorialization of Martin Luther King will remind us of our responsibility to remembering King as he actually was ... as he was a philosopher, an organizer of the people,...
Jan 20, 2025•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast Writer Pico Iyer lost everything in a 1990 California wildfire. After being rendered homeless and sleeping on a friend's floor, he was told about a Benedictine monastery. His time spent in silence on retreat there changed him both as a person and as a writer. He spoke with Terry Gross about his new memoir about the experience, Aflame . Also, comic and former Daily Show correspondent Roy Wood Jr. talks with Tonya Mosley about his new comedy special, Lonely Flowers. Learn more about sponsor messag...
Jan 18, 2025•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Colson Whitehead's The Nickel Boys has been adapted for the big screen. In 2019, Whitehead spoke with Dave Davies when the book was released. It's set in the early '60s, based on the true story of the Dozier reform school in Florida, where many boys were beaten and sexually abused. Dozens of unmarked graves have been discovered on the school grounds. "If there's one place like this, there are many," he says. Later, guest critic Martin Johnson reviews a new recordi...
Jan 17, 2025•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast Rape kits were widely known as "Vitullo Kits" after a Chicago police sergeant. But a new book tells the story of Marty Goddard, a community activist who worked with runaway teenagers in the 1970s. Also, TV critic David Bianculli reviews the Western miniseries American Primeval , now streaming on Netflix. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Jan 16, 2025•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast In 1990, writer Pico Iyer watched as a wildfire destroyed his mother's Santa Barbara home, where he also lived. In Aflame , he recounts the devastation of the fire — and the peace he found living in a Benedictine monastery. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Jan 15, 2025•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast In the past, Donald Trump talked about keeping America out of foreign conflicts — but lately he's talked about potentially using force or economic pressure to acquire Greenland, the Panama Canal, even Canada. We'll speak with Pulitzer Prize-winning NYT national security correspondent David Sanger. He'll talk about how Trump might handle the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and Iran's growing nuclear threat. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Jan 14, 2025•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast A good comedian has to "know what regular people are going through," Roy Wood Jr. says. In his new Hulu special, Lonely Flowers , Wood riffs on how isolation has sent society spiraling. He spoke with Tonya Mosley about leaving The Daily Show , learning from other comics, and how an arrest pushed him to pursue stand-up. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Jan 13, 2025•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tilda Swinton stars as a woman with cancer who decides she wants to end her life in the new Pedro Almodóvar film The Room Next Door . She asks a friend to stay with her for her last weeks. She spoke with Terry Gross about the role and her own experience bearing witness to the deaths of loved ones. Also, we hear from award-winning actor Adrien Brody. He stars in the film The Brutalist as a Hungarian-Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor who seeks a fresh start in post-WWII America. Brody tells ...
Jan 11, 2025•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast A Complete Unknown – the film about Bob Dylan is in theaters. We're featuring interviews with three people depicted in the film: Suze Rotolo was his girlfriend and was photographed on his arm for the cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. She told Terry about that photoshoot. Folk singer Joan Baez was already a star when she met Dylan. She took him on tour, but nobody knew who he was. She talks about some of those early shows. And Al Kooper was a session musician who played the organ on "Like a Ro...
Jan 10, 2025•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast The 39th president spoke with Terry Gross in 1995, 2001 and 2005 about poetry, Sept. 11 and his concerns about how intertwined politics and religion had become. Carter died on Dec. 29 at age 100. Today is his funeral. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Jan 09, 2025•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Pedro Almodóvar's film The Room Next Door , Tilda Swinton plays a woman with late-stage cancer who wants to end her life. She asks a friend, played by Julianne Moore, to stay with her for her last month on Earth. Swinton's performance draws on her experiences supporting and bearing witness to loved ones at the end of their lives. "A life spent considering how we're going to spend our end is not wasted time," she tells Terry Gross. "We're all going that way, and the sooner we accept and embrac...
Jan 08, 2025•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Adrien Brody won a Golden Globe for his role in The Brutalist , as a Hungarian-Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor who seeks a fresh start in post-WWII America. "I just was in awe when I read the script," he says. Brody spoke with Tonya Mosley about how his family's history helped him with the role, and about his collaboration with Wes Anderson. Also, John Powers reviews the new erotic drama Babygirl . Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Jan 07, 2025•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast In an experiment, science journalist Lynne Peeples spent 10 days in an underground bunker, with no exposure to sunlight or clocks. She wanted to see what happened to her body and mind when it became out of sync with its natural circadian rhythm. She spoke with Tonya Mosley about what she learned, how we change with age, and the importance of sunlight. Her book is The Inner Clock . Also, TV critic David Bianculli reviews the series Laid and Going Dutch . Learn more about sponsor message choices: ...
Jan 06, 2025•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
