Mueller deputy Aaron Zebley looks back on the investigation of Trump's ties to Russia and explains why his team didn't indict the president in 2017. Zebley is the co-author of Interference . David Bianculli reviews WandaVision spin-off, Agatha All Along on Disney+. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
After his 2019 hit Joker , Todd Phillips knew he wanted to do more with the character. Joker: Folie à Deux picks up two years after the original, and features singing by Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga. The director spoke with Terry Gross about his collaboration with Phoenix, how he got into filmmaking, and casting Gaga. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Pioneering television journalist Connie Chung gives us a behind-the-scenes look at what it took for her to climb to the top in the male-dominated field of TV news. Her new memoir is Connie . Also, we talk with Demi Moore about her new horror film The Substance, in which she plays an aging actress who loses her job hosting a workout show because her boss thinks she's too old and not hot enough. John Powers reviews the new documentary ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor! Learn more about sponsor message choices:...
Florida's population has quintupled since writer Carl Hiaasen grew up near Fort Lauderdale in the '50s. As a former Miami Herald columnist and novelist, Hiaasen railed against, and made fun of, politicians and developers who he said were covering the state with concrete, and the tourists and retirees who just kept coming. Hiaasen's 2013 novel, Bad Monkey , a wacky murder mystery set in Key West COMMA is now a television series streaming on Apple TV +, starring Vince Vaughn. Also, we remember rev...
NYT senior political correspondent Maggie Haberman, who has spent years covering former President Trump, discusses his behavior on the campaign trail, including his need to respond to every slight, even when it damages his appeal to voters. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
TV news journalist Connie Chung has written a new tell-all memoir. It's about breaking into the boys club of her industry, her marriage to Maury Povitch, and the big scoops of her career. The funny and off-the-cuff news icon spoke with Tonya Mosley. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner spent years investigating the former president's finances and various businesses. They dispel Trump's myth of being a self-made billionaire, and trace the missteps he made, squandering his father's fortune. Their book is Lucky Loser . Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
In the horror movie The Substance , Demi Moore plays an aging actress who uses a black-market drug to create a younger version of herself. She says the film examines the pressures middle-aged women face to remain youthful. Moore spoke with Tonya Mosley about "compare and despair" in Hollywood, and why she's entered a new chapter of her life. Also, John Powers reviews the documentary ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor! , about the South Park creators' ill-fated attempt to restore a beloved Colorado landmark. L...
Journalists Ryan Mac and Kate Conger talk about the chaos Elon Musk created inside Twitter, how Musk moved further to the political right, and how Trump wants to appoint Musk to head a new efficiency commission. Their book is Character Limit . Also, we'll hear from comedian Taylor Tomlinson, host of CBS's late-night talk show After Midnight . Tomlinson started doing stand up when she was 16 and took a class with a Christian comedian. Then she started testing her material on the church circuit. A...
James Earl Jones was the voice of Darth Vader in Star Wars and Mafusa in The Lion King , and once the voice of CNN. But there was a time when he didn't want to be heard. We revisit his 1993 interview with Terry Gross about how he overcame his stutter. Jones died this week at 93. Also we remember late guitarist Russell Malone. He played with Diana Krall and Harry Connick Jr . Film critic Justin Chang reviews His Three Daughters . Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoi...
Democrats and Republicans learned from the legal fight over the 2020 elections, New York Times reporter Nick Corasaniti explains how both sides are prepping for 2024 ballot box fight. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
After buying Twitter in 2022, Elon Musk instituted sweeping changes. He laid off or fired about 75% of the staff –including about half the data scientists. He also ended rules banning hate speech and misinformation. Authors Kate Conger and Ryan Mac recount the takeover in Character Limit. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Investigative journalist Jessica Pishko says that a growing group of "constitutional sheriffs" have become a flashpoint in the current politics of toxic masculinity, guns, white supremacy, and rural resentment. "Constitutional sheriffs would argue that there is no one who can tell them what to do," Pishko says. "Not the president, not the Supreme Court, not the governor, not the legislature. Sometimes constitutional sheriffs will call themselves something like a king." Her book is The Highest La...
The After Midnight host was initially unsure about sharing her bipolar II diagnosis on-stage. But, she tells co-host Tonya Mosley, "I got such amazing feedback from people who had been struggling with their mental health." Her new Netflix comedy special is Have It All . Also, David Bianculli reviews the new season of Only Murders in the Building . Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
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...
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 . ...
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
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
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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
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...
