Fresh Air

By NPR

What's Fresh Air about?

Fresh Air from WHYY, the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues, is one of public radio's most popular programs. Hosted by Terry Gross, the show features intimate conversations with today's biggest luminaries.

4.3

26,592 ratings

Download our free app to listen on your phone

LAST EPISODE

Courtney B. Vance On Playin...

04.21.2021

Courtney B. Vance got his start in the theater, with a breakout role in the August Wilson play 'Fences' on Broadway. We talk about his origin story and his recent roles as Aretha Franklin's father, Rev. C.L. Franklin, in 'Genius: ...

Fresh Air episodes:

04.22.2021 The Social Psychologist Who Works To Reduce Harm In Policing Yale professor Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff co-founded the Center for Policing Equity, which collects data on police behavior from 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the country. He says most people think of racism as an issue of character and ignorance. ...
04.21.2021 Courtney B. Vance On Playing Rev. C.L. Franklin & Johnnie Cochran Courtney B. Vance got his start in the theater, with a breakout role in the August Wilson play 'Fences' on Broadway. We talk about his origin story and his recent roles as Aretha Franklin's father, Rev. C.L. Franklin, in 'Genius: ...
04.20.2021 Growing Up In A Cult, Lauren Hough Freed Herself By Writing Hough was 15 when her family left the Children of God cult. Afterward, she struggled to face the trauma of her past. At 18 she joined the Air Force during "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and was discharged for being gay. ...
04.19.2021 'How To Be An Adult' & 'Real American' Author Julie Lythcott-Haims Former Stanford University undergraduate dean Julie Lythcott-Haims' new book, 'Your Turn: How to Be an Adult,' is a handbook on adulthood, offering insights and strategies on education and career choices, building friendships and coping with setbacks. Her 2017 memoir, 'Real ...
04.17.2021 Best Of: Choreographer Twyla Tharp / Henry Louis Gates On 'The Black Church' 'Twyla Moves,' a new documentary by PBS American Masters, tells the story of the legendary choreographer and dancer, who got her start performing on subway platforms and rooftops in the 1960s. "If it was kind of level, it was fair ...
04.16.2021 Native Peoples' 'Long, Brutal Fight For Survival' Louise Erdrich's novel, 'The Night Watchman,' was inspired by her grandfather, a chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa who fought a Congressional initiative to move indigenous peoples off their land and into cities. Erdrich says the policy amounted ...
04.15.2021 'Resistance' Podcast Host On The Fight For Black Lives Saidu Tejan-Thomas Jr. lost a close friend from college to police violence. His Spotify podcast, 'Resistance,' explores different aspects of the movement for Black lives — including Tejan-Thomas Jr.'s personal history. We talk about his childhood in Sierra Leone, his ...
04.14.2021 The 'Secret History' Of The Sackler Family & The Opioid Crisis The Sackler family owns Purdue Pharma, which made billions of dollars selling OxyContin, an opiate painkiller stronger than morphine. Introduced in 1996, OxyContin has been largely blamed for the opioid addiction crisis that followed. The Sacklers and the company are ...
04.13.2021 Henry Louis Gates Jr. On The Black Church The 'Finding Your Roots' host has a new book and PBS series called 'The Black Church.' Gates describes the Black church as "the cultural cauldron Black people created to combat a system designed in every way to crush their spirit." ...
04.12.2021 Leslie Odom Jr. / 'Promising Young Woman' Filmmaker Emerald Fennell Tony and Grammy-winning actor Leslie Odom Jr. is best-known for his role as Aaron Burr in 'Hamilton.' Now he stars as Sam Cooke in Regina King's film 'One Night in Miami,' which imagines a night where Cassius Clay, Malcolm X, ...
04.10.2021 Best Of: Brandi Carlile / Palestinian Cookbook Author Reem Kassis Six-time Grammy winner Brandi Carlile got her start onstage as a kid, singing backup for an Elvis impersonator. Her new memoir, 'Broken Horses,' is about her early life and the family of misfits she's built. "I think I'm starting to ...
04.09.2021 Prolific Background Singer Merry Clayton Singer Merry Clayton did the iconic background vocals of the 1969 Rolling Stones song "Gimme Shelter." But despite the fame and success of the record, Clayton remained largely anonymous. Until, that is, she was featured as one of the backup ...
04.08.2021 Choreographer Twyla Tharp 'Twyla Moves,' a new documentary by PBS American Masters, tells the story of the legendary choreographer and dancer, who got her start performing on subway platforms and rooftops in the 1960s. "If it was kind of level, it was fair ...
04.07.2021 Palestinian Cookbook Author Reem Kassis Reem Kassis began gathering family recipes after the birth of her first child. The recipes, she says, "could be the story of any and every Palestinian family." We talk about her favorite fried egg recipe, the importance of za'atar seasoning, ...
04.06.2021 The Intersection Of Black Performance, Joy & Pain What do 'Soul Train' and Whitney Houston tell us about race in the U.S? Poet and culture critic Hanif Abdurraqib's book, 'A Little Devil in America,' traces the history of Black performance through moments in pop culture, emphasizing the joy ...
04.05.2021 Brandi Carlile The six-time Grammy winner got her start onstage as a kid, singing backup for an Elvis impersonator. Her new memoir, 'Broken Horses,' is about her early life and the family of misfits she's built. "I think I'm starting to really ...
04.03.2021 Best Of: The Amazing Lives Of Migratory Birds / 'Lovecraft Country' Creator Author and bird researcher Scott Weidensaul shares amazing stories of the billions of migratory birds that journey over our heads every year, how they manage their feats physically, and how they're threatened by economic development and climate change. His new ...
04.02.2021 Christopher Meloni / Remembering Larry McMurtry & G. Gordon Liddy We remember novelist and screenwriter Larry McMurtry who died last week at the age of 84. Raised on a Texas ranch, McMurtry wrote about the American West in the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel 'Lonesome Dove', which was later made into a ...
04.01.2021 Tackling Child Poverty Through COVID Relief 'New York Times' reporter Jason DeParle says a provision in the new COVID relief package has the makings of a policy revolution — and "would roughly cut child poverty in half." Qualifying families with children will receive between $250 and ...
03.31.2021 The High Stakes Of Amazon's 'One-Click America' ProPublica journalist Alec MacGillis says a union vote by Amazon workers in Alabama could determine "what life is going to look like for the working class in America in years to come." We talk with MacGillis about how Amazon's size, ...
03.30.2021 'Lovecraft Country' Creator Misha Green The HBO series 'Lovecraft Country' takes the real horrors of the Black experience in the 1950s and adds to it the supernatural terrors of the horror genre. We talk to series creator Misha Green about reclaiming the genre space for ...
03.29.2021 The Amazing Lives Of Migratory Birds Author Scott Weidensaul talks about the millions of birds flying unseen over our heads in the night sky, how the bar-tailed godwit can fly more than a week over water without stopping, and how new tracking technology may help with ...
03.27.2021 Best Of: The Making Of 'Soul' / The Afterlife Of Mass Incarceration The Oscar-nominated animated film 'Soul' imagines a place where souls are matched with unique passions. It follows Joe Gardner, a middle school band teacher and aspiring jazz musician, who nearly dies right after securing the gig of his life. Filmmakers ...
03.26.2021 Actors Riz Ahmed / Kathryn Hahn Riz Ahmed plays a drummer who loses his hearing in 'Sound of Metal.' To prepare for the role, he immersed himself in deaf culture — an experience that changed the way he thought about communication and listening. The film earned ...
03.25.2021 The Threat Of Domestic Terrorism Elizabeth Neumann resigned from the Department of Homeland Security in April of 2020. She says the Trump administration ignored the threat — and fanned the flames — of violent domestic extremism. She's now co-director of the Republican Accountability Project, which ...
03.24.2021 The Afterlife Of Mass Incarceration There are 45,000 laws, policies and administrative sanctions in the U.S. that target people with criminal records. University of Chicago sociologist Reuben Jonathan Miller researches how they affect people's lives in 'Halfway Home.' "I want us to think about all ...
03.23.2021 The Making Of Pixar's 'Soul' The Oscar-nominated animated film imagines a place where souls are matched with unique passions. It follows Joe Gardner, a middle school band teacher and aspiring jazz musician, who nearly dies right after securing the gig of his life. Pete Docter ...
03.22.2021 Correcting The Record On Lady Bird Johnson The former first lady is often remembered as a genteel Southerner who promoted highway beautification, but author Julia Sweig says archival records show Lady Bird was a savvy political strategist and key advisor to her husband, President Lyndon Johnson. Lady ...
03.20.2021 Best Of: The Story Behind 'Unorthodox' / Novelist Kazuo Ishiguro Deborah Feldman's memoir, 'Unorthodox,' about leaving the Satmar Hasidic community in Brooklyn, inspired the Netflix series of the same name. Growing up, she wasn't supposed to pursue an education or career, and, at 17, she entered into an arranged marriage ...
03.19.2021 Country Icon Loretta Lynn The country music star's 50th studio album, 'Still Woman Enough,' is out now. Lynn spoke with Terry Gross in 2010 about her memoir, 'Coal Miner's Daughter.' Also, Justin Chang reviews 'The Father,' starring Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Coleman. And Lloyd ...
03.18.2021 Could Trump Be Convicted Of Criminal Charges? 'New Yorker' writer Jane Mayer talks about the criminal investigation into whether Donald Trump engaged in tax, banking and/or insurance fraud. If convicted, he could be sentenced to prison. "The thing that's most complicated about this case and makes it ...
03.17.2021 Novelist Kazuo Ishiguro The Nobel Prize-winning novelist's new book, 'Klara and the Sun,' is set in the future and has an artificially intelligent narrator. "I wanted some of that childlike freshness and openness and naivety to survive all the way through the text ...
03.16.2021 How to 'Futureproof' Yourself In An Automated World 'New York Times' tech columnist Kevin Roose says we've been approaching automation all wrong. "What we should be teaching people is to be more like humans, to do the things that machines can't do," he says. We talk about misconceptions ...
03.15.2021 'Unorthodox' Author On Her 'Scandalous Rejection' Of Hasidic Life Deborah Feldman's memoir, 'Unorthodox,' about leaving the Satmar Hasidic community in Brooklyn inspired the Netflix series of the same name. Growing up, Feldman spoke Yiddish and was discouraged from speaking or reading English at home. She wasn't supposed to pursue ...
03.13.2021 Best Of: Musician Jon Batiste / Magician Derek DelGaudio The bandleader of 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' joins us from his home piano where he plays music he wrote for the Pixar movie 'Soul' and songs from his new album 'We Are.' Batiste has been playing pop-up shows ...
03.12.2021 The Rise Of White Supremacy In Wilmington, N.C. Journalist David Zucchino tells the forgotten story of a murderous coup that led to a white supremacist takeover of a Southern city. In the 1890s, Wilmington, N.C., was a mixed-race community with a thriving Black middle class, Black aldermen and ...
03.11.2021 Musician Jon Batiste On Sharing Joy In A Painful Year The bandleader of 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' joins us from his home piano where he plays music he wrote for the Pixar movie 'Soul' and a stirring rendition of the national anthem. Batiste has been playing pop-up shows ...
03.10.2021 Sherry Turkle On The Burden Of Family Secrets MIT professor and social scientist Sherry Turkle was 27 when she learned that her estranged father had conducted psychological experiments on her when she was a child. She looks back on her childhood in a new memoir, 'The Empathy Diaries.' ...
03.09.2021 Inside The Right-To-Die Movement Journalist Katie Engelhart's new book, 'The Inevitable,' follows people who are planning to end their lives due to terminal illness or unbearable disability — either legally with physician-assisted death, or as part of the "euthanasia underground," outside of the law. ...
03.08.2021 Author Walter Isaacson On The Gene Editing Revolution Biochemist Jennifer Doudna, the subject of Walter Isaacson's new biography 'The Code Breaker,' shared a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2020 for the part she played in developing the CRISPR gene editing technology. We discuss mRNA vaccines, how gene editing ...
03.06.2021 Best Of: Writer Tim O'Brien / Inside The Capitol Insurrection Known for his novel 'The Things They Carried,' Tim O'Brien is now the subject of a new documentary, 'The War and Peace of Tim O'Brien.' When he became a father in his late 50s, he initially feared parenthood would curtail ...
03.05.2021 Novelist James McBride James McBride's novel 'Deacon King Kong' takes place in 1969, in a Brooklyn housing project similar to the one he grew up in. "In this book and in this community, people generally love each other," he says. McBride's novel 'The ...
03.04.2021 What's Next For The War In Afghanistan? America's 19-year war in Afghanistan may soon be coming to an end. The Trump administration negotiated a deal with the Taliban, in which the U.S. agreed to withdraw all its troops by May 1. But the Afghan government was not ...
03.03.2021 'Minari' Director Lee Isaac Chung Based on Chung's own childhood, 'Minari' is about a Korean American family that moves to rural Arkansas to start a farm. The director spoke with contributor Arun Venugopal about the memories that inspired the film, why he initially kept the ...
03.02.2021 How Bellingcat's Web Sleuths Solve Global Crimes Eliot Higgins is the founder of an online collective that picks apart conspiracy theories and investigates war crimes and hate crimes using clues from the Internet — like social media posts, leaked databases and free satellite maps. We talk about ...
03.01.2021 From Card Cheat To Illusionist: Magician Derek DelGaudio The sleight-of-hand master explores themes of identity, honesty and the emotional cost of keeping secrets in the memoir, 'AMORALMAN.' DelGaudio's one-man show 'In & Of Itself' is now available on Hulu. "[Secrets] are like a drug," he says. "They enter ...
02.27.2021 Best Of: Sacha Baron Cohen / Changing Policing From The Inside British actor Sacha Baron Cohen is known for taking his absurd characters like Borat, Brüno and Ali G into the world and interacting with unwitting real people. Baron Cohen has been chased, sued and nearly arrested while in character. We ...
02.26.2021 The Legacies Of Sam Cooke, Muhammad Ali & Malcolm X The movie 'One Night in Miami,' directed by Regina King, imagines the conversations between four Black icons in 1964: Cassius Clay, Sam Cooke, Jim Brown and Malcolm X, on the night of Clay's surprise win over Sonny Liston. We listen ...
02.25.2021 Behind-The-Scenes Of The Capitol Insurrection Video George Polk Award-winning journalist Luke Mogelson followed a mob of MAGA supporters into the Capitol on Jan. 6 and filmed what he saw. His video footage from inside the Senate Chamber was used as evidence in the second impeachment trial ...
02.24.2021 Writer Tim O'Brien On Fatherhood & The Burden Of Vietnam Known for his novel 'The Things They Carried,' O'Brien is now the subject of a new documentary, 'The War and Peace of Tim O'Brien.' When he became a father in his late 50s, he initially feared parenthood would curtail his ...

Older episodes

Fresh Air

What's Fresh Air about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Fresh Air episodes:

The Social Psychologist Who Works To Reduce Harm In Policing

Courtney B. Vance On Playing Rev. C.L. Franklin & Johnnie Cochran

Growing Up In A Cult, Lauren Hough Freed Herself By Writing

'How To Be An Adult' & 'Real American' Author Julie Lythcott-Haims

Best Of: Choreographer Twyla Tharp / Henry Louis Gates On 'The Black Church'

Native Peoples' 'Long, Brutal Fight For Survival'

'Resistance' Podcast Host On The Fight For Black Lives

The 'Secret History' Of The Sackler Family & The Opioid Crisis

Henry Louis Gates Jr. On The Black Church

Leslie Odom Jr. / 'Promising Young Woman' Filmmaker Emerald Fennell

Best Of: Brandi Carlile / Palestinian Cookbook Author Reem Kassis

Prolific Background Singer Merry Clayton

Choreographer Twyla Tharp

Palestinian Cookbook Author Reem Kassis

The Intersection Of Black Performance, Joy & Pain

Brandi Carlile

Best Of: The Amazing Lives Of Migratory Birds / 'Lovecraft Country' Creator

Christopher Meloni / Remembering Larry McMurtry & G. Gordon Liddy

Tackling Child Poverty Through COVID Relief

The High Stakes Of Amazon's 'One-Click America'

'Lovecraft Country' Creator Misha Green

The Amazing Lives Of Migratory Birds

Best Of: The Making Of 'Soul' / The Afterlife Of Mass Incarceration

Actors Riz Ahmed / Kathryn Hahn

The Threat Of Domestic Terrorism

The Afterlife Of Mass Incarceration

The Making Of Pixar's 'Soul'

Correcting The Record On Lady Bird Johnson

Best Of: The Story Behind 'Unorthodox' / Novelist Kazuo Ishiguro

Country Icon Loretta Lynn

Could Trump Be Convicted Of Criminal Charges?

Novelist Kazuo Ishiguro

How to 'Futureproof' Yourself In An Automated World

'Unorthodox' Author On Her 'Scandalous Rejection' Of Hasidic Life

Best Of: Musician Jon Batiste / Magician Derek DelGaudio

The Rise Of White Supremacy In Wilmington, N.C.

Musician Jon Batiste On Sharing Joy In A Painful Year

Sherry Turkle On The Burden Of Family Secrets

Inside The Right-To-Die Movement

Author Walter Isaacson On The Gene Editing Revolution

Best Of: Writer Tim O'Brien / Inside The Capitol Insurrection

Novelist James McBride

What's Next For The War In Afghanistan?

'Minari' Director Lee Isaac Chung

How Bellingcat's Web Sleuths Solve Global Crimes

From Card Cheat To Illusionist: Magician Derek DelGaudio

Best Of: Sacha Baron Cohen / Changing Policing From The Inside

The Legacies Of Sam Cooke, Muhammad Ali & Malcolm X

Behind-The-Scenes Of The Capitol Insurrection Video

Writer Tim O'Brien On Fatherhood & The Burden Of Vietnam

Other shows like Fresh Air: