Terry Gross
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So let's hear a song that the Gershwins wrote for a movie musical. And the musical is Shall We Dance? And the song is They Can't Take That Away From Me. Did they like writing for Fred Astaire? I love his singing as well as his dancing.
Most of his best-known songs were written with his younger brother, the pianist and composer George Gershwin, but Ira also wrote with Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, and Kurt Weill. Thank you. Let's start with Ella Fitzgerald singing Lady Be Good from her 1959 album Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Songbook. It's the title song from an early Gershwin musical.
Was it highly syncopated?
So this is a song from the 1937 movie musical, Shall We Dance? And the song is They Can't Take That Away From Me. Any insights into how the song was written?
Okay, so this is Fred Astaire singing That Can't Take That Away From Me.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Michael Owen, author of the new book, Ira Gershwin, A Life in Words. He knows a lot about Gershwin's life and music. For about a decade, he ran the Ira Gershwin Estate Archive. And then after that, he became a consulting historian and archivist to the estate.
Is it fair to say that one of Ira Gershwin's favorite songs was Embraceable You of his own songs?
Hi, it's Terry Gross. Before we start our show... I want to take a minute to remind you that it's Almost Giving Tuesday, which is so named because it's become a day of expressing gratitude by giving money or any kind of help to an individual or group or organization that matters to you. We found a way to turn Giving Tuesday into Giving and Getting Tuesday.
I mean, so everyone has to be a naughty baby. Come to Papa.
Do my sweet, embraceable you. Who talks about their father that way?
Yeah. It's a beautiful song. In a lot of ways, the lyric is pretty simple. And you're right that George was always saying to Iris, simplify, simplify. Why would he say that?
And name checks of Schopenhauer.
And very, very singable.
So why don't we hear Billie Holiday's recording of Embraceable You.
The Gershwins, along with DuBose Haywood, wrote what I think is considered the first great American opera, and certainly the first jazz-inflected American opera, Porgy and Bess. And it's always kind of confusing who wrote what lyric, because Ira Gershwin is known as the lyricist for Porgy and Bess, but some of the lyrics are actually written by DuBose Haywood.
and some of the lyrics are credited to both of them. Can you straighten that out a little bit?
Since it sounds like we're certain that Ira wrote There's a Boat That's Leaving Soon for New York, I thought we'd hear that and also hear it from the 1977 Houston Grand Opera recording of Porgy and Bess. Because I think this song really exemplifies how the Gershwins combined opera and jazz. And the arrangements are so good, too, which I assume George Gershwin did.
Yeah. So let's hear this 1977 production. The singer is Larry Marshall. Before we hear it, just set up briefly the context of the song.
Okay, let's hear it.
That's a song from Porgy and Bess, and this was from a 1977 Houston Grand Opera production featuring Larry Marshall singing. And my guest is Michael Owen, author of the new book, Ira Gershwin, A Life in Words. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to my interview with Michael Owen, author of the new book, Ira Gershwin, A Life in Words.
Ira Gershon's career stalled at some point. Why did it stall? Was it changing times? Was it George's death? What was the problem?
How did Ira Gershwin's life end?
So why don't we end with Love Is Here to Stay, a George and Ira Gershwin collaboration, one of their really enduring songs, sung by Rosemary Clooney, who was Ira's next-door neighbor and a great interpreter of Gershwin's songs. Is this a song you particularly like?
Yeah, yeah, a fitting ending, and it's the way Rosemary Clooney used to end a lot of her shows.
Michael Owen, thank you so much for talking with us.
Michael Owen is the author of the new book, Ira Gershwin, A Life in Words.
Michael Owen, welcome to Fresh Air. I love the Gershwin's music, so it's a pleasure to be able to talk with you about it. I opened with Lady Be Good because I think it ties together the early part of Ira Gershwin's career with the part in the 1950s when he wasn't really writing much. And his career, his songs, like, needed a boost.
Coming up, jazz historian Kevin Whitehead has an appreciation of Roy Haynes, who played with musicians ranging from Lester Young and Charlie Parker to Pat Metheny and Chick Corea. Haynes died earlier this month. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. We're going to remember drummer Roy Haynes. He died November 12th at the age of 99.
He was one of the most in-demand drummers in jazz, working with Lester Young, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Stan Getz, and Sarah Vaughan, and many others, before he turned 30, and later with Gary Burton, Chick Corea, and Pat Metheny. Jazz historian Kevin Whitehead calls him a powerhouse who liked to prod his fellow players.
And Ella Fitzgerald's Gershwin Songbook really helped give him that boost. So can you talk a little bit about the importance of both of those ends, you know, the Lady Be Good musical and the Ella Fitzgerald Gershwin songbook?
Kevin Whitehead is the author of Play the Way You Feel, The Essential Guide to Jazz Stories on Film, Why Jazz, and New Dutch Swing, which has just been reissued. Tomorrow on Fresh Air for Thanksgiving Day, we feature one of our favorite interviews of the year with the beloved cellist Yo-Yo Ma. He brought his cello to the interview and played music that's inspired him from his childhood to today.
I hope you'll join us. Our technical director is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer is Adam Staniszewski. Our digital media producers are Molly Sivinesper and Sabrina Siewert. Thea Chaloner directed today's show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross. All of us at Fresh Air wish you a happy Thanksgiving.
George and Ira had very different interests and personalities. George was more extroverted. Ira was more shy or wanted to stay more in the background. And George was very musical. Ira was immersed in words. He read a lot. He kept a record of what he read. He started writing light verse songs. That was published in the college magazine or newspaper and other places.
Were they close as children being so different from each other?
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When Ira was young, either in high school or college, he became friends with Yip Harburg, the lyricist probably most famous for writing the lyrics for The Wizard of Oz. And he also wrote the very famous lyric, Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? And not only were they friends and they often like talked about not only poetry and light verse, but also lyrics together.
Ira actually contributed a couple of lines to Over the Rainbow from The Wizard of Oz. What was Ira's contribution?
If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why oh why can't I?
And he did not get credit.
Why don't we just hear that coda, just hear the end of the song.
That was the end of Somewhere Over the Rainbow from The Wizard of Oz, and we heard those last couple of lines, which were actually written by Ira Gershwin. Ira read so many books and wrote light verse, and some of the lyrics have really fun, funny literary references in them. An example for that is But Not For Me, which is a beautiful song.
And it has a line, I found more skies of gray than any Russian play can guarantee. One of his famous lines. Can you talk a little bit about that song and how it originated?
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Part of the lyric, and it's the end of the lyric, goes, when every happy plot ends with a marriage knot, and there's no knot for me. So it's a clever play on words.
It was the same with S'Wonderful. If somebody sang It's Wonderful, you'd get pretty upset. And I was listening to the Lee Wiley. She did a whole set of Gershwin songs. And she sings It's Wonderful. It's supposed to be S'Wonderful. But she's such a great singer. Anyhow, let's not get too distracted and let's hear But Not For Me. Should we hear Lee Wiley singing it?
And this is on her recording from the 1930s, right?
So let's hear Lee Wiley's recording from the 1930s of George and Ira Gershwin's But Not For Me.
The classic songs, Lady Be Good, Embraceable You, Swonderful, Love Is Here to Stay, Let's Call the Whole Thing Off, Fascinating Rhythm, I Got Rhythm, I've Got a Crush on You, My Ship, The Man That Got Away, Long Ago and Far Away, I Could Go On. They all have lyrics by Ira Gershwin.
That was Lee Wiley, recorded in the 1930s, singing the Gershwin song, But Not For Me. My guest, Michael Owen, is the author of a new book called Ira Gershwin, A Life in Words. What was their approach to writing together? Everybody wants to know what came first, the words or the music. And their approach to writing together changed over the years.
Sammy Cahn used to say that, too. Yes. I think they all said that. I think they all said that.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Merry Christmas. I hope you're enjoying the holiday. The new Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, opened today in theaters. It stars Timothee Chalamet as Dylan. Today we're featuring interviews from our archive related to Dylan. We'll start with folk singer Pete Seeger, who influenced Dylan and is portrayed in the film by Edward Norton.
Your work has inspired thousands and thousands of Americans of different generations. And you could have, if you wanted to, really played that role to the hilt of the father of the modern American folk music movement.
My interview with Pete Seeger was recorded in 1984. He died in 2014 at the age of 94. In the new Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, Seeger is portrayed by Edward Norton. After we take a short break, we'll hear the interview I recorded with Bruce Springsteen in 2016 after the publication of his memoir, Born to Run.
He performed with Seeger and recorded an entire album of songs associated with Pete Seeger. Here's one of them. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. The new Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, opened today. Our next Dylan adjacent interview is with Bruce Springsteen. Not only did Dylan influence Springsteen, Springsteen was hailed as the new Bob Dylan at the start of his recording career.
In Springsteen's memoir, he called Dylan the father of my country and wrote that Dylan's albums, Highway 61 Revisited and Bringing It All Back Home, were, quote, unquote. When Springsteen inducted Dylan into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Springsteen said, I wouldn't be here without you.
He performed Dylan's The Times They Are a-Changin' in 1997 at the Kennedy Center when Dylan was a Kennedy Center honoree. We're going to hear the interview I recorded with Springsteen in his home studio in New Jersey, not far from where he grew up. It was back in 2016 when his memoir had just been published. The book shares the title of his most famous song, Born to Run.
The theme of that anthem is escape. But in much of the book, Springsteen reflects on how he and his music were shaped by home, roots, blood, community, freedom, and responsibility. We started with a track from his CD, Chapter and Verse, that serves as an audio companion to the book with a selection of songs that span his career. This is his demo recording of his song, Growing Up.
Pete Seeger was convicted for contempt of Congress, but that was eventually overturned on appeal. He later performed at President Obama's inaugural concert. As a young man, Seeger believed songs were a way of binding people to a cause. Here's one of his many labor songs, called Cotton Mill Colic.
Well, the flag of piracy flew from my mask Bruce Springsteen, welcome to Fresh Air and thank you for welcoming us into your studio. I'd love it if you would start by reading the very opening from the foreword of your book. It's really a fantastic book and I'd like our listeners to just hear a little bit of your writing.
So what's it like for you to write something that doesn't have to rhyme and that you don't have to perform on stage?
Well, that's one of the things I love about the book, is that there is rhythm and music in it, even though it's not a song. So many of your songs, particularly the early ones, are about searching for a dream and running to bust out of the confines of your life. And in some ways, I get the impression from your book that that was your father's story, except he never found the dream.
It's kind of a little bit like the story that you describe in your song, The River, where
Because when you were 19, he moved to California.
Do you think the song Born to Run is in part about him and in part about you?
So you had a dream in a way that your father maybe didn't have a dream that he could articulate?
Yeah, yeah. So you write, too, about your father that... He was kind of very, let me quote you because you put it so well. You write that he loved me, but he couldn't stand me. He felt we competed for my mother's affections. We did. He also saw in me too much of his real self. Inside, beyond his rage, he harbored a gentleness, timidity, shyness, and a dreamy insecurity.
These were things I wore on the outside, and the reflection of these qualities in his boy repelled him. I was soft, and he hated soft. Of course, he'd been brought up soft, a mama's boy just like me. So that timidity and shyness that you wore on the outside, it's kind of like the opposite of your stage persona. I know, it's bizarre.
Can you tell us a little bit more about the timidity and shyness of your youth?
So do you think that your stage persona draws both from, like, the angry and uninhibited side of you and the more inhibited, timid side of you?
We're listening to the interview I recorded with Bruce Springsteen in 2016 after the publication of his memoir, Born to Run. We'll hear more of it after a break. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to the interview I recorded with Bruce Springsteen in his home studio in New Jersey back in 2016 after the publication of his memoir, Born to Run.
During your early years as a musician, you were in Asbury Park, boardwalk, carnival atmosphere. What did you love about that kind of urban beach? Yeah. And the, you know... Madame Marie and all of the boardwalk regulars, you made great stories out of those characters, great songs out of those characters. What appealed to you about knowing them and writing about them?
Pete Seeger kept singing and protesting right through 2011 when he joined a march in support of the Occupy Wall Street protests. He also spent many years championing environmental causes. He died in 2014 at the age of 94. When I spoke with Seeger in 1984, he told me about how much he was influenced by Woody Guthrie.
But you connected in some way.
And that's one of the things that really interests me in comparing you to Dylan. Because when you first started, people were comparing you to Dylan, one of the new Dylans and everything. In some ways, like persona-wise, you're the opposite. He changed his name. He surrounded himself in mystery. His lyrics are very obscure. Your lyrics tell stories. You're all about a place.
You reveal so much about yourself and the world around you in your songs. Yeah. You know what I mean? I know that you're more than what you literally tell us about in the songs, but still, you have an identity and try to tell us something of who you are in your songs.
I want to quote you again. So you write, this is toward the beginning of your career. I wanted to be a voice that reflected experience and the world I live in. So I knew in 1972 that to do this, I would need to write very well and more individually than I had ever written before. And this was, at some point you realized, too, that...
Although you had like the most popular bar band in Asbury Park, that there was a bigger world, there was a lot of talented people. And in order to like be someone in that world, to have a career, to make a difference, that you had to figure out what was unique about you and you had to write great songs. And in fact, you achieved that. You wrote great songs.
But how did you go about trying to write the best songs that you could? I mean, when you knew that a lot of this was going to depend on the songwriting...
and later will feature an interview with Bruce Springsteen, who described Dylan as the father of my country and inducted him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Pete Seeger was famous for his songs about working people, unions, and social justice. He was one of the most important figures in 20th century American folk music and was at the forefront of the folk music revival in the 1950s.
We're listening to the interview I recorded with Bruce Springsteen in 2016 after the publication of his memoir, Born to Run. We're featuring it today because the new Dylan biopic just opened and Springsteen's music was deeply influenced by Dylan. We'll hear more of the interview after a break. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air.
Let's get back to the interview I recorded with Bruce Springsteen in his home studio in New Jersey back in 2016 after the publication of his memoir, Born to Run. You started going to therapy in 1983. And at some point, you say in your 60s, you had a really bad depression.
And I'm wondering if you thought about, during that period when you were very depressed, how many people in the world really wanted to be you? Doesn't count for that much at the time.
You write about, I'm sorry?
You write about how being on stage is almost like medicine for you. Sure. Does it get you out of yourself?
Was it hard to learn how to jump a railroad car?
During the Depression, there was a period of a year and a half when you weren't on the road. You were home with one of your sons, I guess with your youngest. Did that contribute to the Depression because you couldn't be on stage and you couldn't have that kind of cathartic experience?
As you mentioned in your book, you wanted to write songs that you wouldn't outgrow, that you could sing as an adult, that weren't just kids' songs, and done, accomplished. But when you sing some of your early songs now, as you still do, like Born to Run, does the song have a different meaning to you than it did when you first started performing it?
What's an example of a song that's taken on a different meaning or more meaning for you?
As someone who grew up in Brooklyn and now lives in Philadelphia, I love that you've continued to live in New Jersey, not only in New Jersey, but not far from where you grew up. Why have you stayed close to the home that your father left? It's ironic, yeah.
Bruce Springsteen, I can't thank you enough for inviting us into your studio and allowing us to do this interview. Thank you very much. Thank you so much.
And I really love the book. Thanks a lot. My interview with Bruce Springsteen was recorded in his home studio in 2016 after the publication of his memoir, Born to Run. We featured it today because Bob Dylan was so influential on Springsteen, and today the Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, opened in theaters.
Tomorrow on Fresh Air, we begin our holiday week series featuring interviews we particularly enjoyed this year. We'll start with my interview with Jeremy Strong, who played Kendall Roy in the HBO series Succession.
He's nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance in the film The Apprentice, which stars Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump at the start of his career and Jeremy Strong as the infamous lawyer Roy Cohn, who became Trump's lawyer and mentor. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air.
Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Boldenato, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Mali Sivi Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show.
Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I am Terry Gross. All of us at Fresh Air wish you a very Merry Christmas.
You started doing a lot of performing for unions and union halls and even on picket lines. How did you all come up with the songs that you thought would really speak to the people who were there?
In 1949, you were one of the people who were supposed to perform at the Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill.
You and many other people there were.
He popularized the songs This Land is Your Land and We Shall Overcome and wrote If I Had a Hammer and Turn, Turn, Turn. In the 1940s, he sang union songs with the Almanac singers. A few years later, he co-founded the Weavers, who surprised everyone, including themselves, when they became the first group to bring folk music to the pop charts, until they were blacklisted.
When you look back, I don't know how many times before that you had been confronted with that kind of direct violence. How did you behave during it, and are you satisfied with the way you behaved when you look back?
During the 1950s when you were performing with the Weavers, I think that initially you performed at a lot of demonstrations and union halls and outside. And then you made a decision to start trying nightclubs. Was that a big crisis to actually decide to move into the clubs?
Seeger refused to answer questions about his politics and personal associations when he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s during the committee's investigation into so-called subversive activities in the entertainment field. When the committee asked about a song, Seeger offered to sing it. Permission was denied.
Were you really surprised when your records started getting played on the radio and became big hits?
That might have made it even more difficult then when you were blacklisted.
You wanted to sing a song to the committee, right?
I'm speaking with Pete Seeger, if you're just joining us. Have the wounds ever healed among the folk musicians who were friendly witnesses and those who weren't before you act?
Well, that honor kept you off of television for many years afterwards. How did you feel around the early 60s when the folk music boom started taking off, when finally folk music had become commercially viable? And you were, in a way, prevented from participating in it because you weren't allowed on radio or TV.
In 1961, he was convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions about his politics and about other people's politics. Permission to sing the song was denied again at his trial. There's a scene based on that in the new movie.
Well, take a song like If I Had a Hammer. That is, I think, one of the most recorded songs in the world. I mean, hundreds of people have recorded it, right? But when you had first written it, it was considered a very dangerous song. What was considered dangerous about it?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. There is a term for what Musk and Trump are doing. That's the headline of the latest Atlantic Magazine article by my guest Anne Applebaum. The term, she says, is regime change. She writes, no one should be surprised or insulted by this phrase because this is exactly what Trump and many who support him have long desired.
You wrote a whole article about this, about how it's really like threatening European elections. What are some of the biggest concerns now about American threats to European elections?
There is something called the European Union's Digital Services Act, which went into effect last year. What can it do? It's in the middle of an investigation, right?
Is that an explanation that you think is plausible because you wrote that a group of American oligarchs want to undermine EU institutions because these oligarchs don't want to be regulated?
The description keeps getting more extreme.
Do you have any insights into why President Trump wants to distance himself from NATO while he seems to be aligning himself with Putin?
And what are the countries that are already leaning toward authoritarianism in Europe now?
You mentioned that some people on the right in America are very supportive of Orban and admire him. He spoke to one of the CPAC conferences, the Conservative Political Action Conference. And at one of those conferences, he said, Hungary is actually an incubator where experiments are done on the future of conservative politics.
Hungary is the place where we didn't just talk about defeating the progressives and liberals and causing a conservative Christian political turn, but we actually did it. Do you think the Trump administration has taken some actions from the Orban playbook?
Orban has really advocated the far right side of the culture wars. And he said the woke movement and gender ideology are exactly what communism and Marxism used to be. They artificially cut the nation into minorities in order to spark strife among the groups.
And he endorsed Trump in 2016. I don't know if he said anything in 2020 or 2024. But it sounds like not only is the right borrowing from the Orban playbook, but Orban is borrowing from the far right playbook in America.
My guest is journalist Anne Applebaum, a staff writer for The Atlantic, where she's been writing about America's turn toward the right and Trump's move toward authoritarianism. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. Let's look at Poland. Your husband is the foreign minister of Poland and you're very familiar with Polish politics. You live part-time in Poland and part-time in Washington, D.C.
I want to talk about that more in depth. But first of all, I want to talk about what happened over the weekend at the Munich Security Conference, which you attended to report on. So let's talk about how shocked European leaders were by what J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Pete Hexeth had to say about NATO and about Europe's far right, and how shocked they were at how the U.S.
Poland had moved from a hard-won democracy to approaching authoritarianism and then it moved back to democracy. How did it return to democracy? Was it through resistance to authoritarianism, through just a vote? Like what happened to return it?
So we're seeing in America right now, a lot of people in civil service, and now I'm talking about ones who aren't being fired, they're having to decide whether they should stay in their jobs and carry out orders, thus sacrificing their own principles of ethics and good government.
or resign, but then they risk having their position either not filled or filled by somebody who will be pressured to just conform to orders that are not good government kind of orders. Did that happen in Poland where people had to make really tough decisions about what to do?
has sidelined Europe and even Ukraine from the initial negotiations with Russia and about ending the war in Ukraine. Hexeth said that European allies should increase military spending and decrease their reliance on Washington, and that Trump will not allow anyone to turn Uncle Sam into Uncle Sucker.
You trace the modern civil service system back to Teddy Roosevelt, who reformed it. What was it like before?
You wrote that if the Trump administration succeeds in destroying the civil service system, the universities are next. What leads you to say that?
Vance said, if NATO wants us to continue supporting them, and NATO wants us to continue to be a good participant in this military alliance, why don't you respect American values and respect free speech? You have a lot of contacts in Europe. I mean, your husband is the foreign minister of Poland. You live part-time in Poland and part-time in the U.S. and Washington.
Trump pardoned leaders of far-right groups that organized January 6th and were convicted of sedition, seditious conspiracy. One of those groups, the Proud Boys, here's what the Anti-Defamation League has to say about them. The group serves as a tent for misogynistic, anti-immigrant, Islamophobic, and anti-LGBTQ plus ideologies and other forms of hate.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated the Proud Boys as a hate group. So the leaders of that group were pardoned by Trump. Can you talk about the contrast between pardoning hate groups and being against diversity, equity, and inclusion?
Well, let me reintroduce you again. If you're just joining us, my guest is journalist Anne Applebaum, a staff writer for The Atlantic, where she's been writing about America's turn toward the right and Trump's move toward authoritarianism. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. You're a journalist, and you've been writing critically about Trump since 2016 or 2015. Trump is attacking the press.
He's always attacked the press. I mean, in his first term, the press was the enemy of the people. But now it's escalating. What are some of your concerns about the attack on the press and where it might lead to for the press?
She points out during his 2024 campaign, Donald Trump spoke of Election Day as Liberation Day, a moment when people he described as vermin and radical left lunatics would be eliminated from public life. Before Applebaum started writing about America moving to the right and Trump moving toward authoritarianism, she was writing about how some European countries were becoming authoritarian.
What did you hear behind the scenes about the reaction of European leaders to what American leaders said about NATO?
The White House blocked the AP, the Associated Press, from the Oval Office and from Air Force One because the wire service used Gulf of Mexico and not Gulf of America in its reporting. So renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America seems like an odd and maybe not very important thing. But do you see that as part of like a loyalty test?
Like who's going to say it my way, the Gulf of America, and who's going to defy me and say Gulf of Mexico?
Do you have any role models for continuing to report in a time that can be very chilling for journalists?
Anne Applebaum, thank you so much for coming back to Fresh Air. Thank you. Anne Applebaum is a staff writer for The Atlantic. Her latest book is Autocracy, Inc., The Dictators Who Want to Run the World. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, Rich Benjamin, the grandson of a popular Haitian labor leader who became president of Haiti in 1957, but was overthrown by a military coup after 19 days.
Benjamin will talk about getting classified documents showing the U.S. role in the coup, and we'll hear about Benjamin's experiences as a black, gay, Haitian American who came out during the AIDS epidemic. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller.
Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Rebo Donato, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman, and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show.
Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
I'm going to stop you there because I just want to play a clip that illustrates the point that you're making. You know, he was talking about Europeans being afraid of free speech and that they're using words like misinformation and disinformation, which he described as ugly Soviet era words.
And so he was talking about that and about how there should be room for like all parties because like the other parties in Germany won't form an alliance with the far right party that you've been describing.
Vance speaking over the weekend at the Munich Security Conference.
What's your interpretation of what he said there?
Last weekend, she was at the Munich Security Conference, where Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Pete Hegseth were dismissive of NATO and its importance for American as well as European security, marking a turning point in the post-World War II alliance. It left European leaders shocked and worried. Applebaum is a staff writer for The Atlantic.
When he says there is nothing America can do for you, is that meant to be some kind of threat or just a kind of moral condescension?
So tell me what you heard from European leaders and your contacts in Europe.
And what are Europe's primary security concerns right now, especially if America either totally distances itself or pulls out of NATO?
She is also a senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University and the School of Advanced International Studies. Her latest book is Autocracy, Inc., The Dictators Who Want to Run the World. Her other books include Twilight of Democracy, Red Famine, Stalin's War on Ukraine, and Gulag, a History, which won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction.
Ukraine's President Zelensky has suggested that Europe create its own military force independent of NATO.
So during the first Trump administration, President Zelensky of Ukraine seemed to try to flatter Trump as a way of courting support. Did he shift away from that while speaking in Munich? Do you see that as a change?
My guest is Anne Applebaum, a staff writer for The Atlantic. Her latest book is called Autocracy, Inc., The Dictators Who Want to Run the World. We recorded our interview yesterday morning. Later, President Trump was asked about Ukrainian objections to being shut out of the initial talks to end the war. Trump responded by falsely blaming Ukraine for starting the war with Russia.
Trump said, quote, you should have never started it. You could have made a deal. This morning, we reached out to Ann Applebaum for her reaction. She emailed us this, quote, Trump is now repeating Russian propaganda. Ukraine did not start the war. Ukraine has not refused to negotiate. When they tried in 2022, Russia offered only one option, surrender.
Russian goals are the same now as at the beginning of the war. Remove Ukrainian sovereignty. Make Ukraine into a vassal state. Ukrainians know that Russian occupation would mean death, destruction, and the loss of identity. If the U.S. sides with Russia against Ukraine, we will boost Russian allies all over the world, in China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela.
Many people in the administration and Congress understand what a disaster this would be for the American economy and American power, unquote. We'll hear more of my interview with Ann Applebaum after a break. This is Fresh Air.
She's a former Washington Post columnist and member of the editorial board. We recorded our interview yesterday morning. Anne Appelbaum, welcome back to Fresh Air. Thanks for having me. You're calling what's happening in the U.S. under the Trump regime, regime change. Can you expand on why you're using that language? In the past, you've used words like illiberal democracy or authoritarianism.
You have referred to Musk using X to try to influence the election in Germany in favor of the far right party. You know, American elections are always being threatened by foreign interference nowadays from China. from Russia, from their bots, from false information, conspiracy theories. But now Europe is worrying about foreign interference from the U.S. through social media.
And in what ways do you feel like you get deeper into it when you're there?
How do you spend your day at the monastery?
A Flame is about the flame of passion and commitment in the monastic life, even for visitors on a retreat like him. And it's about the destructive, deadly flames of fire. Ira is best known for his travel writing and for reporting and reflecting on the cultures and religions of the world.
If you're just joining us, my guest is Pico Ayer. His new memoir, reflecting on his retreats in a Benedictine monastery and on the wildfire flames that have threatened the monastery and burned down his family home, is called A Flame Learning from Silence. We'll be back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
Pico, somebody said to you, a friend I think, is it selfish when you have other people depending on you to take retreats in a monastery? And you're now married, you have two children. Your answer was, not if it makes you less selfish. So my question is, how does being in the monastery make you less selfish when you end the retreat and go back into the world?
His previous book, The Half-Known Life in Search of Paradise, found him traveling around the world to discover what different cultures and religions perceive as paradise. Iyer has known the Dalai Lama for decades and is the author of an earlier book about him. He spent a lot of time in monasteries but remains secular. His mother was a professor of comparative religion.
Something I'd like to hear more about, you write in the book that you at the monastery are glad to be away from the self that you are with other people. How do those two selves compare?
I think it's more than chatter. You're talking, yeah.
He was born and grew up in England where his parents moved from India to study. When his parents moved to the U.S., he remained in an English boarding school. He received degrees from Oxford and Harvard. We recorded our interview Monday. Pico Ayer, welcome back to Fresh Air. It's a pleasure to have you back on the show.
Well, let me reintroduce you again. If you're just joining us, my guest is Pico Ayer. His new memoir is called A Flame, Learning from Silence. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air.
The monastery that you go on retreats to, it's a Christian monastery, part of the Benedictine Order monastery. You are secular. You know, your parents are Hindu. They're from India. You went to a boarding school in England where your parents moved to study before moving to the U.S. And it was a Christian boarding school, so you had to go to chapel like two times a day.
You are very secular, even though you do your retreats at a Catholic monastery. What keeps you secular surrounded by the monks?
This is a very moving book and a really fascinating book because of your experiences at the monastery.
Well, right now, humanity seems to be a major part of the picture because if, for instance, the wildfires that have consumed so much of California are partly the responsibility of people, of us, because of climate change caused by chemicals that, you know, things that we've released into the air, then it's an act of humans. It's hard to see it just as an act of God.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. When we first booked today's interview weeks ago, we had no idea how timely it would be and for such a tragic reason. My guest, Pico Ayer, has written a new memoir about what he's experienced and learned in the more than 30 years that he's been going on retreats in a Benedictine monastery to practice silence and for contemplation.
And also, when a wildfire rages through urban areas like that, it seems so different than when it ravages Forest, because it's a little more expected, and we know that eventually forests can replenish themselves, things can grow back. I suppose homes can be rebuilt, but there's something so unnatural about it. You know what I'm saying.
My question about how all these fires are likely in part attributed to man-made climate change and extreme weather that we are collectively responsible for, and I don't say that to blame the victims of the fire. I say that in part to blame myself because I know I have not been doing what I should be doing. I'm using things. I'm throwing things out into the trash that I shouldn't be.
So I mean that to accept some of the blame, not to blame the victims. So I just want to be clear about that because I felt a little bad about how I stated the question. One of the questions your mother asked you when you told her about the monastery and your retreats was, you're not going to convert, are you? Why was she so concerned about that?
You write briefly about a dilemma that you faced that so many people have faced in their own way. So your wife is Japanese and you moved to Japan to be with her and her two children who are now your children. But at the same time, your mother was sick. Once you were living in Japan, when your mother was sick, you wanted to be with her. You wanted to be with your wife and children.
Why do you think your mother and the monastery keeps rebuilding when they know they're in the path of wildfires?
She needed full-time care, but you couldn't be with her because you needed to be in Japan with your family and you needed to make enough money in order to pay the bills for her healthcare needs. So, so many people have experienced some version of that.
whether it's taking care of their children or taking care of their mother or something else, and then needing to do your job so you could pay for everything you need to pay for. How did you resolve that? or balance that.
What was your mother's attitude to you having to be not only away but so far away in Japan?
Let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is Pico Ayer. His new memoir is called A Flame, Learning from Silence. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air.
You became good friends with Leonard Cohen, and you met him through a magazine assignment where you were sent to find out more about why he left his life as a music star to live in a Zen monastery in California and kind of remove himself from that whole world that he was such a star in.
And you didn't even recognize him when you first saw him, because he was wearing a tattered robe, I think, and kind of bent over a little.
So you got to know him well. You met him multiple times in the monastery, if I'm not mistaken. Yes. How would you compare the monastery, the Zen monastery where he lived to the Benedictine monastery that you've gone on so many retreats to?
You're a writer. You're all about words. You're a writer. You're a public speaker. Is it hard for you to share no words at all and to be silent for stretches of time?
Pico, before you go, you should choose a Leonard Cohen song to end this. And the last time you were on our show, you chose If It Be Your Will. So let's go with another one that still means a lot to you.
I don't think I know that one.
Oh, wonderful. Beautiful. I look forward to hearing it. Thank you so much.
Pico Ayer's new memoir is called A Flame, Learning from Silence.
So you were trapped with flames five stories high. I don't even know how they would get that high since you weren't living in an apartment building or anything. But it seems like so terrifying. And I just wonder what went through your mind when you didn't think you had a way out.
Tomorrow on Fresh Air, the secret history of the rape kit. For years it was thought that a Chicago police sergeant created the rape kit, a tool for investigating sexual assault and rape that has been instrumental in getting justice for victims. Investigative reporter Pagan Kennedy will tell us about the real creator, an activist who worked with runaway youth in the 70s. I hope you'll join us.
Teresa Madden directed today's show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
And did images, almost like biblical images or images of Hindu funeral pyres because your parents were from India, they're Hindu, did those kind of images flash before your eyes?
So you managed to get out of the house, but you were surrounded by flames in your car.
How were you changed after the fire? You'd lost all your possessions. You probably lost your manuscripts, your books, things that were really precious to you, probably photos, all kinds of things. You cared for your mother. She was in great distress. But you probably had a new outlook on being alive. How were you changed? And was it the fire that led you to seek out monastic retreats?
to get both out of himself and the world, and deeper in. But the book begins with fire, and fire is a theme throughout. The monastery is surrounded by 900 acres of trees, and on one side, the ocean. It's in California's Big Sur, one of the most beautiful places in the U.S. On the first page, a monk is describing to Iyer a wildfire that came close to burning down the monastery.
I wonder if things are really different for people who were parents who weren't a parent at the time.
So at the Benedictine Monastery, where you took refuge after the fire, they practiced silence there, and you practiced silence with intervals of talk as well. What did you find appealing about silence? Is that something you'd ever sought out before?
It wasn't the first time, and it wasn't the last time. At one point, the road was blocked and there was no way out. A little later in the book, we learn that Iyer's family home in Santa Barbara, where they had lived for about a quarter century, where he was living at the time with his mother, that burned to the ground. At the time, that fire was part of the worst fire in California history.
It's funny, speaking for myself, sometimes when I'm really alone for an extended period of time, my mind is quieter. But other times, the chatter gets louder because there's nothing to drown it out. There's no outside world or outside of maybe like the TV or books or whatever. But there's nothing to drown out the chatter or to distract. Did you experience that too at any point?
Would you describe the Benedictine order, whose monastery you've been going on retreats to for decades?
Can you physically describe the monastery?
He was at home, alone with his mother's cat, when he was suddenly surrounded by flames five stories high and had no way out. After three hours of terror, he was rescued by a Good Samaritan traveling around in a water truck with a hose. He and his mother lost everything, but he survived and the cat survived. His memoir is titled A Flame, Learning from Silence.
It is such a beautiful place. I don't mean the monastery itself, but Big Sur. And so I'm kind of wondering if going on a retreat there is like being in a privileged bubble. Or it's like getting in touch with something so elemental, so essential about nature, about the world.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. A new investigation into conflicts of interest posed by Elon Musk overseeing the drastic cost-cutting and dismantling of some federal agencies was published yesterday afternoon in the New York Times online. A few hours later, Musk and President Trump held a joint press conference during which they insisted Musk was operating with full transparency.
So, you know, we've been talking about several agencies that Musk has conflicts of interest with. But if you put all of the departments and all the agencies together that he is using his team to cut costs and cut jobs, if you put it all together, what is the significance that's different than looking at individual places?
I know you don't cover the courts, but some of the lawsuits that have been filed to try to stop Musk from following through on all the cuts that he's making, some of those are likely to end up before the Supreme Court. There are several justices who consider themselves originalists, meaning that they—
either take a literal reading of the Constitution, or their goal is to try to interpret the Constitution as closely as the founders would. So one of the basics of the Constitution is that Congress has powers of the purse, and another is the separation of powers, and the equal branches of government, Congress, judiciary, and executive,
And now the Trump administration seems to be saying, well, we have the power. The courts can't stop us. So do you have any idea, like any guesses how the Supreme Court might rule on any of these appeals? Yeah.
Eric Lipton, I really want to thank you.
Eric Lipton is an investigative reporter at The New York Times. Our interview was recorded yesterday. After we take a short break, I'll talk with Theodore Schleifer about how Musk became so powerful in the Trump administration and how Musk's political views shifted to the right. He covers the intersection of Silicon Valley and politics for The New York Times.
I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency are reshaping the federal government, inserting themselves into departments and agencies with the goal of drastically slashing costs and cutting jobs. Musk isn't the only tech billionaire that's a player now in the Trump administration.
My guest, New York Times reporter Theodore Schleifer, says those tech leaders are emboldened and they have their fingerprints all over the second Trump administration. What does this say about the influence of Silicon Valley's ultra wealthy on our current government? The intersection between Silicon Valley and politics is a subject Schleifer has been reporting on for years.
His Times bio describes him as covering billionaires and their impact on the world. Theodore Schleifer, welcome to Fresh Air. I'm wondering, has Musk always wanted to have a hand in reshaping government?
But, you know, like he has tweeted or retweeted conspiracy theories. He's endorsing the far right party in Germany. He's aligned with the far right in the U.S. now. Is there more of an explanation of how that started happening, assuming it's something relatively new?
And the Office of Government Ethics, which you mentioned, Trump just fired the head of it this week. That office had pending requests to investigate Musk for conflicts of interest. On what grounds?
Tell us more about the personal story you alluded to.
So do you think he sees his trans child as a victim of woke ideology?
So is Elon Musk a one-off, or do you think that a lot of the Silicon Valley billionaires have become more conservative, have drifted more to the right in recent years?
So one of the things happening now with Musk, or at least it's happening now as we record this Tuesday morning, he's leading a group of investors who are trying to execute a hostile takeover of a nonprofit that controls the artificial intelligence company OpenAI. And that's the company behind ChatGPT. It's headed by Sam Altman. Musk had been involved with this group early on.
So whatever this is about, I'm just wondering, like, if Elon Musk has some control over this huge AI company. I know Elon Musk is working on his own AI company, but it's not as developed as OpenAI is. Correct me if I'm wrong.
But if someone like Musk who has endorsed conspiracy theories and is far right now in some of his politics, if he takes over – or him and the consortium take over a really major AI company and if they feed it the kind of things that Musk believes now, certain conspiracy theories, if that gets into AI as fact – What would that mean? And am I just interpreting this all wrong?
So do you see liberal billionaires trying to put money to stop with the conservative bill? Like how are the liberal billionaires reacting to all of the very conservative billionaires that are embedded in one way or another in the Trump administration?
If you're just joining us, my guest is Theodore Schleifer, and he's a reporter for The New York Times who covers, among other things, the intersection of Silicon Valley and Washington politics. We'll be right back after a short break. This is Fresh Air. As you've pointed out, there isn't a lot of transparency in what Musk is doing in terms of job and cost cutting.
And he has said secrecy is necessary to the team of young people who he has carrying out his orders at departments and agencies. Russell Vaught, who's the new head of the Office of Management and Budget, said, we want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.
And Trump for years has been calling, for instance, the press the enemy of the people. And Musk has accused USAID of being a criminal organization and said time for it to die. Does that seem a little unusual that Musk could say, oh, we just don't want to make our own people targets when some of the Trump administration people have really put targets on the back of so many people?
So he is investigating spending and possible fraud in agencies and departments throughout the government. Is anybody investigating if there's any inefficiency or fraud in the about $3 billion he's getting from the government?
So one of the big concerns is that Musk's team has wanted access to the Treasury Department's payment system. And the Treasury Department disperses about $5 trillion in funding. And it has everybody's sensitive information in there. How far has the Musk team gotten in their attempt to get into the payment system?
The U.S. Digital Service is now renamed the U.S. Doge Service. And it was established in 2014 to fix the federal government's online services, which What can you tell us about this service and what it means that it's now renamed with the Doge brand?
Let's take another break here and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is New York Times reporter Teddy Schleifer. We'll be right back after a short break. This is Fresh Air.
One of your articles was about investigating who are the people working with Musk on Doge, the young people who are going into agencies and departments and trying to lay off people or fire them and cut costs. What are some of the things you were able to learn about who they are and how they're being selected?
I assume there were more because there's so many agencies and departments that they're working on.
When we talk about spending in Washington politics or political power in terms of private enterprise, it was always about corporations. And now you're specializing in writing about billionaires who own corporations, multiple corporations in the case of Elon Musk. So do you think the balance of power has kind of switched to individuals as opposed to companies?
Trump said he wouldn't allow Musk to look into areas that posed a conflict of interest. Musk controls six private companies, including SpaceX, Tesla, and X, formerly Twitter. He gets billions of dollars from the federal government. My guest Eric Lipton, along with Times reporter Kirsten Grind, spent the past year investigating Musk's business with the federal government.
So a lot of Trump watchers have described Trump as somebody who wants to be the person getting the most attention, whether it's on the media or in terms of political power. And Musk is getting so much attention now, and you're contributing to that by writing so much articles.
By reporting so much on Musk and his influence in the Trump administration, there was a Time magazine cover where it was Musk at the Resolute desk in the White House. Some people are predicting that this relationship can't last long because they both want to be the most powerful person. Do you have any insight into that?
Teddy Schleifer, thank you so much for talking with us.
Theodore Schleifer covers the intersection of Silicon Valley and politics and the global influence of billionaires for The New York Times. We recorded the interview yesterday before the Trump-Musk press conference. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, our guest will be filmmaker, photographer, professor, and writer Rommel Ross.
He's nominated for an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for the film Nickel Boys, which he also directed. The movie is also nominated for Best Picture. It's about two young black men in the 60s attempting to survive a brutal reformatory. I hope you'll join us.
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Meeble Donato, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman, and Joel Wolfram. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
The National Labor Relations Board has 24 investigations into Musk's companies. Can you tell us a little bit about the nature of some of those investigations?
And it's interesting because it sounds like some of the investigations into Musk's companies from the National Labor Relations Board are similar to the kinds of suits that Musk may face because of the way he's eliminating positions in federal agencies.
What about the courts?
Let's look at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was founded by Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren. It received hundreds of complaints about Tesla revolving around debt collection or loan problems. Tell us a little bit about the complaints.
they learned that at least 11 federal agencies have more than 32 continuing investigations, pending complaints, or enforcement actions into Musk's companies. Yesterday, before the Trump-Musk press conference, I spoke to Lipton about what the investigation uncovered. Eric Lipton, welcome to Fresh Air. You're a reporter looking into these conflicts of interest.
Let's look at the Federal Aviation Agency, which has fined SpaceX for safety violations. Tell the story about the launch of the satellite, the SpaceX satellite.
$283,009, like just a few dollars more than $283,000, is probably a pittance to Elon Musk. So why is this such an offense to him?
So the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission, has been investigating what Musk paid for Twitter and the backstory to that. So would you explain that?
Is there anyone in an official capacity in the Trump administration or in Congress or in any other official capacity who is doing an investigation into possible conflicts of interest between Elon Musk and the departments and agencies that he is cutting jobs and costs?
So what were the consequences of Musk having purchased 5% of Twitter stock before saying that he was going to buy it?
Was it hard to report this story and get the information that you needed? When I say this story, I mean the whole story you've written about conflicts of interest.
How much do you think Musk's efforts combined with Trump's desire to basically gut a lot of government, how much is that reshaping what the federal government is?
Our interview is about the context and possible consequences of the tariffs, so it will be helpful in understanding the news, whatever twists and turns the story takes. Zannie Minton-Biddles, welcome back to Fresh Air. Thank you for having me.
What does a tariff war look like? Like, take the example of the US and China. And I don't think President Xi is likely to back down. President Trump says he's not going to back down. So if there's a tariff war, say, between China and the US, what does that look like?
If Trump were to say, oops, my mistake, I didn't intend my beautiful tariffs to tank the global economy, let's call the whole thing off and put things back exactly like they were, would the markets likely recover quickly, even if he did that?
Well, let me reintroduce you again. If you're just joining us, my guest is Zannie Minton-Bettos, editor-in-chief of The Economist. We're talking about Trump's tariffs and their impact on everything from the global economy to our daily lives. We'll talk more after we take a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
You recently returned from a reporting trip to China. What kind of information did you pick up there about China's economy and how it's going to react to Trump tariffs?
I think there's another way that this might be an opportunity for China. China sees itself, I think, as a major competitor with the US globally. And China's been doing its best to make inroads in countries that have minerals and other things that China needs. So if the US makes a lot of enemies in these trading wars and has trouble trading with traditional trading partners,
How can that create an opportunity for China?
What's another way of dealing with China beyond tariffs in terms of trade?
I want to talk about Vietnam for a minute and its relationship to China in this trade war. Vietnam has a 40 plus percent tariff that's being imposed on it. And Vietnam wants to negotiate that down. But the Vietnam tariff has to do with China. Can you explain that connection?
I just want to say, you mentioned the islands with only penguins on them near Antarctica. The rationale apparently is, and was it Howard Lutnick who said this, that this is so that China can't use these islands to get around tariffs? Well,
Let me reintroduce you here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Zannie Minton-Beddoes, editor-in-chief of The Economist. We'll talk more about the Trump tariffs after a break. This is Fresh Air.
I'm going to quote President Trump and use a word that I don't traditionally use on the radio. Trump said that the EU was created to, quote, screw, unquote, Americans. The EU, meanwhile, is trying to figure out a way to counteract these tariffs, to negotiate. I don't know what their plans are. But are we creating adversaries out of allies?
Would that shut out the U.S.? Are you describing a system in which the U.S. is weaker, not stronger?
So the EU is talking about going after tech like Google in retaliation for the tariffs. And I'm trying to understand what a tech retaliation would look like.
Thank you.
You said that terrorists are something that Trump has believed in for a long time. And he recently said that America is being, quote, looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far. What's your take on that high drama description?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. I follow the news pretty carefully, but it used to be that when I'd come across an article about tariffs or free trade, I'd give myself permission to skip over it. I assumed it might be boring and that I wouldn't understand it even if I read it. But now, now, Trump's tariffs are high drama.
Thank you.
It's ironic that Trump wants to lower taxes, but at the same time, the tariffs will create high taxes. So the billions that Trump says we'll be getting from tariffs, is that money that we, the consumers, will be paying to the government?
They've upended world markets, and it feels essential to understand their impact on the U.S. and the global economy, how they might have a long-term effect on U.S. relations with our allies and adversaries, and how they'll affect consumer prices and our savings.
Here to help me and you better understand what's happening is a journalist who's been covering economic issues for years and recently returned from a reporting trip to China. Zannie Minton-Beddoes is the editor-in-chief of The Economist. She previously was the magazine's business editor and economics editor and is a former economist for the International Monetary Fund.
In terms of tech innovation, like you were saying that the U.S. strength is in tech, in the service industry, and in research. But the Trump administration has been cutting research and cutting agencies that do research, cutting universities that do research. So if our strength is
in terms of the financial system, is in innovation and we're decreasing the funding intentionally of innovation, where does that leave us?
Trump's approach to the tariffs is to put a 10% tariff as a minimum on everybody, like every country, and then individually have a formula so that he can individually place tariffs on all of our trading partners. And it's all happening simultaneously, and it's all happening with a very fast deadline. Is that usually the way tariffs are done?
Like how have tariffs traditionally been instated on countries?
We recorded our interview yesterday morning. Trump's tariffs went into effect at midnight, and this afternoon, as I record this introduction, he's put a 90-day pause on most of the tariffs, but not China's. But who knows what will happen later today?
I'm surprised that people in finance, people in the banking system, people in hedge funds, and just, you know, major investors aren't complaining more, aren't objecting more because they're losing a fortune. And a lot of corporations, I mean, are losing millions or billions in terms of their stock prices.
They were losing their families.
She's been in several Wes Anderson films, the Joanna Hogg films The Souvenir and The Eternal Daughter, and the Luca Guadagnino films I Am Love, Suspiria, and A Bigger Splash, the Julio Torres film Problemista, and the Coen brothers Hail Caesar and Burn After Reading. Swinton even has a place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the Ancient One.
If you're just joining us, my guest is Tilda Swinton, and she stars in the new Pedro Almodovar film, The Room Next Door. It opened in New York and L.A. and begins opening in theaters this Friday and then opens more widely on the following Friday, the 17th. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
Your parents died in the care of home hospice. You were there in Scotland where you're from. Were you and your parents able to talk about your lives together and your lives apart and reconcile any things that needed to be reconciled and be open and honest with each other?
Her new film, The Room Next Door, is adapted from the 2020 novel What Are You Going Through? by Sigrid Nunes. Swinton's character, Martha, is planning to end her life. She doesn't want to die in her Manhattan home surrounded by things she loves. She thinks it will be easier to die in a house in the woods that has no personal connection.
So she rents a beautiful home in the woods for one month, planning on dying before the month is up. She wants solitude, but she also wants a friend to accompany her. After several friends decline, she asks an old friend who Martha had lost touch with. The friend, Ingrid, played by Julianne Moore, is a novelist who has found out Martha is sick and has been visiting her.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest, Tilda Swinton, stars in a new, beautiful movie called The Room Next Door. She plays a war correspondent who has dodged death several times. Now she has cancer, for which she's received harsh treatments, including in clinical trials. But the cancer progresses.
Well, it sounds like her end was a blessing. Yeah, truly.
Yeah. Well, I need to reintroduce you again here. My guest is Tilda Swinton. She stars in the new Pedro Almodovar film, The Room Next Door. It's opened in New York and L.A. and begins opening in theaters around the country on Friday and opens more widely the following Friday. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air.
You're from a military family. Seems to me you went in the opposite direction in your artistic life. You got your start in the avant-garde. And the avant-garde, it breaks the rules. It's unconventional. And in the military, there are rules that are strictly followed. And it's hard to be—unless you're thinking of an unconventional war strategy and you're in a leadership position—
It's hard to be unconventional in the military. Do you feel like you went in an opposite direction?
Ingrid's latest novel draws on her own fear of death. Here's Tilda Swinton as Martha, explaining the situation to Ingrid.
Something that's similar and different is clothing. Like in the military, you have a uniform, which is kind of a costume, but it's a uniform. Everybody has the uniform. And in movies, like you've worn so many different kinds of costumes over the years. So do you feel like clothing... Like your interest in clothing, was that influenced in the negative or positive by the uniforms of the military?
And I don't know even if you ever saw your father or any other of your relatives or even your brother in uniform and what that meant to you.
You've described yourself as queer, but not in the LGBTQ community. spectrum. So when you use the word queer, what do you mean?
We're all queer fish. I know in boarding school you were bullied. What were you bullied for, do you know?
You won an Oscar for your performance in Michael Clayton, which is a very good, very popular, and also a genre film. I mean, it's a legal thriller. And it was probably pretty conventional by your standards, considering the films that you made. I'm wondering what it was like to be in a film like that, that was more of a Hollywood film.
I'm going to take a break here because I need to reintroduce you. So my guest is Tilda Swinton. She stars on the new Pedro Almodovar film, The Room Next Door. It's opened already in New York and L.A. and begins opening in theaters around the country on Friday and opens nationally the week after. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air.
If you love NPR podcasts, you don't need me to tell you the value of public media in your life. To support our mission and get perks like sponsor-free podcast listening across more than 20 NPR podcasts and exclusive bonus episodes, sign up for the NPR Plus bundle at plus.npr.org. I want to get back to your new film, The Room Next Door.
Tilda Swinton, welcome to Fresh Air. I love this movie. I love your performance in it. And I want to congratulate you for making something that is so moving with such a great performance.
So talk about seeing the movie with the music and what impact the music had on you.
Yes, and Happy New Year to you. I know you had friends, including your close friend, Derek Jarman, who made the first films you were in, who died during the AIDS epidemic, and your parents died. Are there ways, I know you have a lot of people in your life who have died, are there ways in which the screenplay and your character connect with you on a very personal level?
I think the music also is, and I think I'm right about this, it's like a very slow tango.
Tilda Swinton, it's just been great to talk with you. Thank you so much, and thank you for making this movie. I just really love your new movie. Thank you, Terry, and for everything you do. Tilda Swinton stars on the new Pedro Almodovar film, The Room Next Door.
Tomorrow on Fresh Air, on the day of Jimmy Carter's funeral, we feature part two of our remembrance of Carter with excerpts of the interviews we recorded over the years. He talked about his poems, his concerns about how intertwined politics and religion had become, and a somber holiday season soon after 9-11. We'll also hear an interview with Carter and his daughter Amy,
Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Mabel Donato, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show.
Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
So many of Almodovar's movies are about death or pain or hospitalization, and they're all so beautiful.
She's rejecting more treatment, refusing to continue suffering, and has decided it's time to end her life. The film is about suffering and death and choice, but it's a beautiful film because of the sometimes poetic dialogue, the emotional depth.
So what was it like for you after having, you know, borne witness to and helped people who were close to you and were dying? What's it like for you to be on the other side in this role as the person who is dying and wants to terminate her life?
And just in case people get the characters' names confused, Ingrid is the person who's helping your character. Your character is dying. Yes. She's accompanying you.
The friends and family whose deaths you witnessed and whose end of life you witnessed, were they fearful of death? Some of them.
The relationship between the two main characters and the contrast between Swinton's ghostly presence in the film and the vibrant, color-saturated world around her, including the clothes, the walls, and the furniture, and the woods. It's a form of beauty and contrast I've come to expect from the film's writer and director, Pedro Almodovar.
Your character is kind of ghostly in it. And you're very pale because you're dying. And it's such a contrast to the world of saturated color that surrounds you. And I'm wondering, did you do anything to make yourself appear more ghostly?
He's Spanish, and this is his first English-language feature film. Tilda Swinton started off in the film Avant-Garde. She made several films with the director Derek Jarman, including her first film, Caravaggio, and never expected, or maybe never even sought, commercial success. But she got it anyway.
I know you've had long COVID. I don't know if you're still experiencing any symptoms.
Good. Took a while. But is it okay if I ask you about that period where you were experiencing?
Right. So I would guess you'd be feeling physically diminished, fatigued, and maybe cognitively not at your best. Having read a lot about long COVID, I haven't had it myself.
In the film, your character has decided to end her life with a pill she brought on the dark web. But the person who she's asked, her friend who she's asked to spend time with her, has this terrible fear of death. And her latest novel is kind of about her fear of death. Yeah. What are your thoughts about what happens after you die and what happens during that transition?
Many filmgoers were introduced to her in the title role of the 1992 film Orlando, adapted from a 1928 Virginia Woolf novel, in which a young nobleman, a favorite of Queen Elizabeth's, inexplicably wakes up as a woman. Swinton won an Oscar for her performance in the popular 2007 legal thriller Michael Clayton.
You've witnessed a lot of death of your loved friends and family. So having seen that and having thought a lot about it and having portrayed it in this new movie, what are your thoughts and have they changed over time?
A quick note before we start today's show. You may have heard that President Trump has issued an executive order seeking to block all federal funding to NPR. This is one in a series of threats to media organizations across the country. The executive order is an affront to the First Amendment rights of public media organizations.
So what's the importance of American relations with that state, with that Gulf state? What's at stake in terms of foreign policy?
Well, let's look at another example of a potential conflict of interest in the Gulf. World Liberty Financial recently made a deal to take $2 billion worth in cryptocurrency from an Emirati venture fund that's backed by the government of Abu Dhabi. This is all a little bit confusing, but very important. So explain what the potential problem is here.
After advocating for passage of the bill, the Trump family crypto company started issuing its own stablecoin and became one of the biggest issuers in the world. Partly as a result of Lipton and his co-authors reporting, Democrats are now trying to amend the Genius Act. I spoke with Eric Lipton yesterday morning about his reporting on Trump's conflicts of interest.
So let's take a break and then we'll talk more. If you're just joining us, my guest is Eric Lipton, and he's been writing a series of articles about President Trump's conflicts of interest. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
At about the same time that Eric Trump was in the Gulf working on real estate and crypto deals, Don Jr. was in Serbia and Bulgaria working on real estate deals pertaining to the Trump family company. So let's look at what's happening in Serbia. I want you to choose one of the projects that Don Jr. was working on there and talk about potential conflicts.
While we were recording, a Senate subcommittee opened an inquiry into, quote, Trump crypto corruption. Hours later, Senate Democrats introduced the End Crypto Corruption Act, which would ban the president, vice president, senior executive branch officials, members of Congress, and their immediate families from
Do you think that's advantageous to the Trump family that it's complicated and there's so many conflicts it's hard to keep track?
Okay. I hope I'm not adding to the confusion here, but I'm going to ask you about one other potential conflict. And this is in Bulgaria, another country that Don Jr. visited in April. He appeared on stage with somebody named Anton Trenchev, co-founder of a crypto firm named Nexo. Tell us the story about that.
from financially benefiting from issuing, endorsing, or sponsoring crypto assets such as meme coins and stable coins, both of which we discuss in this interview. Eric Lipton, welcome back to Fresh Air.
So let's get to something else that's a potential conflict. And this is something brand new called Executive Branch, which is like a private club in Washington, D.C. Tell us about this club and what you need to do to become a member of it.
So you described the crypto legislation before Congress now, the Genius Act, as the first formal act by Congress to create a regulatory system that could help the industry grow. So let's start with what is stablecoin, which is the type of crypto question here.
Let me reintroduce you here. My guest is New York Times investigative reporter Eric Lipton, and he's written a series of articles about President Trump's conflicts of interest. We'll be right back after a short break. This is Fresh Air. So some of the people involved with the Trump family businesses have, shall we say, interesting backgrounds.
For example, Zach Folkman and Chase Hero, two of the partners in the crypto business, World Liberty Financial, the Trump family company. Tell us about their background.
One of them came up with a kind of pay for play idea. Can you describe that deal? Sure.
Because it sounds like we're going to bring you credibility with the Trump name and international attention. Probably would raise the price of a crypto coin, right?
So it looks like it's a vote of confidence in that other company's crypto, but it's really in part a way of making money for the Trump family crypto.
Right. One other crypto thing I want to ask you about, which is using meme coin, which is basically like a souvenir. It doesn't have like financial value. It's more like a collectible than a coin. Is that fair description?
Yeah. So the Trump family crypto business used meme coin as a way of raising money in return for access to the president. Would you describe that plan?
And the invitation said that it will be the most exclusive invitation in the world. A chance to have a, quote, intimate private dinner, unquote, with Trump at his members only golf club in Virginia. But is like exclusive and intimate private dinner appropriate words to describe a dinner with 220 people?
So Trump used his properties, his hotels and Mar-a-Lago in ways that profited Trump in his first term. And he's doing that again in the second term. And a good example, which is something that you wrote about a little earlier, is when the Saudis held their live golf tournament in the U.S. in Florida.
And Liv is like the Saudi rival to the PGA, the Professional Golf Association, which, you know, runs this really important tour and championship in the U.S. So how do Trump properties tie in to the rival Saudi-Liv tour and championship?
Okay, time for one more break. Let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is New York Times investigative reporter Eric Lipton. He's written a series of articles about President Trump's conflicts of interest. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. So we've talked about a bunch of conflicts or potential conflicts of interest involving President Trump.
And in terms of reaction, Democrats are trying to block a bill pertaining to cryptocurrency that would stand to benefit the Trump crypto company, the Trump family crypto company. Do you have any sense of what the Democratic strategy is to try to block that bill?
If it's stable at a dollar, why not just use a dollar?
That's why I asked.
Do you have any expectations about what the next step is going to be for Democrats pertaining to the Genius Act?
So what was your reaction when you found out that Maxine Waters had read out loud one of your articles about Trump crypto conflicts of interest? She read it out loud before a House Financial Services Committee hearing.
Eric Lipton, it's a pleasure to have you back on the show. Thank you so much, and thank you so much for your reporting.
Eric Lipton is an investigative reporter for The New York Times. While we were recording our interview yesterday morning, a Senate subcommittee opened an inquiry into, quote, Trump crypto corruption.
Hours later, Senate Democrats introduced the End Crypto Corruption Act, which would ban the president, vice president, senior executive branch officials, members of Congress and their immediate families from from financially benefiting from issuing, endorsing, or sponsoring crypto assets such as meme coins and stable coins.
So how would the Genius Act regulate stable coins?
Tomorrow on Fresh Air, we'll talk about how technology now shapes every aspect of parenting, from our online identities to the pressures of sharing our lives in real time. Our guest will be journalist Amanda Hess, author of the new book Second Life, Having a Child in the Digital Age. I hope you'll join us.
To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger.
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Boldenato, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakindi, Anna Bauman, and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
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Well, let's get to the conflict here. So Trump called on Congress to pass this legislation. Then World Liberty Financial, the Trump family crypto company, said it was going to release its own stable coin called USD1. And Trump or his family would be profiting from the legislation that he asked Congress to pass. The Trump family company is now one of the biggest issuers of stable coin in the world.
So talk about that conflict.
So you expressed the concern that the bill lacks strong provisions to stop money laundering. And Democrats in Congress are concerned about that, too. But, you know, Trump's Justice Department recently terminated a crypto crimes task force, a task force that could perhaps have helped, you know, keep on the lookout for money laundering no longer exists.
So you say that the crypto world's ultimate goal in Washington is to secure ambitious legislation that would cement the industry standing in the U.S. financial system and that the crypto world wants to make the crypto sector part of the larger banking sector. What would that look like if the crypto industry got its way?
Your support means so much to us, now more than ever. You help make NPR shows freely available to everyone. We're proud to do this work for you and with you. Okay, let's start the show. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Since President Trump has returned to office, his conflicts of interest have surpassed those of his first term.
Trump established a strategic Bitcoin reserve. I don't really understand what that is. Can you explain it?
So the Trump family company, World Liberty Financial, their crypto company, does more than stablecoin. We've talked about the stablecoin. Describe the company to us and the range of things that they do regarding crypto.
He's no longer hesitant about pursuing profits without restraint, according to my guest Eric Lipton, an investigative reporter for The New York Times. Lipton has written a series of articles about the president's conflicts of interest relating to his family's real estate and development companies and cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial.
What does President Trump and his sons, Don Jr. and Eric, have to say about conflicts of interest regarding the president with this company?
Hasn't Trump said that he is immune from conflicts of interest?
So we talked about the Trump family cryptocurrency business. Let's look at the Trump family real estate business and developments it's working on in foreign countries. Last month, Eric Trump visited Gulf states, including the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, working on real estate developments there. And he met with Saudi leaders, too.
Lipton writes that World Liberty Financial has eviscerated the boundary between private enterprise and government policy in ways without precedent in modern history. Trump has urged Congress to pass a bill known as the Genius Act, which would make it easier for U.S. companies to deal in a type of cryptocurrency known as stablecoin.
So if you could choose one of those real estate developments that Eric Trump was discussing and tell us about the potential conflicts you see there.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Our guest is four-time Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan, the star of Little Women, Lady Bird, and Atonement, stars in two very different new films, The Outrun and Blitz. She spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Boldenaro.
Saoirse Ronan spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Boldenado. Her films The Outrun and Blitz are in theaters. Blitz will start streaming on Apple TV+, November 22nd. After we take a short break, Carolina Miranda will review a new film adapted from a 1955 novel that inspired many Latin American writers, including Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This is Fresh Air. This is fresh air.
In 1955, Mexican novelist Juan Rulfo published a slim novel called Pedro Paramo about a man who goes in search of the father he'd never met, only to discover that his father is dead and the village he inhabited is haunted by ghosts. Pedro Paramo changed the course of Latin American literature.
Among the writers it influenced was a young magical realist by the name of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who went on to write 100 Years of Solitude, and who once declared that Rulfo was as enduring as Sophocles. Today, a new movie inspired by the novel premieres on Netflix. Contributor Carolina Miranda had a look to see how this cinematic interpretation holds up against Rulfo's timeless book.
Culture critic Carolina Miranda reviewed the film Pedro Paramo. It started streaming today on Netflix. Tomorrow on Fresh Air. After the Civil War, tens of thousands of formerly enslaved people deposited millions of dollars into the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company, a bank created for them. But they lost their savings when the bank collapsed in 1874.
Our guest will be Justine Hill Edwards, author of a new book about the bank and how it contributed to racial economic disparities. I hope you'll join us. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
Quick question to this. So Trump wants to impose maximum pressure on Iran. Yeah, this is important. What does he want to do?
Dexter Filkins, thank you so much. And so next up, we're going to hear the interview we recorded yesterday based on your New Yorker article, your new New Yorker article about the shortage of recruits in the military that is leaving us kind of vulnerable.
And be interesting to listen to that now in the light of Trump suggesting that we send troops to Gaza after we own it and rebuild it and expel the Palestinians. So thank you very much.
Dexter Filkins is a staff writer for The New Yorker. After we take a short break, we'll hear the interview I recorded yesterday with him about the recruitment crisis in the U.S. military, which Trump has blamed on the military's DEI programs. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
Now we're going to hear the interview I recorded with Dexter Filkins yesterday morning. It's about a disturbing question that the U.S. military leaders are asking. Can our country defend itself if not enough people are willing or able to fight? They're confronting that question because the military has been unable to meet its recruitment quotas.
President Donald Trump blames this on the military's DEI programs. The new defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has declared an end to the era of DEI in the Defense Department. Filkins has been investigating the real reasons why the armed forces are becoming depleted and how the military has responded by loosening some admission standards. Filkin's new article, titled The U.S.
Military's Recruitment Crisis, is published in The New Yorker, where he's a staff writer. He's reported on the Middle East for years, covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was embedded with the Marines during one of the Iraq War's most brutal battles, the Battle of Fallujah. He's the author of the bestseller The Forever War, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction.
So Trump and Hexeth have made eliminating DEI in the military a priority for the Defense Department. What exactly do they want to eliminate? What has the military been doing to increase diversity in the military?
You sometimes don't know how to read what people mean when they talk about DEI and what Trump means when he bans DEI. So one possible way of interpreting banning DEI in the military is, you know, there's too many people of color, too many women in the military. They're not really competent. So let's cut down on those people.
Give us a sense of how bad the recruiting crisis is in the military now.
But they don't have enough ships either, right?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. The show you're about to hear isn't the one we'd planned for today. So let me take a moment to explain. We intended to broadcast the interview I recorded yesterday about the recruiting crisis in the military and how Trump blamed it on the military's DEI programs, which is the subject of Dexter Filkin's latest article in The New Yorker.
And the really big question is, are we more vulnerable as a result of this?
Well, I think I have to reintroduce you here. My guest is Dexter Filkins. His new article in The New Yorker is called The U.S. Military's Recruitment Crisis. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air.
So you found that the military actually is lowering its standards. And that's not because of DEI. That's because so many would-be recruits are very overweight or they can't pass the aptitude test. You visited the Future Soldiers Training Course at Fort Jackson in South Carolina.
And your piece starts with, you know, a bunch of overweight people who can't do five push-ups but really want to enlist. So can you just talk a little bit about the problem that the military is having when a fair amount of would-be recruits just can't pass the tests, don't fit the requirements? Yeah.
You described one woman who was told, first you have to lose 100 pounds, then come back and see if you qualify for this training program. Can you talk about her?
What kind of track record does this program have in terms of weight loss? Do they track the people afterwards to see if they put the weight back on or if they stay at the qualifying standard?
Dexter Filkins, welcome to Fresh Air. What was your reaction last night when you heard the press conference?
So you said the Navy has lowered its standards. What other ways has it lowered the standards?
The military has loosened other standards, including if you have a history of asthma, you can qualify as long as you've abstained from medications for at least a year. And then there's the tattoo issue. Explain the tattoo issue and how that's changed.
What are their tattoos and what do they signify?
How do you know that? Just because the world is against him, Trump can be very stubborn and look at what he's doing to the American government. So how can you be sure that he wouldn't try it? Maybe it wouldn't work, but how can you be sure he wouldn't try to push it forward?
So has Pete Hexeth said anything about those tattoos?
You know, in talking about the difficulty of recruiting, Trump and Hexeth seem to want to bar women from serving in combat. Correct me if I'm wrong about that. But isn't that counterproductive if you want to increase the ranks of people in combat? And like flying planes, that counts as combat, doesn't it? Like if you're flying a war plane?
Well, let me reintroduce you again. If you're just joining us, my guest is Dexter Filkins. His new article in The New Yorker is titled The U.S. Military's Recruitment Crisis. We'll be right back after a short break. This is Fresh Air.
One of the things the military is doing now to get more recruits is offering pretty impressive incentives. What are some of the incentives being offered now, both financial and other kind of incentives?
Personnel pay and benefits are now about 40% of the defense budget. Do you think that that will be cut?
Well, Dexter Filkins, thank you so much for talking with us and for coming back to the show. I really appreciate it.
Dexter Filkins' new article titled The U.S. Military's Recruitment Crisis is published in The New Yorker, where he's a staff writer. The magazine is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, our guest will be writer and dominatrix Brittany Newell.
Her new novel, Softcore, explores the underworld of San Francisco's dive bars, strip clubs, and BDSM dungeons, where tech bros, executives, and outcasts live out their fantasies. Hope you'll join us. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
Do you think Trump and Jared see this as a kind of ultra form of gentrification?
So with the Abraham Accords, that would have created peace and recognition. So the Saudis would officially recognize Israel. There'd be an official peace between them.
In that interview with Filkins, we also talked about how the Middle East was being reshaped by the Israel-Hamas war and the overthrow of Syria's dictator, Bashar al-Assad. But last night, at a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, Trump proposed a shocking way he'd like to reshape the region.
Yeah.
Choice C. When Al Qaeda attacked the U.S. on 9-11, the leadership said this was because of American military presence in the Middle East. So even if Trump does not follow through on his plan, do you think that this will arouse terrorist groups or what's left of them to try to get back at the U.S.?
And on a related note, if Trump did take steps forward in trying to implement this, what would it mean in terms of possible terrorist attacks on U.S. troops or on just American land?
So in terms of a Palestinian state, like Mike Huckabee, who is the new ambassador to Israel, doesn't even call the West Bank the West Bank. He refers to that as Judea and Samaria, which are the biblical names for that land. And he's one of the people who believes that Israel has biblical claim to the land that we call the West Bank.
So with him being the ambassador to Israel, what do you think that means for the future of Israel and the Palestinians?
His idea is for all the Palestinians to leave Gaza, get Jordan and Egypt to take them in, while the U.S. takes ownership of Gaza and rebuilds it. He didn't rule out sending U.S. troops into Gaza. We brought back Falcons this morning to talk about Trump's proposal. In the second half of today's show, we'll hear the interview we recorded yesterday morning about the shortage of recruits in the U.S.
There seems to be some controversy over whether Trump was musing or whether this was like planned in advance.
And on a related note, the CIA, this is part of Elon Musk's plan to save money and change government. Buyouts have been offered to, I think, everybody in the CIA. And we need the CIA more than ever now, don't we?
But that's not the plan right now. The plan is like, you can all leave if you want.
So yesterday in a part of our interview, which we'll hear that interview a little later, we spent some time talking about how the Middle East has been reshaped because of the Israel-Hamas war and because of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad having been overthrown. And everything that we said yesterday is a little out of date now as of last night. So can we take that one again?
How do you think the Middle East is being remade right now?
military and how that's leaving us vulnerable. Filkins is a staff writer for The New Yorker. He has been reporting on Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East for decades and is the author of the bestseller The Forever War. Let's start with a clip from last night's press conference when CNN's Caitlin Collins posed this question to Trump.
What's left of the terrorist groups, the offshoots of Al-Qaeda, ISIS, what's left of those? And are they still a threat to Israel or to the U.S.?
So Ron Cephas Jones, who was in that scene with you, your biological father in the series, he died a few months ago. And Andre Brouwer, who you also work with, and we'll talk about him a little bit later. Sure. He died at the end of 2023. And then you also worked on Black Panther. Yes.
And you knew Chadwick Boseman, who died of cancer at a young age, shocking everybody because he didn't make it public. I'm wondering if that made you think about your own mortality.
He's a plastic surgeon who's currently having money problems because his wife has left him and has taken half his practice after discovering he's having a gay relationship. He's just come out as gay and is going a little overboard in reconstructing his identity. The film is a funny satire about race and the publishing industry, while at the same time probing complicated family relationships.
Right.
So you've been in the gym a lot. So I know you're doing your part in terms of exercise. I appreciate that. So let me reintroduce you here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Sterling K. Brown. We're going to take a short break, and then we'll be right back. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. As part of our holiday week series of interviews we particularly enjoyed from 2024, we're listening to my interview with Sterling K. Brown. He co-starred in the movie American Fiction. He won an Emmy for his portrayal of prosecutor Christopher Darden in the miniseries The People vs. O.J. Simpson and had a small but important role as a prince in Black Panther.
He was one of the stars of the popular TV series This Is Us, where he portrayed Randall Pearson, the adopted black son in a white family. He won an Emmy for that role, too, and was nominated for another for his guest appearance in the comedy series Brooklyn Nine-Nine. When we left off, we were talking about how his life was changed by his father's early death.
You know, so you're talking about like losing your father when you were 10 and he was in his 40s. You know, one of the focal points of This Is Us is the loss of the father. So much of the story is flashing back to the impact of the father and the father's death on the three siblings' lives.
So I'm wondering like in the day-to-day world of your lifetime, how much of it has been spent thinking about the loss of your father and how much of his loss – this is a lot to ask in one question. I apologize. It's all good.
But how much of that loss affected your sense of who you were, of your own confidence, your self-esteem, your identity? You could probably talk for hours about that. So I apologize for packing that into one interview question on a radio show.
Sterling K. Brown, welcome to Fresh Air. So happy to have you on the show.
So your father was Sterling Brown Jr., but you went by your middle name, Kelby, until you were 16.
Why did you go by that name? Why did you change it back to Sterling Brown and keep the K as the middle initial?
Did you experience any of the same type of preconceptions about what it means to be authentically black in your personal life or in your acting career?
So I want to mention another parallel between your life and your character Randall's life in This Is Us. Randall decides since he was adopted, he's going to kind of pay it back and adopt a girl. And the person who he adopts is in her teens, and her mother is addicted to drugs, and that's why she needs a home. And, you know, your mother adopted two children when you were in college.
Were they teenagers too? And why did your mother decide to adopt two children at that stage in her life?
That's quite a story.
There's so much that you must have related to in This Is Us. Oh, yeah. Yeah, your mother must have been very, is she still alive?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Happy New Year. We're continuing our holiday week series, featuring a few of the 2024 interviews we particularly enjoyed. Today, it's an interview with actor Sterling K. Brown. I've admired his work since I first saw him in the miniseries, The People vs. O.J. Simpson. He played Christopher Darden, one of O.J.
My guest is Sterling K. Brown. He co-starred in the film American Fiction and the NBC series This Is Us and was in the movie Black Panther. We'll hear more of the interview after a break. This is Fresh Air.
This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to my interview with Sterling K. Brown. He was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in the 2023 movie American Fiction. He won Emmys for his performances in the popular TV series This Is Us and the miniseries The People vs. O.J. Simpson and was nominated for another for his guest appearance on Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
In the film Black Panther, he played a prince. Well, since we've been talking about This Is Us and how it relates to your own life, I want to play your Emmy acceptance speech for This Is Us. And this was in 2017. And in this excerpt of your acceptance speech, you're holding your Emmy, and that's what you're referring to when you say this one right here. So here's the excerpt of that speech.
When you were an economics major and then you interned at the Federal Reserve, did you want to be in business or economics?
You were so funny in that, especially when you were being played off, what went through your mind when the orchestra started playing to tell you that your time was up, get off the stage?
No, are you kidding? Like it physically moved?
I just figured maybe they would like mute it or something, but they physically lowered it.
Well, you protested. You said, you didn't play music this loud for anyone else.
So that was all spontaneous. You hadn't rehearsed, like, say I'm played off. Here's what I think I'll say.
No, that's great.
While you were shooting This Is Us, you got away long enough to shoot a couple of scenes in Black Panther. First of all, what did Black Panther comics mean to you when you were growing up?
So how did you know it was happening? And since you couldn't get away for long because you were shooting This Is Us, how did you manage to get a role in it?
My guest is Sterling K. Brown. He was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in the 2023 movie American Fiction and was one of the stars of the NBC series This Is Us. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air.
This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to the interview I recorded one year ago with Sterling K. Brown. He's known for his performances in the films American Fiction and Black Panther, in the TV series This Is Us, and the miniseries The People vs. O.J. Simpson. I want to play another clip. And you talked about Andre Brouwer.
And how your lives intersected and how you looked up with him. You got a chance to do an episode of the comedy series Brooklyn Nine-Nine with him. And in the series, he plays a police captain and Andy Samberg plays a police detective.
And, of course, Andre Brouwer was famous for being a police detective in Homicide Life on the Street, a terrific series that really showed off his acting quite well. So this is basically a parody.
This episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a parody of a famous episode from Homicide in which Brouwer and one of the other detectives are interrogating one witness for the entire episode, for the entire hour-long episode. And that's what happens in the episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine that Brouwer and Sandberg are interrogating you.
You play a dentist who is accused of murdering his partner, his dental partner.
And they want to get a confession out of you and you keep coming up with answers. So let's play a clip from that episode.
That is such a great scene, and your timing is so good. I really want to see you in more comedy.
Can you talk about doing that scene and getting the timing right and getting the kind of nonchalance that your character is aiming for?
Thank you so much for coming to our show. It's really been great to talk with you.
Me too. My interview with Sterling K. Brown was recorded in January 2024. He stars in an upcoming Hulu series called Paradise, playing a security guard for the president.
Tomorrow on Fresh Air, we'll conclude our holiday week series with music star and actress Selena Gomez, one of the stars of the popular series Only Murders in the Building, and Alex Van Halen, who wrote a memoir about his relationship with his younger brother Eddie, and their band Van Halen. Eddie died of cancer in 2020. I hope you'll join us.
To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer today is Adam Staniszewski.
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
All of us at Fresh Air wish you a very happy, healthy, and fulfilling 2025.
Okay, so you found the passion in acting. But this reminds me of a line that you say in American fiction. So, you know, your brother, the main character in the story, who's the novelist who can't get published, you say to him, like, you know, me and your sister, like, we're doctors. We save people. Like, what can you do? Revive a sentence? Yeah.
And so that reminds me, did you worry, okay, so I'm not going to give back to my community through learning about economics and money. What will being an actor give back to my community? What meaning does that have in the larger world?
I want to talk to you about the role that you got your first Emmy for, and that's the role of Christopher Darden in The People vs. O.J. Simpson, which was the first season of American Crime Story. You won an Emmy in 2016. Darden was one of the prosecutors, one of the two prosecutors, and he was portrayed by O.J. Simpson defenders, by people who thought O.J. was innocent.
Simpson's prosecutors in one of the most controversial trials of the 20th century. Brown won an Emmy for that performance. Since then, he became well-known in the popular NBC series This Is Us, a show that brought many viewers to tears, and won him another Emmy. He took off long enough from that job to play a prince in Black Panther.
as having the job so that the prosecution could present a black face.
But Darden really, I think, deeply believed in O.J. 's guilt. So I want to play a clip from the closing argument that you make in The People vs. O.J. Simpson. So here we go.
Now I'm going to skip ahead to the end of your closing argument.
When I saw the series, I thought, oh, you look so much like Christopher Diamond. You're so good in it. You were in college at Stanford during the trial. What did you think of O.J. at the time? Did you think he was guilty or innocent?
He's also appeared in comedy, including a memorable Emmy-nominated performance in Brooklyn Nine-Nine. He was nominated for an Oscar last year for his role in the Oscar-winning film American Fiction. We started our interview talking about American fiction. It stars Jeffrey Wright as a novelist who is black.
She was the main prosecutor and your partner in the trial.
Did you see, as a young man, did you see Christopher Darden as a traitor for prosecuting a black man?
So what changed your mind? Was it stepping into Christopher Darden's role, becoming him for the series, or was it examining the facts more closely?
He writes about fiction that's pretty obscure, like a novel based on the Greek tragedy The Persians by Aeschylus. No one wants to publish his new novel. It seems to him that the only books white publishers want by black authors are books about being poor or in gangs or addicted to drugs or being a pregnant teenager.
So let's talk a little bit about This Is Us. And this is a series, this was a series, an incredibly popular series about three siblings. And the white mother was pregnant with triplets, but only two children survived. So the father, who's also white, decides like he'd planned on taking home three babies and that is what he's going to do.
So he adopts a baby born the same day who is left at the door of a firehouse. Now that baby is black. So you're the adult version of that black baby. who grew up in the white family. So you're set apart from the family in two ways. You're the only black person in the family and you're the only sibling who's not a twin.
And part of the series set in the present, you're married to a black woman, you have two children and later adopt a third. So I want to play a scene from the first episode. You've been searching for your biological father, and you finally found where he lives. So you drive over there, you bang on his door, and as soon as your biological father opens the door, you make a little speech.
So let's start with the banging on the door.
I love how that ends. So the father's played by Ron Cephas Jones, who died a few months ago. But I love how he casually invites you in after this long negative harangue about him. And you just say, OK. Talk about deciding how to play that and whether you talked about how to play those final notes, whether you talked about it with Ron Cephas Jones.
To prove his point, he writes a book conforming to those expectations, using a pen name to disguise his identity. He's offered a huge advance, the book becomes a bestseller, and he gets even more money when the film rights are sold. But the pseudonym leads to unexpected trouble. Sterling K. Brown plays the writer's brother.
Did you audition with him for that scene?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. We're continuing our end of the year series, featuring a few of the 2024 interviews we've particularly enjoyed. On this episode, we have an interview with Mark Ruffalo. This year, he was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Supporting Actor category for his role in the movie Poor Things, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos.
Mark Ruffalo spoke with our producer Sam Brigger in February. Our holiday week series, featuring a few of the 2024 interviews we particularly enjoyed, continues tomorrow with actor Sterling K. Brown. He was nominated for an Oscar this year for his supporting role in the film American Fiction. He's also known for his roles in the series This Is Us, The People vs. O.J.
Simpson, and for the film Black Panther. but he started out as an economics major at Stanford and he interned at the Fed. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer today is Adam Staniszewski.
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Marie Baldonado, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross. All of us at Fresh Air wish you a happy, fulfilling, and healthy 2025.
He spoke with our producer, Sam Brigger, in February about that role and his career. Here's Sam.
So another question about religion. You know, we talked a little about the Trappist Monastery that you spent 10 days in and how it helped you decide to be a writer. Yeah. Do you maintain any form of religion in your life? If that's not too personal to ask.
What did it mean to you?
So I just really appreciate, like I think so many, many, many people do, all the philanthropy you've done, the support of literacy, the support of independent bookstores, scholarships, funding school libraries. One thing I find especially endearing, which you've done, is giving bonuses to independent booksellers.
He's also a generous philanthropist, donating over $7 million to schools and classroom libraries around the country, establishing over 400 teacher and writer education scholarships at 21 colleges and universities... and giving over $2 million to independent bookstores.
Yeah, that's such a nice touch, because I'm sure they're all not paid very well. And it's such a personal thing. thing to do, it's like acknowledging not just the institution or an abstract and like loving reading, it's honoring the individuals who do the work. How did you come up with that?
James Patterson, I want to thank you for this and congratulations on the Lifelong Learning Award.
James Patterson's latest book is the number one dad book. The new novel he wrote with Bill Clinton will be published later this summer. Our thanks to WHYY's Nancy Stusky, Ali Lesperance, and Yvette Murray. Coming up, if you think accordion is a corny and out-of-date instrument, stay tuned for some music that I think will change your mind.
Jazz critic Martin Johnson will review the new solo accordion album by Will Holzhauser, and will feature my interview with him. He brought his accordion and played. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
Hi, this is Molly Sivinesper, digital producer at Fresh Air. And this is Terry Gross, host of the show. One of the things I do is write the weekly newsletter. And I'm a newsletter fan. I read it every Saturday after breakfast. The newsletter includes all the week's shows, staff recommendations, and Molly picks timely highlights from the archive. It's a fun read.
It's also the only place where we tell you what's coming up next week in exclusive. So subscribe at whyy.org slash fresh air and look for an email from Molly every Saturday morning. The music of Will Holzhauser defies easy categorization. Streaming services have variously filed his albums as jazz, folk, even easy listening.
There's more than a grain of truth to these classifications, but adjectives like elegant, ebullient, and saucy fit much better, and may be ambitious. Holzhauser is an accordionist, and his new recording, The Lone Wild Bird, is a solo effort, a rarity for a virtuoso on his instrument. Martin Johnson has this review, and after Martin's review, we'll hear my interview with Holzhauser.
In recognition of his work, on May 14th, James Patterson received the Lifelong Learning Award from WHYY, the public radio and TV station where Fresh Air is produced. That was the occasion for our interview, which we recorded in front of an audience.
He brought his accordion and played. ¦
First of all, congratulations, and thank you for doing this interview.
So in your memoir, you describe how you hear voices in your head basically telling you stories. I'd really like to know what that feels like, what that experience is like.
Morton Johnson writes about jazz for the Wall Street Journal and Downbeat. He reviewed The Lone Wild Bird by Will Holshouser. I recorded an interview with Holshouser a few years ago during which he played his accordion. We'll hear that after a break. This is Fresh Air.
Now that we've heard Martin Johnson's enthusiastic review of the new solo album, The Lone Wild Bird, by accordion player Will Holzhauser, let's hear from Holzhauser. I spoke with him in 2014 when his album Introducing Musette Explosion was released. It features French waltzes and dances, as well as original songs in the musette style. He brought his accordion to the studio and played.
Since I think most people don't have an accordion at home and don't get to see accordion very much, I'm assuming a lot of people aren't really familiar with what an accordion can really do and how it works. So give us a little tour of your very beautiful accordion.
So manipulate the bellows differently to give us a sense of how the tone changes depending on how you're playing. What's the verb for what you do with the bellows? What's the right verb?
So it's going from slow to fast in terms of what you're doing with the bellows?
And start writing?
Wow. I didn't know you could bend notes on accordion. Do you bend notes on a keyboard instrument that's not a synthesizer? It's pretty good. So I should ask you to play a song for us. And your new album, Introducing Musette Explosion, is all musette, which is a type of French song. Tell us what the genre is.
So another thing that I learned from your memoir, which I found really fascinating because it's so different
From the work that you do and from the stories I keep coming to in your head, when you were young before you became a writer, when you first became really interested in reading, you read a lot of Thomas Merton, who was the now famous Trappist monk who wrote the bestseller Seven Story Mountain. which was kind of required reading for a lot of people in college, like in the 60s and 70s.
And the tradition that Django Reinhardt was from?
Wow. You're a guitar player and Matt Ministeri plays banjo on some of the tracks.
On your album. Oh, okay. So you should play one of the musettes from your album for us. Do you want to do Swing Falls?
What are you doing to your accordion?
And this is my guest, Will Holzhauser.
That's great. That's just so beautiful.
So how were you first introduced to the songs known as Musette?
We'll hear more of my interview with Will Holzhauser and I'll play more music after a break. This is Fresh Air. There's something very old-fashioned and avant-garde about the accordion. And let me see if I can explain that. It seems old-fashioned because in this era of digital instruments and everything, you're physically pumping air into it.
You're doing it manually to get the air over the reeds to create the sound. But there's something kind of avant-garde about it because you can get all these really unusual overtones through this array of buttons, almost as if it was some kind of either synthesizer or organ. where you're just creating unusual harmonics.
Go, show us some effects you can get.
But anyway, you actually went to the monastery that he lived in for many years. And I think you seriously considered becoming a Trappist monk.
I like that too.
I love it. I love it. There's an original song I'm going to ask you to play that you do on your new album, The Musette Explosion. And this is an original song in the style of a French musette. And it's called Chanson Pop, which translates to pop song.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest, James Patterson, has sold over 400 million copies of his many books. Those books include the Alex Cross Detective Series, the Women's Murder Club Series, and Maximum Ride. Alex Cross was spun off into three films, two starring Morgan Freeman and another starring Tyler Perry.
So would you talk about composing it? And there's two different parts to the song. It's like a six-minute piece on the recording. I'm going to ask you to play an excerpt of the opening melody, and then we'll talk about that, and then we'll play an excerpt. I'm going to ask you to play an excerpt from deeper in.
But give us an overview of this piece and writing it and what your intention was.
That's beautiful. And that's Will Holzhauser in our studio playing the opening of his song, Chanson Pop. And I know you said that that's based on like chanson, French song. To me, it sounds like it's also based on hymns.
And I know that your father was a minister.
And I imagine you heard a lot of hymns growing up. Do you hear a little hymn-like quality in that piece?
Aren't I?
It's silence and work and prayer.
Was it a combination of beautiful music and a sacred place?
My interview with Will Holzhauser was recorded in 2014. He has a new solo accordion album called The Lone Wild Bird. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, we'll talk about how J.D. Vance rose from a struggling Ohio steel town to Yale Law School to venture capital and now the vice presidency. Along the way, he shed old convictions and adopted new ones, some deeply divisive.
We'll talk with Atlantic Magazine staff writer George Packer about Vance's transformation and what it reveals about the future of American politics. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Ganny Miller.
Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering today from Adam Staniszewski. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Rebo Donato, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesker.
Thank you.
Well, one of the things I find interesting about spending 10 days in the Trappist Monastery, it's because they practice silence and because you're always hearing stories and voices in your head. And both the silence and the need to write, to always have more words and more stories, seems so
You mentioned you were doing too many drugs.
How did being an usher at the Fillmore East figure into that? And for anyone who doesn't know the Fillmore East, that was... the East Coast equivalent of the Fillmore West, which is where they had all of the, like, psychedelic concerts, you know, whether it was The Grateful Dead or the Jefferson Airplane, I think they were there. And Jimi Hendrix, The Doors. Yeah, and The Doors.
You're kidding, really?
An Amazon Prime video series called Cross has been renewed for a second season. Patterson has co-authored books with Bill Clinton and Dolly Parton. His second collaboration with Clinton will be published this summer. Patterson's also written nonfiction books about the Kennedys, John Lennon, Muhammad Ali, and Jeffrey Epstein, as well as books for children and young adults.
So people are always wondering, like, how do you do it? How do you write so many books? And the answer is you collaborate.
The music and lyrics?
At what point in your writing career did you think that it would be helpful or a good idea or more productive or whatever to work with collaborators? And then maybe you can explain your process for doing that.
Yeah, I read the obit.
His new book, The Number One Dad Book, is addressed to new fathers who need some advice. Back when Patterson was starting to write, he took a job as a junior copywriter at the J. Walter Thompson Advertising Agency. He rose to the top, becoming CEO and then head of the agency's North America division. If you're wondering how he's managed to do all this, he typically works with collaborators.
You describe yourself as being like the storyteller, but you enjoy telling the stories, coming up with the stories, doing like a very elaborate 30, 50 or 60 page outline.
Yeah, but then you leave the actual sentences in the book.
But you leave the sentences in the book to the person you're collaborating with. At what point did you think that you'd stick to the story and leave the sentences to someone else? Correct me if I'm getting that wrong.
Are these things that your father did or did not do for you?
He apologized for not hugging you?
What did your father end up doing to make a living?
Patterson writes an elaborate outline of the story. The collaborators write the sentences. He describes this in more detail in his 2022 memoir called James Patterson by James Patterson. I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention that he's now collaborating on a thriller with the star YouTuber and influencer known as Mr. Beast. As you can guess, Patterson is pretty rich.
So I want to ask you about your Alex Cross series, which is like your longest running series of books. Did you know that you'd be capable of writing mysteries and thrillers?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. It's becoming a Fresh Air tradition that for Christmas, we ask someone who's deep into music and whose work we love to choose some of their favorite Christmas recordings. We started this two years ago with Questlove. Yesterday, we featured John Batiste at the piano, singing and playing some Christmas songs.
Yeah, and we've got some songs about that, too, that you've chosen.
The next song I want to play, David, is I think the saddest Christmas song I've ever heard. It doesn't get much sadder than this. And this is a Prince Christmas song called Another Lonely Christmas. You want to tell us about why you chose this one? Oh, to cheer us up.
Fear not. There will be some sad songs. All right. I want to start with something from your list that I really love that I hadn't heard before because I wanted to get off to a really strong start. So we're starting with a song that you wrote and recorded called Fat Man's Comin'. Now, most Santa Claus songs are so ho-ho-ho cheery. This one is like high drama.
And he's alone because his girlfriend died on Christmas Day several years ago. You find that out deeper in the song.
Yeah, yeah. But he sounds so good on this.
Okay, so if you're in the mood for a sad Christmas song, David Byrne has one for you. And here it is, Prince's Another Lonely Christmas Day.
If you're just joining us, my guest is David Byrne, and he is co-founder and was the frontman of Talking Heads. And he's brought with him a Christmas playlist for us, so we'll hear more Christmas songs chosen by David Byrne after we take a short break. This is Fresh Air.
It sounds like the theme song for an opening, like, dramatic film. Tell me how and why you wrote this song.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with David Byrne, the co-founder and frontman of the band Talking Heads. He's put together a playlist of his favorite Christmas songs for us, and he's here to play and talk about them. So I asked him about one of the songs he chose, Who Took the Merry Out of Christmas, by the Staples Singers.
That is really catchy. Yeah, thank you for bringing that. Did you spend any Christmases in church?
What music was it? Was it like guitar? No, it wasn't. There was that period in church when it was like very folky?
So moving on, this is another anxiety, this is like an anxiety Christmas song. It's Paul Simon getting ready for Christmas Day. Tell us why this one's on your list.
And musically, this is another really, like, danceable song. It sounds like it's going to be a joyful, upbeat song, but lyrically it's the opposite.
There's a sample in the song.
I read on a website, and I can't vouch for whether this is true or not, but according to that website, the sample was recorded in 1941 at the last sermon by pre-war American Christian preacher and gospel singer Reverend J.M. Gates.
Is he? Yeah, I'm not familiar with him. So this may or may not be true. I hesitate as a journalist to put this question mark on the air, but that's what it says on this website. It's a song website.
Okay, should we hear it? Yes. Okay, here's Paul Simon getting ready for Christmas.
Well, a kind of really contradictory song, again, between the joyfulness of the music and the sadness and anxiety of the lyric. That was Paul Simon, Getting Ready for Christmas. So we have another Christmas heartbreak song here, and this is Alexander 23 and Leve. So tell us about them and why you chose this song.
Okay. So this is In Christmas, and let's hear it.
Today, we feature David Byrne and his Christmas playlist, which we recorded last Christmas. Byrne is, of course, a founder and the frontman of Talking Heads, which was a seminal new wave band in the 70s and 80s, although calling the band new wave and punk doesn't describe how unique they were or how they expanded out from the stripped-down music they began playing.
I really like that song. And the way they do it with a male and female singer, it sounds like they're both yearning for each other, but they've broken up and they should get back together. Exactly.
It sounds more like a home invasion.
Yeah, because they love the same films. If you're just joining us, my guest is David Byrne, and he is co-founder and was the front man of Talking Heads. And he's brought with him a Christmas playlist for us, so we'll hear more Christmas songs chosen by David Byrne after we take a short break. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air.
Yeah, and tell us why you chose this song. It's from 1983.
Absolutely. Let's hear it. This is David Byrne's Fat Man's Comin'.
I'm unfamiliar with him, too, but it's a fun song, so let's hear it.
I'm voting for that it's not ironic because he's talking about the joy of buying gifts for people who you care about.
Do you buy a lot of gifts or have you kind of like signed off of that?
Also, as an adult, there's always this fear as you're opening a gift that it's going to be something you know you want to give away because you don't need it and you don't have room for it.
Exactly, exactly. I remember a gift I gave to one of my parents and they opened it and they said, take it back. I don't need it.
Yeah, I know. I was going to mention that. So I want to end with a song that's actually a song that's really about Christmas. It's one of the carols, but it's an old song. It's from like the 1840s. It's Oh Holy Night. And this is one of those songs that it's just a beautiful song. It's a beautiful melody in the part that goes fall on your knees.
There's some chord behind that part that is just it's kind of gripping. A recent version that I really like a lot is by Samara Joy. And she won like two Grammys this year for Best Jazz Vocal Album and Best New Artist. And this is a song with her family because her family all sang gospel music. And she's singing lead on it.
And her father, who performed with the gospel star Andre Crouch, her father both sang and played bass, I think. Anyways, he sings on it, too. Do you like this song, David?
Yeah. Okay. Let's hear it. This is Samara Joy and the McClendon Family.
Oh, I hadn't noticed that.
That's the kind of thing you would notice.
Yeah. So that Samara Joy song was a song that I chose. But other than that, the songs we've been hearing today were chosen by David Byrne. It's his Christmas playlist. And David, I'm so grateful to you for coming back on the show and doing this. It's been so much fun. And you've introduced me to songs I didn't know and performers I didn't know. I knew some of them, but not all of them.
So thank you for that. I personally thank you for that. And I wish you happy holidays.
David Byrne and His Christmas Playlist, recorded last year. You can find and listen to The Christmas Playlist that he put together for us on our website, freshair.npr.org, or in the show notes on the podcast.
David Byrne co-founded and fronted the band Talking Heads, the restored version of the band's 1984 concert film, Stop Making Sense, is available for rent or purchase on various streaming platforms. After we take a short break, the best films of 2024 as chosen by our film critic, Justin Chang, who is also a film critic for The New Yorker. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air.
Our film critic Justin Chang spent a lot of 2024 in movie theaters, at film festivals, and in front of his TV. He says that it was, all in all, a stronger year for movies from around the world than it was for Hollywood. Here's his list of the best movies of 2024.
Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker. His list can be found on our website, freshair.npr.org. The new Bob Dylan biopic opens Christmas Day.
Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Reboldonato, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show.
So that was David Byrne's song, Fat Man's Coming, with David, of course, singing lead, and an orchestration by Jarek Bischoff. I really love that. I hope you do more of that kind of high drama song with Jarek Bischoff orchestrations. Okay, so the next song we should play from your playlist is the Pogues song, Fairy Tale of New York.
And the frontman of the Pogues, Shane McGowan, died very recently. So we should just acknowledge him and play this song. It's a great song. I know it's a favorite of a lot of people. Tell us why you chose this and what the song means to you.
And she's accusing him of all these promises that he made to her about how great New York would be, and they're all broken promises. It's not been great.
So let's hear it. This is The Pogues' Fairy Tale of New York, recorded in 1987.
Byrne also founded the music label Luwakabop, which releases music of different genres from the U.S. and around the world. The restored version of the Talking Heads' 1984 concert film Stop Making Sense was released last year. It's widely considered one of the best concert films. Byrne also created the Broadway shows American Utopia and Here Lies Love. David Byrne, welcome back to Fresh Air.
Yeah, because he's in jail because he was... Brunken public. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I don't think there were like bitter Christmas songs like this when you were growing up. I know there wasn't when I was growing up.
Was Talking Heads ever asked to do a Christmas album?
And did you ever release a Christmas album on your label, The Wacka Bop? No, no.
That will only be viable for a month.
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so moving on, we've got another song about Christmas in the city. And this is a classic. This is one of those songs that does get played every Christmas. And it's James Brown's Santa Claus Goes Straight to the Ghetto. Tell us why you chose this.
Happy holidays. Happy holidays.
Yeah, you could easily dance to this.
Yeah. All right, so here's James Brown, Santa Claus Goes Straight to the Ghetto.
So I want to start by asking you, what are the criteria that you use to compile this list?
Hit it! So Santa Claus Goes Straight to the Ghetto, one of the recordings, the Christmas recordings that David Byrne has brought with him today to play for us. So yeah, that's a great recording. You brought several songs that are pretty sad and depressing Christmas songs. The holidays are hard. Yeah, what's hard for you about the holidays? Or what was hard for you about the holidays?
By choice or by... No, not exactly by choice.
Not many Christmas songs have Christmas will crush your soul in the lyrics. But it's a great song. I really like it a lot.
Do you often feel like everyone else is having a better time than you are on Christmas?
Do you ever perform on Christmas?
It gets you off the hook of having to have a good time.
While we're on the subject of Judaism, were you bar mitzvahed?
He's also troubled by the disconnect between the nice restaurants the tour takes them to while at the same time the death camp Majdanek is on the tour. Our critic John Powers wrote, quote, unquote. It's worth mentioning that the film also has comic touches. Jesse Eisenberg, welcome to Fresh Air and congratulations on the film.
Did you feel like a fraud?
Oh, that's such a great story. Okay, let me reintroduce you and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is Jesse Eisenberg. He wrote, directed, and stars with Kieran Culkin in the film A Real Pain, which is now streaming on multiple platforms. We'll be right back. I'm Terry Gross. This is Fresh Air.
Hi, this is Molly C.V. Nusberg, digital producer at Fresh Air. And this is Terry Gross, host of the show. One of the things I do is write the weekly newsletter. And I'm a newsletter fan. I read it every Saturday after breakfast. The newsletter includes all the week's shows, staff recommendations, and Molly picks timely highlights from the archive. It's a fun read.
It's also the only place where we tell you what's coming up next week in exclusive. So subscribe at whyy.org slash fresh air and look for an email from Molly every Saturday morning. So I want to play a clip from A Real Pain. And this is a scene that not only shows the kind of emotional turbulence that the Kieran Culkin character is going through.
He plays your cousin, and he's the one who is very prone to severe depression. But he also gets kind of manic when he's around people. And I don't know if you would describe him as bipolar, but those are the two extremes of character that he goes through. So in this scene, everyone on this small tour is at a restaurant.
And your character is talking about the grandmother and how she survived the Nazis through a thousand miracles. So before we hear the scene, I just want to say you're going to hear a couple of very loud burps during the scene. And that is the Kieran Culkin character who will be doing the burping. Here's the scene.
Pee-pee time. So that's an example of how really inappropriate Karen Culkin, who plays your cousin, can be. Tell us why you wanted to create that difference, because this is another really important dynamic in the film. You've both had a very similar upbringing. You lived close to each other when you were children. You were like brothers. You were born three weeks apart. Right.
or three months apart, I forget which. But now you're living in separate cities in New York. You're in New York City. He's in Binghamton. And you've gone in different directions. He seems totally rootless. And you have a good job. You're married. You have a child. You have a nice home. And he's lived in his mother's basement.
We don't know if he's still there or where he is or if he has any home at all. So why did you want to create that wide range, that big dynamic of difference between the two cousins?
So your character in the film is dealing with OCD and he's medicated for it. So we don't see a lot of OCD, but we do see that you live a very structured life in the film and that Karen Culkin's character is a rule breaker. So I'd like to talk with you, if you're willing, about like your own inner issues.
So is OCD a thing for you or is it something different?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest Jesse Eisenberg wrote, directed, and stars in the film A Real Pain. Oscar predictors expect the film to be nominated for multiple Academy Awards. Eisenberg had his first major film role in 2002's Roger Dodger when he was still in high school. Three years later, when he was 21, he was a star of the film The Squid and the Whale.
Oh, it's a pleasure to have you. So the movie is based in part in a movie you were making, a kind of road movie set in Mongolia. And it wasn't working for you. That's right. And then you saw an ad advertising like a Holocaust tour, a Jewish heritage tour, and it said lunch included. And you thought, okay, this is something. What intrigued you about that, especially the lunch included part?
Do you feel like something like OCD ever works in your favor? Like if you're producing a movie or directing a movie, there are so many details that you have to take care of and so much you have to pay attention to.
And I was thinking that maybe, and I might be misdiagnosing the symptoms of OCD, that maybe that your brain would be wired in such a way that you would have almost a need to obsess on details. Yeah.
When Kieran Culkin refuses to stand on his mark, does part of you go into a panic?
Let me reintroduce you again. If you're just joining us, my guest is Jesse Eisenberg. He wrote, directed, and stars with Kieran Culkin in the film A Real Pain, which is streaming now on multiple platforms. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air.
I want to get back to your emotional state and how it may or may not have changed over the years. When you were young and were going to school, you've said that in first grade, you cried every day on the bus. What was your reaction to crying in front of all the other kids on the bus?
Whoa, whoa, slow down. You were kicked out of preschool because you locked your mom in the closet because you didn't want to be separated from her?
So I wasn't like you and I was growing up, but I could cry pretty easily. And then when my parents would say, stop crying, or an alternate was, stop crying, or I'll give you something to cry about. And I think, you know, and I thought like... I didn't have the words to express it then, but that was so not helpful.
It just makes you cry even harder. Of course. Because all this anger is coming at you. Of course. Stop it. And you know you can't. I'm not trying to cry. Right, exactly. It's not a willful thing. Did anybody ever tell you stop crying? No.
What was your experience like when you were in a mental health institution?
Well, I'm thinking of a couple of things. One is, like, I'm wondering if being inhibited is like the swing of the pendulum in the opposite direction.
For acting out, because you're acting out in such a stream way, an extreme way, and inhibition is about holding things in.
If you're just joining us, my guest is Jesse Eisenberg. He wrote, directed, and stars with Kieran Culkin in the new film, A Real Pain. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air.
Did becoming an actor really young change your thoughts about yourself or your ability to be around other people, your ability to be on your own, and to think that you had something to contribute?
I love something you said about acting and why acting has been so helpful to you. You said you're given a prescribed way of behaving. And so instead of having to figure out what to do in a situation, you're playing a character who has a script and you know how the character is supposed to behave. You know what they're supposed to say. And that, I guess, was relatively relaxing. Yeah.
The pressure of acting was nothing compared to the pressure of being yourself.
Your mother was a director and choreographer in a high school, among other things that she's done. Was that helpful to you when you started acting?
Here's something I'm curious about. So in the film The Social Network, you played Mark Zuckerberg. When you hosted Saturday Night Live, he did a bit with you. When Zuckerberg does something that really makes news, especially when he does something that a lot of people really don't like, like ending fact-checking on Meta, do you feel personally connected to that?
What's it like for you, having played him?
Well, another question the movie raises is like, what is real pain? Like, what is suffering? Like, if you're suffering from, you know, emotional or mental health issues, and I know you have issues of your own. The character has OCD. I don't know if that's an issue you have to contend with.
So I want to close with some music from the soundtrack of the film. There's some beautiful Chopin music throughout the film. And were you familiar with that music before making the movie?
Is there a piece you'd like to close with?
You mean what we close with?
Beautiful. It has been such a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much.
But if you have your own internal suffering, and let's face it, people take their lives because of that internal suffering. Like you don't even have to have somebody kill you. You end your own life because the suffering is so bad. But you haven't been in Auschwitz suffering there. But so is your suffering any less important? Does that count as pain? Yeah.
Tomorrow on Fresh Air, our guest will be Pamela Anderson. She became a pop culture phenomenon in the late 80s, in part because of her role on the series Baywatch. But there's much more to her than that. She's received award nominations from the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild for her role in the new film The Last Showgirl. A Netflix documentary about her was nominated for an Emmy.
I hope you'll join us. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Rebo Donato, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper.
Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
He played Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network about the early days of Facebook. He played the journalist interviewing writer David Foster Wallace in The End of the Tour. He starred in the 2022 miniseries Fleischman is in Trouble.
Okay, so you are a writer and director and actor, and you were not only in Majdanek, the death camp in Poland, you were filming there, because you do have a scene there, and it's a very emotionally moving scene. So I'd like to hear what it was like for you to not only have lunch and dinner while visiting Majdanek, you were filming there, you were taking this kind of like...
holy place and setting up your lights and your cameras and your actors. How did you go about it in the most respectful way that you could think of while also making a movie?
In a real pain, he plays a husband and father who goes on a Jewish heritage tour in Poland with his cousin, played by Kieran Culkin, who was like a brother when they were growing up. The trip is funded by their beloved, recently deceased grandmother, who left money in her will for the trip so that they could see the home she fled when the Nazis were in power.
And also you were shooting it as a museum. You weren't shooting it trying to pretend that it was still a death camp.
You became a Polish citizen, so what moved you to do that?
So the grandmother in the movie is based in part on your aunt. And tell us something about her. Like when did she flee Poland? How did she survive the Holocaust?
Each cousin is dealing with mental health issues, which are exacerbated by the trip. Eisenberg's character is introverted and takes meds for his OCD. He's constantly hurt and embarrassed by his cousin's inappropriate behavior.
Did your aunt and your cousins' experiences in Nazi Poland, did those experiences make them any more Jewish or any more secular?
Culkin's character is dealing with depression, but when around other people, he becomes extroverted, manic in ways that can be seen as charismatic or incredibly annoying and intrusive. Both extremes are intensified by the disconnect Culkin's character experiences between the first-class train car the tour travels on and the cattle cars that brought Jews to their death.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Joe Biden got a lot of devastating news over the past few days. On Sunday, it was announced that he has an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has metastasized to the bone.
You write that a lot of the White House was really being run by Biden's inner circle. And I'm not sure how far that extended. Are you implying that decisions, policy decisions that Biden made were actually made by his inner circle with Biden maybe not fully being able to think them through or even comprehend them?
Jake Tapper, welcome back to Fresh Air.
I'm really sorry, as I'm sure are you, to hear the news about Biden's prostate cancer. Does it make it awkward for you to criticize him now at this moment?
Well, let me reintroduce you here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Jake Tapper, CNN's chief Washington correspondent and anchor of The Lead and State of the Union. He's the co-author of the new book, Original Sin, President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. We recorded our interview yesterday morning. There's more after a short break.
I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. Why don't we hear the excerpt of the interview that was recently released with Robert Herr, the special counsel interviewing Joe Biden. And it starts with Biden answering counsel Herr's question about, do you remember where you had the documents, you know, the papers from the White House stored in your in your home, in your office, in the garage?
Do you remember where they were? So here's where it picks up with Biden's answer.
The audio was released of his interview with Robert Herr, the special counsel investigating the classified documents found in Biden's home, garage and office after leaving the White House. The transcript had previously been made public, but on the audio, you can hear how difficult it was for Biden to continue a train of thought, complete a sentence or remember basic facts.
So even if our listeners couldn't make out the words, you hear the hesitations, you hear all the kind of fill words and all these like phrases that just fill time without progressing the sentence.
Yeah. And when special counsel Hurst said that prosecutors believed the jury would see Biden as a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory, what his conclusion was is that the jury would be unlikely to convict him because they'd be sympathetic to him because he sounded like an old man with a poor memory.
Is there anything else you hear in that that you want to talk about?
If you were able to understand the words on the radio, you would have heard that part.
Where Biden just kind of brings it up himself.
In 2020, you have a now famous interview that you did with Lara Trump. And she was saying, when Biden talks, I just wait, like frustrated, like, come on, Joe, you can get it out. You can complete that sentence. I'm waiting for the next words. And you accused her of mocking his stutter. And she said, it's not his stutter. It's his cognitive ability to
And you and she went back and forth and, you know, we're talking over each other. It's like one of those, one of those clashes. In retrospect, how does that play back to you?
Well, let me reintroduce you again. If you're just joining us, my guest is CNN anchor and chief White House correspondent, Jake Tapper. He co-authored the new book, Original Sin, President Biden's decline, its cover up, and his disastrous choice to run again. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air.
A story that was excerpted in, I think it was The New Yorker, was that George Clooney was asked to co-host a really big fundraising event. And I don't remember whether it was for the campaign in particular or for Democrats in general. And I assume Biden knew that Clooney was hosting the event and clearly they'd met before. And I'm sure Biden must have seen Clooney once or twice on screen.
But he didn't recognize Clooney. Yeah. So Clooney was very disturbed by that. And then there was also a problem at the same event when Biden, Obama, and Jimmy Kimmel were talking together on stage. And tell us what happened when the stage part of the event was over.
Like he'd blanked out?
So Clooney ends up writing an op-ed in the New York Times basically saying he loves Joe Biden but Joe Biden has to withdraw from the race and that Biden can defeat a lot of the odds that are against him. But age is something that you don't have any control over. You can't fight age. You can't beat that you're getting older.
What was the reaction inside the party to that?
My guest is CNN anchor and chief Washington correspondent Jake Tapper. He co-authored the new book, Original Sin, President Biden's decline, its cover-up, and his disastrous choice to run again. We'll be back after a short break. This is Fresh Air. Schumer had called for a meeting between Democratic senators and Biden's inner circle of advisors, the advisors who were sticking with Biden.
And at some point, Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania defends Biden and he basically asks, who's with me? And I don't know, somewhere between like three and five senators raise their hands.
Yeah. So what was the impact of that?
So, you know, Trump was very opposed to the press during his first administration, enemy of the people. There's more lawsuits now and, you know, legal attacks against the media, funding attacks against public radio and television. I think it's designed to have a chilling effect. How do you fight against that?
Do you feel like you were misled or lied to?
Jake Tapper, a pleasure to have you back on the show. Thank you so much.
Jake Tapper is an anchor and chief Washington correspondent for CNN. He's the co-author with Alex Thompson of Axios of the new book, Original Sin, President Biden's decline, its cover up and his disastrous choice to run again. We recorded our interview yesterday morning. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, what happens when artificial intelligence quietly reshapes our lives?
New York Times reporter Kashmir Hill will explain the real-world impact of AI from classrooms to our everyday decisions and how our relationship with AI could define the future of privacy and human connection. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller.
Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Boldenado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakunde, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson.
Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
Republicans, I think, are very happy with your book. And James Comer, chair of the House Oversight Committee, is going to continue its investigation into a cover-up of Biden's mental decline and his use of the auto pen, which is like an automatic pen. And there's questions that Comer has about whether Biden had the mental capacity to sign bills and also whether the auto pen –
The House Oversight Committee opened an investigation into a cover up of Biden's cognitive decline. There's also been a lot of advanced coverage of my guest Jake Tapper's new book, which was published today. It investigates how Biden's inner circle of advisors and his wife, Jill, tried to keep his physical and cognitive decline as hidden as possible.
is a legitimate way of signing them. He also says that those involved in the cover-up will begin to put on notice. Do you think that what you found in your book is worthy of a congressional investigation? Is that an appropriate response to what you found, in your opinion?
Right, and I think a lot of this comes from the Robert Herr audio.
Many Democrats are unhappy about your book, and this dates back to before the news of the past few days. A lot of Democrats feel like, why are you going back and talking about Biden and his problems? It distracts from putting the focus on how Trump is using or abusing his power. The Democrats want to put the past behind them and move forward. What's your response to that?
And that was the case with you, with writing this book.
So before we get to more findings from your book, you and CNN's Dana Bash moderated the Biden-Trump debate that was such a disaster for Biden. As you saw the cognitive problems he was having, the difficulty he had framing a thought or finishing a thought, what was going through your mind?
It's titled Original Sin, President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. Tapper is CNN's chief Washington correspondent and anchors two shows. On weekdays, it's the late afternoon show called The Lead. On Sundays, it's State of the Union, which is also anchored by Dana Bash.
Did it make you think like you needed to like change your questions at all since he was unable to respond to them? But it's your job to ask the questions. So like, did it throw you off as the moderator?
The book's co-author, Alex Thompson, is a national political correspondent for Axios and a CNN contributor. Thompson broke several stories regarding Biden's health. Tapper has interviewed Biden many times, dating back to when he was a senator. Along with Dana Bash, he moderated the 2024 debate between Biden and Trump, which was disastrous for Biden. We recorded our interview yesterday morning.
That debate was a game changer for Biden. After that debate, a more robust conversation happened among Democrats about what to do. Tell us about what it was like right after the debate. What was the conversation like among the insiders?
So you call what happened a cover-up as opposed to people really believed in him and they believed that he could do the job. And you're talking here about his inner circle, the same people who protected Biden from a lot of cabinet members, from the public, from Congress.
Most people who normally would have spent more time with the president didn't get a chance to do that because the inner circle was protecting him.
In 2019, music critic John Pirellis wrote in the New York Times, Eilish, age 17, has spent the last few years establishing herself as the negation of what a female teen pop star used to be. She doesn't play innocent or ingratiating or flirtatious or perky or cute. Instead, she's sullen, depressive, death-haunted, sly, analytical and confrontational, all without raising her voice.
But on a related note, you often dress on videos and in performance on stage in really baggy clothes. And I was thinking, since you grew up with a lot of hip-hop, in a lot of hip-hop performances on stage and in videos, the dancers or the women in the videos are usually dressed, and especially earlier in the period when you were growing up, were dressed in really...
tight and scanty kind of clothes. And the men are wearing like baggy hoodies and pants that are so baggy they're like falling down. And in that sense, did you take your cue from the men in hip hop in terms of dress as opposed to the women?
My guests are Billie Eilish and Phineas O'Connell. Their latest album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, is nominated for seven Grammys. His new solo album is called For Crying Out Loud. We'll talk more after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
Let's start with a song from Hit Me Hard and Soft. This is L'Amour de ma Vie, which is French for The Love of My Life.
I want to play Ocean Eyes, which is the first thing that you recorded together. You put it on SoundCloud. It went viral for reasons I don't understand how things by people unknown go viral. But it did. To be honest with you, Terry, I also don't understand. I don't understand either. Good. Thank you for the validation.
So I want to play that song because, Billy, you were talking earlier about how when you started recording when you were 13, you were much younger, your voice was different. But, Phineas, I want to ask you first. I think not many teenage boys would think like, oh, I want to hang out and write songs with and record with my younger sister who's 13. What made you think, oh, Billy has to sing this?
Because I know initially you were going to write it for your band.
Okay, so let's listen to Ocean Eyes as recorded by the 13-year-old Billie Eilish and the 17 or 18? I was 18. 18-year-old Phineas. So here it is.
That was Ocean Eyes, the first song that Billie Eilish and Phineas recorded together, a song written by Phineas, recorded at home that went viral and really launched their careers. Your mother, when she was homeschooling you, gave you classes on songwriting. Are there insights that she gave you both that stuck with you?
If you're just joining us, my guests are Billie Eilish and Phineas O'Connell, and their latest album is called Hit Me Hard and Soft. We'll be right back after a break. This is Fresh Air.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. My guests are Billie Eilish and Phineas O'Connell. As you probably know, they're siblings who write songs together. She sings on their albums. He produces and plays several instruments. They've been writing and recording together since she was 13 and he was 18. Considering the number of records they've broken in the last few years, they're more than popular.
I want to play another song from your new album, Hit Me Hard and Soft. And this song is called Skinny. And Billy, it's talking about how people think you look happy because you're skinny, you know, that you lost weight. But you're right, but I still cry. Did losing weight make a difference in your life? And do you like bounce back and forth?
Because that's something so many people in your audience would relate to.
That's a great relationship to have. Let's hear the song. This is Skinny from Billie Eilish's new album, which is called Hit Me Hard and Soft.
Billy Eilish, Phineas O'Connell, welcome to Fresh Air. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. Billy, it strikes me you're singing more in a fuller voice. What's changing about your voice and how you choose to use it?
That's Skinny, and my guests are Billie Eilish and Phineas, and their new album is called Hit Me Hard and Soft. I think some of your fans think that you're reading their mind or telling their story. Mm-hmm.
Phineas, you have a new album, and I want to play a song from that. So I want to end with Family Feud because your family is so important to you both and the way you still operate as a family because I think your parents are often touring with you, or at least they used to. So this is your song, Phineas. It's from your new album. Do you want to just say a couple of words about writing it?
Billy Eilish, Phineas O'Connell, thank you both so much. I really appreciate you coming on our show, and good luck with the rest of your tours.
Billie Eilish and Phineas' latest album together is called Hit Me Hard and Soft. It's currently nominated for seven Grammys. This is Fresh Air.
Our critic-at-large John Power spends his time leapfrogging between movies, books, TV shows, music, and sporting events. He didn't get to review everything he liked this year. So what he does is each year at the end of the year, he chooses a few things he didn't get to that he still wants to celebrate.
This year's edition includes everything from a comic performance to a political documentary to a great moment at the Paris Olympics.
John Powers is our critic at large. By the way, the first thing that he talked about at the top of his review was the novel All Fours by Miranda July. And coincidentally, Thursday, Miranda July will be my guest. If you're one of over 100 million people in the U.S. on TikTok, that may end on January 19th.
A new law is forcing the Beijing-based company to find a non-Chinese buyer for the site or face a ban in the U.S. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, we'll look at what this means and if the Supreme Court or Trump could intervene. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air.
Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Boldenato, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show.
Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
Did you want to do a whispery voice? Was that like a style choice or just like that's the way your voice sounds?
Yeah. And Phineas, I assume you do the arrangements.
I want to play a track because I like the instrumentation, the arrangement so much, and it's called The Diner. So Phineas, do you want to say a little bit about the instrumental track of this?
They're a phenomenon. Their album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, was the second in Grammy history to win in the major categories Best Record, Album, Song, and New Artist all in the same year. Phineas was the youngest person to receive a Grammy for Producer of the Year, non-classical.
That was The Diner from the new Billie Eilish album, Hit Me Hard and Soft. And my guests are Billie Eilish and Phineas. Phineas, you're not on all of the current tour that Billie is on, and you've just released your second solo album. Does that have significant meaning in terms of the nature of your music partnership?
Billy was the youngest to win two Oscars, one for the theme for the Bond film No Time to Die and another for What Was I Made For from the Barbie movie. She collaborated on both songs with Phineas. They're continuing to break records. Billie was the youngest most listened to artist on Spotify this year.
Billy, can you talk a little bit about when you were a teenager and you had all these like teenage teenagers, especially teenage girls as like such dedicated fans? What was it like for you to grow up? as a teenage star with so many teenage listeners, kind of idolizing you.
And then judging from what I've seen and read about you, you've been kind of insecure about yourself, not necessarily of your music, but for any insecurity you have, to have all these people turning you into an idol must have been, or maybe was, a little disorienting? Definitely.
Well, you were homeschooled, so it's not like you were hanging out in the schoolyard or in the classrooms with your peers.
Their latest album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, is now nominated for seven Grammys, including all the major categories. Each of its tracks reached over 150 million streams on Spotify. Phineas also has an independent career as a producer and recording artist. His second solo album was recently released, called For Cryin' Out Loud. Billie spent her teen years in front of her fans and the press.
Phineas, what's it been like for you, especially early on when Billy was very young and you were still in your teens, your late teens? What was it like for you to have an audience dominated by teenage girls when you're a guy and you're also older? You're four or five years older than Billy.
Billie, I've read that some girls or young women in the audience are throwing their bras onto the stage when you perform. How often does that happen? Do you have any idea how that started? I mean, that's like a classic. Well, it used to be panties that, you know, women would throw at male stars, you know.
A quick note before we start today's show. You may have heard that President Trump has issued an executive order seeking to block all federal funding to NPR. This is one in a series of threats to media organizations across the country. The executive order is an affront to the First Amendment rights of public media organizations.
Well, in addition to like the number one happy family song that we just heard, you write some dark songs. And I want to play a dark song. This is a father singing. One of the lines he sings is sometimes the darkness comes for me. This is his like deep internal feelings, not the facade he's trying to put on. So let's hear that. Do you want to say anything about it before we hear it?
And it's the kind of thing you can only do in animation. Yes. Yeah. Okay, let's hear it.
It was written and directed by Jesse Armstrong, the creator of HBO's Succession. In 2023, Youssef co-starred in the film Poor Things, which won a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy, and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture. Rami Youssef has a new animated series set just before and after 9-11. It's about an extended family of Egyptian-Americans in New Jersey.
Do I detect a very slight Lou Reed influence in that?
Yeah, okay. And I want to point out again that that was my guest Rami Youssef singing on that song. Is that your guitar also?
Good for you. And that was an excerpt from Rami Youssef's new animated series, Number One Happy Family USA. Well, let's take a short break here, and then there's plenty more to talk about. If you're just joining us, my guest is Rami Youssef. His new animated series is called Number One Happy Family USA. And also he co-stars in the new movie Mountainhead, which debuts on HBO and Max May 31st.
And it was written and directed by Jesse Armstrong, who created Succession. We'll be right back. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. You started out in college studying political science and I think economics as well. I'm not sure where that came from considering where you've ended up, but how did you go from that to comedy?
It seems to me the stand-up comedy world is so different than what the life of a faithful Muslim would look like. Because, you know, I don't know what circles you traveled in, but you think of stand-up comics, first of all, of, you know, just being on the road all the time. And having like really bad eating habits and drinking a lot.
So were there parts of your life, especially early on when you had to, you probably had less control of your life early on when you started in stand-up? Even things like, is it five times a day? Yeah. Yeah, praying five times a day as a young comic on the road.
I'm sure there were some very inopportune times that you wanted to pray and you were on like a bus or a plane or doing a set. How do you manage that? Do you have to make certain compromises?
The parents and grandparents are immigrants. The children were born in America. Each of them is trying to figure out how to respond to the Islamophobia that's resulted from the terrorist attack on 9-11. Rami Youssef was 11 years old and in fifth grade on 9-11. That's about the same age as the boy in the series. The series is called Number One Happy Family USA, and that's streaming on Amazon Prime.
Oh, there's traveler's prayers?
Are there special prayers? Oh.
Do you have prayer breaks for everybody who wants it on your sets?
You mentioned that your father worked at a hotel and it was the Plaza. And I think it was the time that Trump owned it, right?
Yeah. And the first time you were on our show, you told us that there was a photo in your home of Trump and your father since your father worked in Trump's Plaza Hotel. And you thought of him as like Uncle Donald Trump because anybody who was with your father on the wall like that, that was like an uncle.
And I'm wondering, this is a strange question, but Trump seems so obsessed now with immigrants crossing the border from the south, right, from like south of the U.S.-Mexican border. Has that like eased up the Islamophobia because the lens is now on, you know, like Venezuela and El Salvador now?
Was it Trump who promoted your father or was it somebody else?
With Trump's family?
How did your father feel after he became president? I don't know if you want to speak on your father's behalf.
In the father's attempt to prevent people from noticing they're an immigrant family and Muslim, he does his best to blend in by doing his best to construct the image of a happy, average American family. But because he doesn't quite understand American culture, just about everything he does to fit in is wrong, which only makes him stand out even more. The mother wants to stand up and defend Islam.
Let me reintroduce you again. If you're just joining us, my guest is Rami Youssef. His new animated series is called Number One Happy Family USA. He's one of the stars of the new movie Mountainhead, which premieres on HBO May 31st. And he had a semi-autobiographical series called Rami that is still streaming on Hulu. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air.
I want to play another clip, and this is from your 2024 special, More Feelings, a sequel to your earlier special, Feelings. And this is about getting a call after the Israelis were taken as hostages by Hamas. So let's hear that clip.
I just thought that was a really nice mix of like speaking from the heart and being really funny. And it's a hard subject to tackle because you're going to get it from all sides, right?
Can we just like break down the joke for a second and talk about the process of like speaking out in defense of Palestinian lives while also saying you have to free the Israeli hostages and then finding where the joke is going to land? Like what is the funny part of that? What was the process like for you of figuring out like where do I go with this to turn it into comedy?
This is a scene from the first episode, which takes place on 9-11, when the father and mother clash over how to respond. Rami Youssef does the voices of the father and the son. Salma Hindi voices the mother.
Did part of you say to yourself, maybe I'd be better off not bringing this up at all?
In the series The Studio, which was co-created by Seth Rogen, and he stars – it's a comedy series – and he stars as a movie studio head. There's an episode that takes place around the Golden Globes. Now, you won a Golden Globe for your performance in Rami. And you're one of the people who comes out and announces the award winners and they come up on stage.
And anyways, there's a lot of campaigning and like all of the award shows. And I'm wondering, having won a Golden Globe and having been part of this episode, if you have anything to tell us about what that campaigning is like and what you think of it, if you had to do it and what the experience was like for you.
You hosted Saturday Night Live last year, and it was during Ramadan. So how did that work out? Because people go crazy when they're guest hosting Saturday Night Live. The whole cast goes crazy because they're writing late into the morning, like overnight. And it sounds so intense in the days leading up to Saturday night. So how did you make it through all of that during Ramadan?
Yeah, it looked like you were having a good time. Rami Youssef, it's really been such a pleasure to have you back on the show. Thank you so much.
Rami Youssef's new animated series called Number One Happy Family USA is streaming on Amazon Prime Video. He co-stars in the new HBO movie Mountainhead, written and directed by Jesse Armstrong. It premieres May 31st. After we take a short break, TV critic David Bianculli reviews this year's Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor ceremony honoring Conan O'Brien.
It's streaming on Netflix. This is Fresh Air. Last December, Conan O'Brien was selected by the Kennedy Center as the next recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
In February, newly re-elected President Trump dismissed the Kennedy Center's chairman and president and appointed himself as the new chair, invited performers, guests, and O'Brien himself had to decide whether to attend the March 23rd awards ceremony under the Kennedy Center's new leadership. They did, and Netflix recorded it and unveiled the resultant TV special May 4th.
It's called Conan O'Brien, the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, and our TV critic David Bianculli has this review.
Remy Youssef, welcome to Fresh Air. It's such a pleasure to have you back on the show. That scene is so funny. I love it when the father says, from now on, we have no culture. Sure.
David Bianculli is a professor of television studies at Rowan University. He reviewed Conan O'Brien, the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. It's streaming on Netflix.
Tomorrow on Fresh Air, our guest will be ProPublica reporter David Armstrong. He'll explain why some critically needed prescription drugs are so expensive in the U.S. It's a subject he knows from personal experience. A single pill of the cancer treatment he takes costs roughly the same as a new iPhone. I hope you'll join us.
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Ribaldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
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What were the discussions like in your family living in New Jersey after 9-11? Were there conversations in your family about whether to stand up and defend diversity and defend Islam or whether to just, like you said, erase part of themselves?
Yeah. Did you code switch a lot when you were 11 after 9-11, like the cartoon version of The Sun does? Part of the code switching is not just the way he talks. It's also like what he wears to try to look like all American, right?
Right. A good reason to be paranoid. Like you have every reason to to feel like you're sticking out. You're not fitting in. And maybe that means prison.
You do the voice of both the father and the son, and their voices are very different. Do you want to demonstrate both voices for us?
Your support means so much to us, now more than ever. You help make NPR shows freely available to everyone. We're proud to do this work for you and with you. Okay, let's start the show. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest Rami Youssef started as a stand-up comic.
The father, in some ways, is kind of like Homer Simpson, you know, in kind of like getting everything wrong, misconstruing things. You know, if I remember correctly, he hangs up like, to fit in and look so American, he hangs up like Christmas ornaments in the summer. He keeps using the word like Jesus Christ totally inappropriately. Yes.
But anyways, do you see a connection between him and Homer Simpson? No.
How did your father feel about the character of the father? Because people always assume, oh, well, that's how the father is in the series. So his real father, you know, Rami Youssef's father must be like that. Your father sounds like the opposite.
So there's briefly a grandfather in the series. And he is very sexist. Like he is the man and he has control, especially control over his wife. He's grumpy. He orders people around. And at one point he says, I sacrificed everything for this family. Most men of my generation hit. And he's referring to hitting women. And he says, I only yell. I didn't even take a second wife.
Then he created and starred in the semi-autobiographical comedy-drama series called Rami, about a 20-something Egyptian-American Muslim trying to make sense of how his life, including his sex life, fit with his commitment to Islam. The series won a Peabody Award, and he won a Golden Globe for his performance.
So did you have a grandfather who was like that? And if so, how did you deal with it? Like, did you say anything?
So you write and sing songs for the series. And I want to play one that's, I think you can describe it as the theme song. And it ends the first episode of number one, Happy Family USA. So let's hear it. And then we'll talk about writing songs. So this is in the voice of the father.
Youssef co-created the comedy-drama series Mo, starring his friend Mo Amr as an undocumented Palestinian-American. Last year, Youssef hosted Saturday Night Live and had an HBO comedy special called More Feelings. His acting career is taking off. He stars with Steve Carell and Jason Schwartzman in the new HBO movie Mountainhead, which debuts May 31.
Have you ever been in a band?
In your band, did you do covers or originals?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Stress and anxiety can lead to itch. So I would imagine a lot of Americans have done a lot of scratching over the past few months. There's the kind of itch that you scratch and poof, no more itch. But sometimes, the more you scratch, the more you itch.
And there was... Help increase the inflammatory or decrease the inflammatory response?
Can you give the names of some of the drugs that fit the category you were just describing?
So I want to ask you right now, we're talking about itch, but you're having to really use your brain to speak with a sense of humor and clarity about the science of itch, your personal experiences with itch.
Is this interview making you itch more or is it distracting you from actually experiencing itch because what you're doing is describing it in a personal history way and in a more scientific way?
Well, let's take a short break here, and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is Annie Lowry. She's a staff writer at The Atlantic, where her article, Why People Itch and How to Stop It, is published. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross.
Let's get back to my interview with Annie Lowry about her Atlantic Magazine article, Why People Itch and How to Stop It. She's a staff writer at the magazine. The article is about what researchers are learning about the causes of chronic itch, and Lowry suffers from severe and chronic itch resulting from a rare liver disease. She writes about that too.
You know, you write that the brain can hallucinate itch into being. Can you describe what that means?
So do you try to train your brain to not focus on itch or not experience itch? I say that half facetiously, but I also say that as a form of like, you know, meditation or mindfulness or those kinds of things.
You're right that scientists are thinking that it is sometimes a disease in and of itself. What is meant by that?
We spoke a little bit earlier about new medications that are being used to treat itch and some of these are off-label uses. Have you found anything that's helpful to you?
Okay, so you mentioned that you were especially itchy on the bottom of your feet, your hands, and your scalp. Are those, if I use the word, popular sites for itch? And if so, why? I mean, a lot of people go around scratching their scalp.
And then there's the kind of itch that is so alive, explosive, persistent, and all-encompassing that nothing seems to help. And it hijacks your brain. That's the kind of itch that my guest Annie Lowry writes about in her Atlantic Magazine article titled Why People Itch and How to Stop It. It's about what researchers are learning about itch and how that's opening the door to new treatments.
Well, we need to take another short break here, so let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is Annie Lowry, and we're talking about her Atlantic Magazine article, Why People Itch and How to Stop It. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to my interview with Annie Lowry about her Atlantic Magazine article, Why People Itch and How to Stop It.
She's a staff writer at the magazine. The article is about what researchers are learning about the causes of chronic itch. Lowry suffers from severe and chronic itch, resulting from a rare liver disease.
What was your first reaction to getting the diagnosis that you had a rare liver disease that was not only causing your chronic and unbearable itch, but it could be untreatable and it could even be fatal?
You point out that if you're in pain, there's so many pain clinics and pain medications and pain experts and pain support groups. If chronic severe itch is one of your problems, you can see a dermatologist, but there aren't a lot of centers that specialize in itch. And you couldn't even find a lot of support groups that deal with itch. And I think a lot of people have issues with itch.
Why do you think... Not as many as pain, but why do you think so little attention is being paid to itch and why comparatively little research has been done about itch when compared to pain?
Your husband made a T-shirt for you. Describe what was written on the T-shirt.
Do you ever enter into a conversation with somebody and you're itching really badly and you're not going to say anything about it and you think, the person I'm talking to only knew what's going on inside. This conversation might be very different.
My guest is Annie Lowry. We're talking about her Atlantic Magazine article, Why People Itch and How to Stop It. We'll talk more after a break. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to my interview with Annie Lowry about her Atlantic Magazine article, Why People Itch and How to Stop It. It's about what researchers are learning about the causes of chronic itch.
Lowry suffers from severe and chronic itch resulting from a rare liver disease. You describe how touch can aggravate your itch. So sometimes when you're in bed with your husband, you will create like a barrier of pillows between you so he doesn't accidentally like reach out and touch you in the middle of the night. Yes.
You described that when somebody is scratching, people will move away because of the fear that it might be some kind of infestation. It might be lice. It might be scabies or, God forbid, bedbugs. But when you're in pain, people will sometimes do the opposite, that they'll move closer, maybe because they want to help or show their sympathy.
Can you talk about that a little bit and talk about how you've experienced that personally? Sure.
Your article ends with this. I'm here. My body tells me I'm here. I'm alive. I'm dying. I'm here. It sounds like a meditation. Is this something that you repeat to yourself a lot?
So before we go, should we apologize to our listeners for making them itch in case we've done that?
I'm going to make the counter argument. I think this is very helpful to anyone who has itch.
Annie Lowry, thank you so much for talking with us. This interview has really been a pleasure, even though we've been talking about chronic itch and rare disease. You've brought a sense of understanding and a sense of humor to it all, and I greatly appreciate that. Thank you so much for having me. Annie Lowry is a staff writer at The Atlantic.
We've been talking about her article, Why People Itch and How to Stop It. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, Donald Trump said if elected, he would quickly settle the war in Ukraine, impose high tariffs on imports, and work to end the war in Gaza. We'll talk with Zannie Minton-Beddoes, editor-in-chief of The Economist, about what to expect from the new administration and what foreign leaders are thinking.
I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director is Aubrey Bentham. Our engineer is Adam Staniszewski.
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Mabel Donato, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Daya Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producers are Molly C.V. Nesper and Sabrina Seaworth. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
I'm going to quote you. You write, itch becomes a constant, obnoxious, and shrill reminder that you are in a body. Describe what it means to you to be constantly reminded that you're in a body. Why don't you want that kind of reminder? And does it make your body feel like an opponent?
Well, let me ask you if you experience this. Sometimes when I get the kind of itch that if you scratch it, it just gets worse. So the first time you scratch it, it's like it explodes. It's almost like it bloomed, it blossomed, it's climactic. But at the same time, you know, the climax and then it ends, right?
But with itch, it's like it explodes and then it kind of keeps up at that like high level. It doesn't stop. Yeah.
Lowry suffers from itch so intense she's dug holes in her skin and scalp and once asked a surgeon to amputate her limbs. Her issue is related to a rare and degenerative liver disease. Part of her article is about her own itch and the extremes it's led her to. Lowry is a staff writer at The Atlantic, focusing on the economy and politics.
Yeah. So that's a strange thing about itch. I just realized I'm scratching my scalp as we talk.
So, you know, in the itch-scratch cycle, if you scratch and itch, it releases histamine to that site, and histamine makes you itch more. Is there any logic behind that?
So you're not supposed to scratch an itch because it can release histamine and amplify the itch instead of quieting it. But the doctor who's called the godfather of itch, Gil Yostapovich, you say he doesn't even suggest to patients that they shouldn't scratch their itch because if you're seeing him, you have pretty severe chronic itch. So why did he explain to you why he doesn't even suggest it?
She's a former staff writer at The New York Times and New York Magazine. Annie Lowry, welcome to Fresh Air. Is today an itchy day for you?
So before we get deeper into what scientists are learning about the neural pathways of itch and how itch is different from pain, I would like you to describe the chronic progressive illness that you have that's responsible for the severe itch that you experience.
Annie, before we talk more about you and your condition and your itch, because there's so much more to talk about, I want to talk about what scientists are learning. I was told a long time ago by a dermatologist that itch is kind of a mild form of pain, that it travels the same neural circuitry, but it's just a variation of pain. That apparently is not true.
Scientists have kind of overturned that theory. So what do we know about how it travels down different pathways than pain does? What are scientists learning?
So people are very dismissive of itch. And I want you to describe what your kind of itch feels like.
Does that help lead to an understanding of what kinds of drugs might help the kind of chronic itch that isn't caused by histamine? So, you know, taking Benadryl or Claritin or any antihistamine isn't really going to help people who have that kind of non-histamine itch.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest, Sebastian Stan, is nominated for an Oscar for his starring role as Donald Trump in the film The Apprentice. It begins in 1973 when Trump is 27, still working for his father's real estate development company and trying to make a name for himself. The company is being sued for discriminating against black people in its rental units.
Tell me about what you experienced doing that.
Well, let's take a short break here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Sebastian Stan, and he's nominated for an Oscar for his starring role as Donald Trump in the film The Apprentice. And he won a Golden Globe last month for his performance in A Different Man. We'll be right back after a short break. This is Fresh Air.
You grew up in Romania, and when you were growing up, I think you lived there till, what, the age of eight or nine?
Yeah, so you were very young during the end of communism in Romania when the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown. He was the head of the Communist Party there. There were protests. There were violent confrontations between the protesters and police. In 1989, as Ceausescu and his wife tried to escape, they were captured. He stood trial, found guilty, and was executed.
How aware were you as a child of what was happening in the country you were living in?
They televised it?
How was he executed?
Oh, that was it?
So your father was able to get out of Romania before the communist government fell. And I know he helped other people get out as well. Was he still married to your mother at the time?
Is he still alive?
Were you ever able to talk to him about this?
Were you surprised to hear some of the things he told you about his past?
When you came here, you had already lived in Romania. You had to learn German from scratch when you and your mother moved to Vienna. And I think, how old were you when you came to the U.S.?
Okay, so you grow up in Romania where there's an hour of TV a night and it's probably just propaganda. And then you move to America where everybody just like watches TV and goes to the movies. And is it before, probably before the heavy days of the internet and social media?
You say it blew your mind, but I can imagine that a lot of pop culture did because you weren't a part of it. You didn't get to grow up with it the way everybody around you in America did.
What did you do to try to catch up?
It seems like you spent part of your early life in hiding. Literally, you had to watch what you said in Romania. In Vienna, you had to learn German to fit in, and you had to learn that from scratch. You come to America, you try to be like other teens, even though you had a totally different background than American teens did.
So there's a lot that you had to acquire and a lot probably that you had to hide.
We need to take a short break here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Sebastian Stan. He's nominated for an Oscar for his starring role as Donald Trump in the film The Apprentice. And he won a Golden Globe last month for his performance in A Different Man. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. So retracing your path again. So you grew up in Romania.
When you're around eight or nine, you move to Vienna where your mother is. Is your mother still alive?
So she took you and moved to Vienna. And there in Vienna, she met a man who she fell in love with, who was the headmaster of a private school in Rockland County, New York on the Hudson River.
Oh, okay.
And that's how your mother met your stepfather.
Well.
So you started acting in high school. Were you in musicals?
Oh, I love the idea of you doing Grease because you didn't really know what American teenagers were like and you were trying to be an American teenager and here you are in Grease.
Sebastian Stan, welcome to Fresh Air. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. I think you're great.
So you were 21 when you got your breakthrough role in Law & Order. Yes. Playing a 15-year-old boy. This was in the Jerry Orbach, Sam Waterston era.
And so you played a 15-year-old who's kidnapped when he's very little. His kidnapper told him that his parents were dead and raised him as if he was really the father. And the kid believes, like, this is my father. And the father, or kidnapper, is accused of murder, of being a sniper. And it's discovered that it was really the kid who did it. Did I have that right? No.
So after choosing that clip, first of all, I should say some listeners were probably thinking he doesn't sound like Trump. What would you say to that?
Okay. So at some point, the kid's actual mother, who he believes is dead, and his sister, who he's never met, I don't think, are brought in to meet the boy. And the boy does not have a very good reaction to it. So let's hear that scene.
It's us, Justin. Jenny and Mom.
Can I go now? Okay, a lot of people, when they're on Law & Order for the first time, they're like a dead body. But you got to have this emotional breakdown in it.
What was hard about it? What was hard?
What was it like to see yourself on TV, and what was it like to have other people see you on TV?
Trump convinces his father to hire Roy Cohn as their attorney. Cohn was infamous for being the chief counsel to Senator Joe McCarthy's Senate investigation into suspected communists. Cohn becomes Trump's mentor, teaching him how to admit nothing and deny everything, go on the attack, and intimidate through the threat of lawsuits or through actually filing lawsuits.
I have an acting question about the clip that we heard where your response to hearing it was so much acting. If you were to give your younger self notes now based on that scene, what notes would you give? Yeah.
Okay, we need to take a short break here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Sebastian Stan. He's nominated for an Oscar for his starring role as Donald Trump in the film The Apprentice, and he won a Golden Globe last month for his performance in A Different Man. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. So I'm thinking about your mother here.
Your mother moves with you and your new stepfather to New York. It's always hard to uproot a child and uproot them to another country. That's probably super hard.
But I'm thinking the life you have now, the respect and fame that you've achieved, all that you've accomplished must make her feel really good about the decisions that she made and alleviate any guilt that she might have experienced at the beginning when you were trying so hard to acclimate to a new country.
So at the Oscars, I always wonder, what's it like if you lose and the camera is on you and you have to pretend like, I'm so happy for the winner. That's so wonderful.
Sebastian Stanis, it's just been great to talk with you. Thank you so much, and good luck at the Oscars.
Sebastian Stan is nominated for an Oscar for his starring role in the film The Apprentice. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, we'll talk about how Elon Musk got and is using the power to cut jobs slash federal funding and help place people close to him in government positions. We'll also discuss the influence other tech billionaires are having on the Trump administration.
My guest will be New York Times reporter Teddy Schleifer, who covers the intersection of Washington's players and tech titans. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.
Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Rebo Donato, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Bea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman, and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
After choosing that clip, I read that you improvised some of that scene.
You made the film while Biden was president in between Trump's two terms. What's it like watching his second term after having played him?
Cohn is played by Jeremy Strong, who's also nominated for an Oscar. Last month, Stan won a Golden Globe for his starring role in A Different Man, as a man who's disfigured by a genetic condition that has grown fleshy tumors on his face. The tumors disappear after taking a new drug, and he emerges quite attractive, but remains alienated and withdrawn from other people.
Playing him, I'm sure you had to be him and see things from his point of view, which requires you, the actor, to have empathy for Trump, the character that you're portraying.
Trump sent a cease and desist letter to the filmmakers trying to prevent the film from opening in the U.S. He accused the film of defamation and interference in the election. The film was set to be released in the fall of 2024, a couple of months before the election.
I'm wondering with that cease and desist letter if you felt like you were suddenly or your film was suddenly the target of the same kind of tactics again. that you learned as Donald Trump in the film so that you were living the tactics that are played out in the film, except this time you weren't Trump. You were on the other end. You were on the receiving end of the threats.
In the film I, Tonya, Sebastian Stan played Tonya Harding's boyfriend, who plots to disable her ice skating competitor Nancy Kerrigan. In the miniseries Pam and Tommy, he played Tommy Lee, Motley Crue's drummer and Pamela Anderson's husband. A lot of Stan's fans know him from the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Bucky Barnes, a recurring character in the Captain America films.
So regarding the film on Trump's social media platform, Truth Social, he wrote, So sad the human scum, like the people involved in this hopefully unsuccessful enterprise, are allowed to say and do whatever they want to hurt a political movement, which is far bigger than any of us. MAGA 2024
When you came to America after growing up under communism in Romania, then moving to Vienna with your mother and then coming to the U.S., I'm sure you didn't expect to become a famous actor.
I'm really sure you didn't expect to portray a former and now current American president and have the president see the whole film as an insult, try to stop it from opening and call everybody involved with the film human scum.
So what did it feel like when that happened?
Do you sense an element of fear in the entertainment industry now? I mean, Trump has promised retribution against his perceived enemies.
I want to move on to another new film of yours, which has been playing on HBO lately, and I assume on Max. And that's A Different Man, for which you won a Golden Globe in January. And in this film, you're afflicted with neurofibromatosis, which is a genetic disease. That creates fleshy tumors, and for you, fleshy tumors on the face.
Let's start with a scene from The Apprentice. Trump is planning to build Trump Tower and is trying to convince New York City Mayor Ed Koch that it will be so extraordinary, Koch should give him tax breaks. It will be so good for New York. Roy Cohn is also in the room. You'll hear him jumping into the conversation.
So you're kind of treated a bit like an outcast because people stare at you. They might move away. The character who you're attracted to, who seems to be very fond of you, just recoils when you try to touch her. So then you're part of a new drug experimental trial, and the drug cures the condition. The tumors kind of fall away, and you're very attractive underneath. You have a beautiful face.
It's your face. It's Sebastian Stan's face. But your character doesn't change. You're alienated. You're isolated. And that's not going to change. I'm wondering how much this film made you think about looks and how looks determine how people are treated in this world, which is something a lot of us think about all the time.
So you're right. The truth was that Joe Biden was too old to run for reelection, much less govern effectively in a second term. His advisers knew this or should have known it, but refused to face that fact. None ever discussed with the president whether he was too old to serve a second term.
What are some of the suggestions you heard about how she could have differentiated herself more and become more of a change agent in the eyes of the public?
Instead, they walled Biden off from the outside world, limiting the number of people who interacted with him. How do you know for sure that no one ever discussed with Biden whether he was too old to serve?
Well, we need to take another break here, so let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is Chris Whipple. He's author of the new book, Uncharted, How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
You think or a lot of people told you that, you know, your sources that part of the problem with the Harris campaign was the decision to really focus on the threat to democracy as opposed to focusing more on like personal finance issues and, you know, economic issues. The threat to democracy, that really resonated with a lot of people.
But talk a little bit more about the controversy about how much to stress that in the campaign.
The Harris campaign was criticized for running a really good, more traditional campaign, knocking on doors to get out the vote, going on mainstream media, whereas the Trump campaign did a lot of podcasts, including with people on the right, went on Joe Rogan. And Harris considered going on Joe Rogan's podcast, but decided not to
How consequential do you think the decision was to take a more like mainstream approach to getting out the vote and being on the media compared to Trump?
And Susie Wiles ran Trump's successful 2024 campaign and is now his chief of staff.
I want to talk with you about Susie Wiles. And Wiles managed Trump's 2024 successful presidential campaign and is now his White House chief of staff. One of the things you say, and I mentioned this before, about chiefs of staff is that they have to be able to say no to presidents. They have to be able to tell the truth to the president when it's not something the president wants to hear.
They have to be able to contradict the president and set the president on what they perceive to be the right course. How is Susie Wiles doing in that job? And I'm just thinking about the tariffs and letting loose Elon Musk and taking advice from right-wing conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer about who to fire from, you know, like what national security experts to fire.
Let's take another break here and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is Chris Whipple, author of the new book, Uncharted, How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air.
One of your earlier books, The Gatekeepers, is about White House chiefs of staff. And you describe the chief of staff position as being one of the most important positions. Why is it so important? Explain what a chief of staff actually does.
The position of chief of staff is relatively new. It started under President Eisenhower. Why did he create the position?
Yes. What did Leon Panetta do as chief of staff to turn around the Clinton White House?
What are some of the ways in which you say he was walled off from the outside world and his staff limited the number of people who interacted with him?
Thank you. Thank you.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Democrats are still asking questions like, why didn't Joe Biden end his reelection campaign sooner? Why did he even run for reelection knowing that he would have been 82 when he started his second term and 86 when it ended? Why didn't his staff tell him he wasn't up to the job?
Thank you. Thank you.
A major source for your new book was Ron Klain, who was Biden's chief of staff during his first two years in the White House. And, you know, in your book about chiefs of staff, you say that one of the main jobs of a chief of staff, a good chief of staff, is to tell the president what the president doesn't want to hear, but is true. And you think that Ron Klain was a terrific chief of staff.
At the same time, Ron Klain never acknowledged that Biden shouldn't be running. And he saw up close what Biden's condition was. So how do you explain that?
Maureen Corrigan is the author of a book about Gatsby called So We Read On, How the Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, how can one man change the whole global economy? We talk about Trump's tariffs, why they've led stock markets to plummet, how they're changing our relationship with allies and adversaries, and what tariffs mean for our day-to-day lives.
Our guest will be Zannie Minton-Beddoes, editor-in-chief of The Economist. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger.
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Mabel Donato, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thaya Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
So on the one hand, you say that you don't think there was a cover-up. But at the same time, you also say that there was a conscious campaign to limit his exposure to the outside world, including people one-on-one. So is that a form of cover-up, limiting his exposure so that people wouldn't see the shape that he was in?
How did Kamala Harris lose to Trump after Trump tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election and was convicted of 34 felonies? My guest, Chris Whipple, explores these questions from different perspectives in his new book, Uncharted, How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History. Whipple's previous book was about the first two years of the Biden presidency.
The days leading up to that disastrous debate with Trump did not find Biden in good shape, and Ron Klain saw it up close. What were some of the most disturbing signs that he saw that he told you about?
There were two mock debates that were scheduled and Klain ended one prematurely because Biden just didn't seem to be up for it. And Biden ended one after about 15 minutes because he was so exhausted. The campaign was considering canceling the debate but decided not to. Why? Why not?
Maybe this shouldn't have surprised me, but I didn't know that this kind of thing happens. Spielberg and producer Jeffrey Katzenberg both prepped Biden for the debate. Is that a typical thing where like mega Hollywood directors and producers prepare candidates before debates?
He's also the author of The Spymasters, How the CIA Directors Shape History and the Future, and The Gatekeepers, How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency. Biden's chief of staff during the first two years of his presidency, Ron Klain, was a major source for the new book about the 2024 election, as was Biden's final chief of staff, Jeffrey Zients.
How is the final decision made to drop out of the race?
The Biden team was really angry with Obama. How come?
Chris Whipple is also a documentary filmmaker and has won a Peabody and an Emmy. Chris Whipple, welcome to Fresh Air.
It sounds to me from your book that when Biden dropped out, the Harris campaign was kind of prepared for that. The Harris campaign was waging what you describe as a stealth campaign to try to be prepared in case Biden did drop out. Tell us about that stealth campaign.
Our long national nightmare is over. Beyonce has finally won the Grammy for Album of the Year. How and why did it take so long for Beyonce to win the top prize at Music's Biggest Night? We're talking about her big wins and breaking down the Grammys for Kendrick Lamar, Chapel Roan, and Sabrina Carpenter. Listen to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Today, we remember Quincy Jones. He died Sunday at the age of 91. In his New York Times obit, music critic Ben Ratliff described Jones as one of the most powerful forces in American popular music for more than a century. Jones started his career as a trumpeter in Lionel Hampton's big band in the early 50s, but he never became a noted instrumentalist.
Well, the first recording that you made was with the Lionel Hampton Band. This was in 1952. It's also your first recorded composition and first recorded arrangement. It's called Kingfish. Why don't you say something about what you think of this musically now?
Okay, so here it is, 1952, Quincy Jones with the Lionel Hampton band, Kingfish. ¦ From the early 1950s, that was Quincy Jones' first recording with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra. It's called Kingfish.
We're listening to my 2001 interview with Quincy Jones. He died Sunday at the age of 91. We'll hear more of the interview after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
Hi, this is Molly Sivinesper, digital producer at Fresh Air. And this is Terry Gross, host of the show. One of the things I do is write the weekly newsletter. And I'm a newsletter fan. I read it every Saturday after breakfast. The newsletter includes all the week's shows, staff recommendations, and Molly picks timely highlights from the archive. It's a fun read.
It's also the only place where we tell you what's coming up next week, an exclusive. So subscribe at whyy.org slash fresh air and look for an email from Molly every Saturday morning. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. We're remembering composer, arranger, and producer Quincy Jones. He died Sunday at the age of 91.
His work spanned from the big bands through bebop, pop, movie soundtracks, TV themes, and hip-hop. He arranged or produced recordings for Sinatra, Ray Charles, Aretha, Dinah Washington, and Ice-T, and he produced the Michael Jackson albums Off the Wall, Bad, and Thriller.
His music has been sampled in many hip-hop recordings, and his 1962 recording, Sol Bossa Nova, was used as the theme for the Austin Powers films. His multimedia company produced the TV shows The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, In the House, and Mad TV. Now I've got to move to a 1962 recording. This is The Soul Bossa Nova, which became the theme for Austin Powers, the movie. Yes, it did.
Which just goes to show how this epitomizes a certain 60s sound. What was the occasion for writing this originally?
So were you flattered when you found out that Mike Myers wanted to use your soul bossa nova as the theme for Austin Powers? Or did you think, oh, now it's going to be camp. Now it's going to be seen as camp.
Well, let's hear your 1962 recording of Sol Bossa Nova, which later became the theme for Austin Powers.
That's Quincy Jones' 1962 recording of his composition Sol Bossa Nova, also known now as the theme for Austin Powers. Other music you were doing in the 1960s, you also had a pop music career. One of your biggest successes was Leslie Gore. You produced her first big hit, It's My Party, and produced other records of hers as well. Tell us how you discovered Leslie Gore.
Whatever happened to the Crystals recording of It's My Party that Phil Spector was producing?
Well, I thought I'd play You Don't Own Me. That's the Leslie Gore track that's featured on your 4CD box set. I also think it's just a particularly good recording and also a kind of proto-feminist anthem.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. With a lot of strings. You were talking about how you were using strings with jazz singers you were working with. I know this is Klaus Ogerman's arrangement and not yours. But still, it's a very string-oriented arrangement.
Okay, well, this is You Don't Own Me, produced by my guest, Quincy Jones, sung by Leslie Gore.
That's Leslie Gore, a recording produced by Quincy Jones in 1963. We're remembering Quincy Jones on today's show. He died Sunday at the age of 91. We'll hear more of my 2001 interview with him after a short break. This is Fresh Air. We're remembering Quincy Jones. He died Sunday. Let's get back to the interview we recorded in 2001. Let's talk about your childhood.
Your early years were spent on the south side of Chicago. Your father was a carpenter, and you say that he worked for the guys who ran the rackets on the south side. How did he end up being their carpenter?
So these were the Jones boys your father worked for. This isn't the Quincy Jones family you're talking about.
Your mother was a Christian scientist. Did she bring you up in your early years as a Christian scientist?
Your mother was later diagnosed as schizophrenic, and she was institutionalized for a while. What were some of her problems at home before she was actually diagnosed, problems that you found disturbing?
No, it doesn't sound like it's nothing.
After she was committed, she escaped from the hospital three times. And then when she was released from the hospital, you say she followed you around from town to town for the rest of your life. And sometimes showing up at the oddest times, apparently, I guess you needed more distance from her than she wanted.
One of the strangest places your mother showed up, one of the most surprising times was at Birdland when you were performing. Tell us what happened.
What made him famous and wealthy was his work as an arranger, composer, and record producer, work that spans from the big bands through bebop, pop, movie soundtracks, TV themes, and hip-hop.
I was reading the obituary for your mother. She died in 1999 at the age of 94. And one of the things that mentioned about her was that she was a master typist and that she once typed the New Testament as a gift to her children.
Do you remember getting that as a gift?
We're listening to my 2001 interview with Quincy Jones. We'll hear more of it after a break. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. We're remembering composer, arranger, and producer Quincy Jones. He died Sunday at the age of 91. Here's the final part of my interview with him, which we recorded in 2001.
I want to get back to your music and to get to the most colossal success that you had, and that was the album Thriller with Michael Jackson. You first met him in 1972 at Sammy Davis' house. You worked together on The Wiz. What was his or yours or, you know, the both of yours original concept for Thriller?
That's a sampling of music from the four-CD box set Q that was released at the same time as his memoir Q. That was back in 2001, when I spoke with him. One of the first musicians he became good friends with was Ray Charles. They met when Charles was 16 and Jones was 14. I asked Quincy Jones how they met.
What was your approach to producing Thriller? What did you think of as your major contributions to the sound of that record?
Well, let's hear Billie Jean. I really regret we're out of time. I wish we could talk some more. I want to thank you so much for talking with us.
My interview with Quincy Jones was recorded in 2001. He died Sunday at the age of 91. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
You said that you admired Ray Charles' independence. He was 16 years old. He was blind, but he had his own apartment. He got around town himself. He had a girlfriend. I mean, he had a lot of things that you wanted.
He arranged or produced recordings for Sinatra, Ray Charles, Aretha, Dinah Washington, George Benson, and Ice-T, and he produced the Michael Jackson albums Off the Wall, Bad, and the best-selling album of all time, Thriller. His music has been sampled in many hip-hop recordings, and his 1962 recording, Soul Bossa Nova, was used as the theme to the Austin Powers films.
I thought I'd play a 1959 recording that you arranged for Ray Charles. And this is from the Genius of Ray Charles album, which was recorded in 1959. We're going to hear Let the Good Times Roll. Would you like to say anything about this track?
This is Ray Charles, arrangement by Quincy Jones, Let the Good Times Roll. ¶¶
Your first important music job was with the Lionel Hampton Big Band. You got that job while you were still in high school. How did he hire you when you were still in school?
The multimedia company Quincy Jones Entertainment produced the sitcoms The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, In the House, and the sketch show Mad TV. I spoke with him in 2001, after the release of his memoir, Q, and a four-CD box set by the same name of music featuring him as a trumpeter, arranger, composer, or producer. We started with a sampling of tracks from that collection.
Now, you said that you were afraid that when you were playing with Hampton that Parker or Thelonious Monk might show up in the audience, and you were worried they'd laugh at what you had to wear in the band. What did you have to wear in the Hampton band?
Well, some of the tenor solos were almost like a rock and roll band, too, yeah.
So did any of your bebop friends end up seeing you in that band that night?
So did Parker see you in your Bermuda shorts?
So playing with the Hampton Band, did you get an appreciation of the value of show business in music? Or did you come to hate it and want something that threw that out the window, kind of like Parker threw show business values out the window?
Well, you know, one of the things you say about the Lionel Hampton band bus, and this might have something to do with why Gladys Hampton wanted you off the bus, was that there were four different sections of guys on the bus. Why don't you describe how that broke down?
Hi, this is Molly C.V. Nusberg, digital producer at Fresh Air. And this is Terry Gross, host of the show. One of the things I do is write the weekly newsletter. And I'm a newsletter fan. I read it every Saturday after breakfast. The newsletter includes all the week's shows, staff recommendations, and Molly picks timely highlights from the archive. It's a fun read.
It's also the only place where we tell you what's coming up next week, an exclusive. So subscribe at whyy.org slash fresh air and look for an email from Molly every Saturday morning.
I know what you're gonna say. I've changed my hair.
I held out hope for so long, but... I know my son's gone.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Our guest is actor Mark Hamill. He's in the new movie The Life of Chuck, directed by Mike Flanagan, who adapted the movie from a Stephen King story. Hamill spoke with Fresh Air's managing producer, Sam Brigger. Here's Sam.
Mark Hamill spoke with Fresh Air's managing producer, Sam Brigger. Hamill is in the new movie, The Life of Chuck. After we take a break, John Powers will review the new film, Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, and we'll consider why Austen still has a place in pop culture. This is Fresh Air.
The new French film Jane Austen Wrecked My Life centers on a Parisian novelist who's having trouble with her writing and her love life. Then she goes to a Jane Austen-themed writer's retreat. Our critic-at-large John Power says that it got him thinking about the qualities that make Austen so popular.
John Powers is Fresh Air's critic at large. He reviewed the new film, Jane Austen Wrecked My Life. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, we discuss the face-off between Harvard University and the Trump administration. The administration has frozen around $3 billion in Harvard grants and contracts and is trying to stop the university's ability to enroll foreign students. In response, Harvard is suing.
We'll talk with Harvard law professor Noah Feldman. I hope you'll join us. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our techno director and engineer is Charlie Kier. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Reboldonato, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman.
Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson. Our digital media producer is Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Tonight, live from New York, The Ed Sullivan Show.
Sorry. There's some doubt that you can sing. No, we need money first. Our psychiatrist briefly said there's nothing but four Elvis Presleys. It's not two, it's not two. What do you think your music does for these people? Well, it pleases them, I think. Well, they must do because they're buying it. Why does it excite them so much? We don't know, really.
If we knew, we'd form another group and be managers.
Yeah, I saw you jump
Well, in doing your research, you think that his mother was a sex worker and that his sister became a sex worker while his mother was in jail and she needed to earn some money. And as a kid, that Armstrong helped out, worked for sex workers. And as a young man, he tried being a fan.
Well, let's stop at that for a second because he spent a couple of years there after being arrested for possession of a gun. He was still a minor and for shooting it in the air. You think it was his mother's gun.
She wrote or co-wrote several songs Armstrong recorded and was instrumental in landing his first recording date. Through writing about Armstrong, Riccardi's new book has a lot to say about segregation in New Orleans in the first part of the 20th century. The new book is called Stomp Off, Let's Go, which is the title of a song he recorded with another band led by Erskine Tate.
So he was sent to the Colored Waif's home for boys for, what, a couple of years?
And that's where he really got his start as an instrumentalist.
We need to take another break here, so let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is Ricky Riccardi. He's the author of the new book, Stomp Off, Let's Go! The Early Years of Louis Armstrong. It's his third book about Armstrong. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
Another thing about Louis Armstrong's early years is that he started working as a child. He loaded coal and kind of ran the junkyard truck or wagon for the Karnovsky family, a Jewish family in New Orleans. And on the one hand, it was child labor. And, you know, like the loading and unloading of the coal that he delivered almost like broke his back, literally.
Ricky Riccardi, welcome to Fresh Air. What a joy it was to do the research for this, you know, being forced to listen again to Hot 5 and Hot 7 recordings. I love Armstrong's recordings, particularly like the ones through the 1940s. But you've written about all of them, like his whole life of recordings. So let's start with one of his great recordings. And this is West End Blues.
On the other hand, the Karnofsky family, a Jewish family, treated him pretty well, and they encouraged his singing. This was before he had a cornet. They encouraged his singing. They recognized his talent. And he credits them for helping launch his career in Hawaii because they encouraged him when he was very young.
And also he developed an affection for Jewish food and for Jewish music of the time, which you can hear in some of his playing. Tell us some of the things he said about loading coal and unloading coal there.
Well, let's hear another recording by Armstrong. I'm going to play Cornette Chop Suey. And you say about that, that it had the effect on instrumentalists that heebie-jeebies had on singers. So what is the importance of this song in terms of American music and in terms of Armstrong's career?
And it's what you describe as one of the most iconic recordings of the 20th century. Tell us why.
So we're going to feature the stop time part in this recording. So you described the stop time part as thrilling, but I want you to describe what stop time is for people who don't know.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Here's a question for you. Who do you think was the first black pop star? The answer is Louis Armstrong, according to one of the leading experts on Armstrong's life and music, my guest, Ricky Riccardi. He's just published his third book about Armstrong.
That was Cornette Chop Suey, Louis Armstrong's Hot Five, recorded in 1926. And my guest is Ricky Riccardi, author of the new book, Stomp Off, Let's Go, The Early Years of Louis Armstrong. It's his third book about Armstrong. We'll be back after a short break. This is Fresh Air.
So I want to jump ahead to Armstrong's last chapter of life. So I'm going to jump ahead to 1971. And your book begins with this story. And it's a very moving start that really pays tribute to Armstrong's love and complete dedication to playing music. In 1971, he signs a two-week contract for two shows a night at a newly renovated studio
nightclub called the Empire Room at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, even though he'd recently been in the ICU with kidney problems and I think heart problems as well?
And his doctor warned him he could die on stage. Armstrong didn't seem to care because his life was his music. So what deal did the doctor made with Armstrong?
I think this would be a good time to play Armstrong and his Savvy Ballroom Five, recorded in 1928. So this is the final side that he made in Chicago before moving to New York. And you say it sums up his entire life up until that point. How so?
Okay, well, let's hear it. It's a great recording. This is Louis Armstrong and his Savoy Ballroom Five. And what we're going to do is focus on that solo that you just described. ¦
That was Louis Armstrong, Tight Like This, recorded in 1928. My guest is Ricky Riccardi, who is the author of the new book, Stomp Off, Let's Go. It's about the early years of Louis Armstrong. We'll be back after a short break. This is Fresh Air.
So you are the director of research collections at the Louis Armstrong House Museum. You've been that since 2009. And what it is, it's the house where Armstrong and his fourth wife, Lucille, lived for about 20 years until his death. And it was transformed into a museum. And it's the world's largest archive focusing on one musician.
One of the amazing things in that collection is 700 hours of tape that Armstrong recorded. Some of it is music, but a lot of it is his thoughts, you know, him kind of thinking out loud, sharing memories of the past, as well as it has conversations with friends and fellow musicians. And it must be very exciting to have access to that.
What are some of the gems that you found in that 700 hours of tape?
And some people thought of him as an Uncle Tom.
Every bit of his work. But why don't we choose something from the 30s and 40s? Because it's kind of like represents the next chapter of his musical life. And we haven't played him actually singing. We've played him scatting.
Okay. So why do you consider Armstrong the first black pop star?
Oh, good. Okay.
Ricky Riccardi, it's just been such a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much.
Okay. And Ricky Riccardi is the author of the new book, Stomp Off, Let's Go, The Early Years of Louis Armstrong. Thank you again.
If you'd like to catch up on fresh air interviews you missed, like our conversation with Questlove about his new documentary covering 50 years of music on Saturday Night Live, or our interview with journalist Derek Thompson on our nation's loneliness epidemic, check out our podcast. You'll find lots of fresh air interviews. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller.
Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Yakunde, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Thea Chaloner directed today's show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley.
I'm Terry Gross.
This one is about Armstrong's early years, his rough childhood, his first recordings with other bands, and his famous first recordings with his own group, the Hot Five and Hot Seven.
Well, I want to play a song that made him a star, and that's Heebie Jeebies from 1926. It's a Hot Five recording. And it's considered the first example of scat, at least the first time it was called scat. So the story that's always told is that Armstrong started singing syllables, scat, instead of words because he dropped the sheet music and didn't remember the words.
There's other versions of the story of how he started scatting. Which do you think is the most authentic story?
As Riccardi points out, those two early groups that Armstrong led, recorded between 1926 and 28, over the course of 25 months, those recordings have been studied by up-and-coming musicians around the world because they provide the foundational language necessary to master the art of improvisation.
Okay, so let's listen to this 1926 recording of Louis Armstrong's Hot Five, his first scatting on record, and this is Hebe Jebe.
So that was Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five, recorded in 1926, heebie-jeebies, which is considered the first recorded scatting. It's interesting, when he played in New Orleans with King Oliver, and when he played in New York with Fletcher Henderson before starting his own bands, nobody wanted him to sing. And he became so famous and so loved for his singing. Why didn't they want him to sing?
But you were one or the other?
For instrumental soloists and vocalists, Riccardi says Armstrong's innovations as both a trumpeter and vocalist set the entire soundtrack of the 20th century in motion. Riccardi has been the director of research collections at the Louis Armstrong House Museum since 2009. It's the world's largest archive focusing on one musician.
And he was singing before he was playing trumpet.
I want to play him backing up a singer because this is a famous early example of his playing. Bessie Smith in 1925 recorded St. Louis Blues. And this is before Armstrong had his own band. And he's playing trumpet behind her. And it's quite beautiful and very sympathetic to what he's singing. Do you want to say anything else to introduce this track?
Well, let's hear it. This is 1925, Bessie Smith with Louis Armstrong on trumpet, St. Louis Blues.
You know, it's really remarkable and lucky for us that Armstrong was able to reach such iconic status and have such a long and productive career considering the circumstances he grew up in. Describe for us the neighborhood he grew up in in New Orleans and just remind us, too, of the year he was born.
It gave Riccardi access to previously inaccessible documents, including 700 hours of Armstrong recordings of his thoughts and his music, the unedited and unsweetened version of his autobiography, and several chapters of an unpublished autobiography by his second wife, Lil Hardin, who was also the pianist in The Hot Five.
So one of the things that you talk about is something that I think a lot of adult children of parents who are dying or very ill have had to deal with. And that's the awkwardness for you as a daughter when your father was no longer capable of using a toilet or a commode of helping him with the urine bottle and not just handing it to him, but really, truly helping him with it.
And then she quietly makes an abrupt turn to this.
And how did you handle that? Because it's uncomfortable. So tell us how you dealt with that.
I need to reintroduce you again. So let me tell everybody that my guest is Sarah Silverman. She has a new comedy special called Postmortem. It's streaming on Netflix. We'll talk more after we take a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
Your father eventually became what you call like your best friend. But when you were growing up, he had a lot of rage. What did he rage at and what did he do when he was overcome by rage?
Sarah Silverman, welcome back to Fresh Air. I think this is a very meaningful and funny special, and I'm grateful that you did it. Oh, man, thank you. Thanks. Sarah, I don't remember you ever doing anything as emotional as this new special. What made you think about doing a special about your parents' death?
Were you afraid of him because of all the rage?
So your father owned a discount women's clothing store called Crazy Sophie's Outlet. He did his own TV commercials.
Radio ads. Okay. I'm not sure if I asked you this before, but can you describe the clothes that he sold?
Did he bring them clothes that he expected you to wear, but you didn't want to wear them?
Yeah. My guest is Sarah Silverman. Her new comedy special, Postmortem, is streaming on Netflix. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air.
Your father wanted to be a writer. Did you ever read anything he wrote?
So he wanted to be a writer but instead had a factory outlet women's clothing store. But when you were in college after one year at NYU, I guess he knew you wanted to be a comic and perform. He offered to pay for room and board for you for three years if you wanted to drop out of college. Yeah. Did he feel bad that he gave up his dream and not want you to give up yours?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. I'm happy to say that comic writer and actor Sarah Silverman is back for a return visit. Her stand-up comedy is always original, brave, and funny. Whether it's talking about sex, abortion, being Jewish, racism, or just daily life, she's willing to take risks to make a point and make it funny.
So you were on Saturday Night Live briefly. It was like one season as a writer and featured performer. You got very little on the air. So getting on to Saturday Night Live, that's what so many comics dream of. You got it when you ordinarily would have still been in college, which is remarkable. So you were a huge success followed by not getting renewed. Yeah, right, right.
How did that collision of big success, oops, failure, how did you process that?
Did you use anything from the eulogy in the comedy special?
Did you tell the Jeff Ross story in the eulogy?
Yeah. So what did you have to do to become part of the Boys Club?
So what did you self-censor that you would have liked to talk about?
It's so interesting because, like, in your new special, Postmortem, you are dressed in such a non-sexualized way. You're wearing jeans, a flannel shirt, and then a short-sleeved kind of T-shirt on top of that. Sweatshirt, yeah. And it all fits well, but it's not exactly clothes that you'd wear to sexualize yourself.
Yeah, and also, I mean, to dress up fancy or sexy when you're talking about the death of your parents, it doesn't set exactly the right mood.
Well, we have to take another short break here, so let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is Sarah Silverman. Her new comedy special is called Postmortem. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air.
Mothers have a way, or at least mothers of a certain generation, have a way of focusing on their children's hair or how they look. And you have a story about that, and you have a couple of stories. When your mother, your biological mother, was dying in 2015, what did she say about your hair?
And your stepmother was really into makeup and jewelry. She had makeup tattooed on her face. I think lipstick and eyeshadow.
And of course, you're not big on makeup. Was that frustrating for her? Did she try to make you wear makeup?
Sarah Silverman, it's been such a pleasure to talk with you again. And, you know, I'm sorry about the loss of your parents. Thank you. Thank you. So be well and thank you. Thank you so much. Sarah Silverman's new comedy special, Postmortem, is streaming on Netflix. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
And there's great photos of your parents in there too and of your sisters. Yeah. So the thing about giving a eulogy is like you really want to do it. And at the same time, it feels like, well, it must have felt for you like you were doing a comedy special or putting on a show when maybe you just wanted to grieve.
On the other hand, it gives you a chance to live in the memory of the person or people that you lost. And then you wonder if you can get through it without totally breaking up and weeping.
She regrets a few jokes she told in the past and later apologized for them. She has a new surprising comedy special, which I'll tell you about in a moment. But first, more about Sarah. She was a writer and featured performer for one season on Saturday Night Live. She played a writer on The Larry Sanders Show. From 2007 to 2010, she starred in the series The Sarah Silverman Program.
She's the one who died nine years apart from your father.
You were with your father and stepmother when she was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. So I want to play a clip from your special postmortem about your father's reaction.
Okay. So this clip starts with you talking about Janice's reaction, your stepmother's reaction to the news and what she has to say to the doctor.
From 2017 to 2019, she hosted the Hulu series I Love You, America, in which she had conversations to help her understand people she didn't necessarily agree with. She's been in several movies, and she's a regular on the animated series Bob's Burgers. She recently roasted her friend Conan O'Brien at the Kennedy Center ceremony, at which he was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
So you've witnessed two deaths that were very different. Your stepmother who had pancreatic cancer and died, you know, with pain. Your father who had a kind of kidney disease where there isn't pain. There's death, but not like physical pain. So two different examples of what death is like. And one of them took four months. And your father's death, like how long after he was diagnosed did he die?
And the helplessness. It's better to be helpless at home with loved ones around you.
Her memoir The Bedwetter was adapted into an off-Broadway musical. It was recently reworked, played at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., and she's hoping it will move to Broadway. Now she has her fifth comedy special. It's called Postmortem. Toward the beginning of the special, she's talking about sexual fantasies and sex talk. Not surprising territory for her.
So I'm wondering how both of those stories that you witnessed affected your own view about death and what you most fear about it or if it alleviated any fears.
When I say death, I mean end of life and how you face the end of life and what kind of like suffering to prepare for.
You just worry a lot and you get preoccupied. That's how you prepare. You don't accomplish anything. You just think about it and worry.
You've dealt with depression over the years. So it's surprising to hear somebody who's dealt with depression talking so confidently about not worrying.
Hi, it's Terry Gross. Before we start our show, I want to take a minute to remind you that it's Almost Giving Tuesday, which is so named because it's become a day of expressing gratitude by giving money or any kind of help to an individual or group or organization that matters to you. We've found a way to turn Giving Tuesday into Giving and Getting Tuesday. Thank you. It's a win-win.
Did you have a chance to be a child when you were a child? Because you must have spent so much time practicing.
One of the things I find really amazing about your life story is that you were so disciplined as a child. I mean, because you were learning so much stuff.
But you went through this period of actually rebelling. I'm still rebelling. Are you?
Yes, but when you were rebelling in school, You were cutting classes.
In Juilliard, you were sneaking out between orchestra breaks to get alcohol.
And got really drunk and went to the emergency room.
He could not have been very happy about that.
Your father gave up drinking because you were a bad example?
You see, I see everybody's... So was there a point where you weren't sure whether you really wanted to play music or whether that was just your father's idea?
On the first anniversary of 9-11, at the ceremony held at Ground Zero, he performed one of the Bach cello suites. Earlier this year, in April, he played at the memorial for the seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen who were killed in an Israeli airstrike while they were feeding people trapped in Gaza.
How did that compare to the message you were getting from your father?
We're listening to the interview I recently recorded with cellist Yo-Yo Ma at an event held at WHYY where Fresh Air is produced. We'll hear more of the interview after a break, and I'll ask him to play what he likes to play for himself when he needs to get in touch with something larger than himself. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross.
Let's get back to the interview I recorded in May with Yo-Yo Ma, the beloved cellist who's famous for his performances of Bach solo cello suites and for the music he's played with the Silk Road Ensemble, which he founded to play music from around the world with musicians from around the world as a way of bridging different cultures.
He's won 19 Grammys and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama. His latest album is a duet with pianist Catherine Stott called Merci. Our conversation was recorded at WHYY, where Fresh Air is produced, in front of a live audience. Was there a piece where you felt like you really found your voice as an individual?
You know, as Yo-Yo Ma, as opposed to just like, you know, somebody who's incredibly talented, but this was your voice, your unique voice.
I think that's really literally true.
Yo-Yo Ma started playing cello at age four, and by the time he was seven, he performed at an event attended by President Kennedy and former President Dwight Eisenhower, where he was introduced by Leonard Bernstein. In 2011, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Obama. That's one of the many honors he's received. including 19 Grammys.
How does the piece you just played relate to that?
He has a new album with pianist Catherine Stott, who he's performed with for over 40 years. She's about to retire. Their new album, Merci, is their final album together. I spoke with Yo-Yo Ma last May at an event held at WHYY where Fresh Air is produced, where he received WHYY's annual Lifelong Learning Award.
We're listening to the interview I recorded earlier this year with cellist Yo-Yo Ma at an event held at WHYY where Fresh Air is produced. We'll hear more of the interview after a break. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to the interview I recorded at an event with Yo-Yo Ma in front of an audience at WHYY, where Fresh Air is produced.
He's the most famous and perhaps the most revered cellist in America. You've performed at several very important commemorative events today. You performed at the first anniversary of 9-11 at Ground Zero. You performed at an anniversary for the Boston Marathon bombing.
You performed in France by the Arc de Triomphe in commemoration of the end of World War I. And very recently, you performed for José Andrés' World Kitchen, which... provides food for people in natural disasters and in war. And seven of his people were killed in Gaza. And you performed at the ceremony, the commemorative ceremony for them.
I would like you to talk a little bit about choosing appropriate music for such grave occasions and how you figure out what to play that will give people that will enable them to fully and deeply feel their grief while also providing some kind of consolation and community. And maybe you can play an excerpt of one of those pieces that you think speaks to that kind of need.
This was the Jose Andres commemoration?
The only honor greater than having Yo-Yo Ma here tonight is having Yo-Yo Ma with his cello here tonight. So I'm absolutely thrilled about this. So I want you to introduce your cello to us, because it's from the 1700s. This cello is older than the United States of America.
Is there a piece that you like to play for yourself when you're alone and you need some kind of consolation or you need to feel something larger than yourself, to connect to something larger than yourself that gives you what you need?
So you don't even need to play it, is that what you're saying?
Is there a piece that goes through your mind, since we can't get into your mind, that you could play for us to give you what you need when you need either consolation or to just get out of yourself and feel connected to something larger?
Okay. That was beautiful. And we started with "'Tis a Gift to be Simple," went to Amazing Grace. I don't know what the third piece was.
Oh, that was just beautiful. So can you talk a little bit about why those pieces are significant to you
One of the things you're famous for is one of the most famous series of compositions for cello, and it's the Bach's Cello Suites Unaccompanied. You recorded them three times.
We're listening to the interview I recently recorded with cellist Yo-Yo Ma at an event held at WHYY where Fresh Air is produced. We'll hear more of the interview after a break. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to the interview I recorded with Yo-Yo Ma in front of a live audience at WHYY, where Fresh Air is produced.
He's the most famous and perhaps the most revered cellist in America. I want to end by paraphrasing something that you've said. And I think this was in reference to recording the Bach cello solo pieces three separate times. And you said that your approach was, this might not be perfect, it might not be the best performance, but it's the best I can do in this moment of my life.
And I find something really beautiful in that because it expresses the commitment of doing your best in that moment. But it also has a kind of forgiving attitude that like, it's not going to be perfect, but it's the best I can do right now. And that's going to be good enough. I think that's a beautiful approach to things, to the music and maybe to life.
1983 was the first time. 2018 was the last time. So the Bach cello suites are the music that really first forefronted the cello, as opposed to it being more of a background instrument, right?
You were so wonderful tonight. You are so wonderful. I love you, Terry Gross.
My conversation with Yo-Yo Ma was recorded on stage at WHYY in May when he was presented with WHYY's annual Lifelong Learning Award. Special thanks to Yvette Murray, Julian Hertzfeld, and our other colleagues at WHYY who produced the event, and to Ben Mandelkern at Yo-Yo Ma's production company, Sound Postings. And thank you, Yo-Yo Ma.
If you're looking for things to listen to over the holiday weekend, check out our podcast. You'll find lots of Fresh Air interviews, including this week's interview with John David and Malcolm Washington, who collaborated on a new movie with their father, Denzel Washington. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer is Adam Staniszewski.
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producers are Molly C.V. Nesper and Sabrina Siewert. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross. Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at Fresh Air.
And they're beautiful pieces, but they were kind of discovered or rediscovered long after his death, I think. And some people thought, well, they're great like exercises. They're like technical exercises. They're not beautiful music until Pablo Casals recorded it.
So I would like you to demonstrate the difference between playing Bach as a technical exercise and then investing your musicality in it and making it beautiful. Because it's easy to think, oh, it's a kind of bunch of grand arpeggios, some of it.
Yeah, so can you just play part of the most, what is to you the most beautiful part of the Bach cello suites? Just a short passage from it.
I know for one of them you'd have to retune.
So join us at plus.npr.org. That's plus.npr.org. Or you can always make a gift at donate.npr.org. Thank you, and thanks to everyone who's already supporting us. And now, on with the show. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. I hope you're enjoying your Thanksgiving. For the holiday, we're going to feature one of our favorite interviews of the year with Yo-Yo Ma. © BF-WATCH TV 2021
You learned this when you were four. That's when you started learning.
You were quite the child prodigy. You were performing for presidents, current and former, by the time you were seven, right? Kennedy and Eisenhower, do I have that right?
Yeah, and, you know, Leonard Bernstein came and heard you, right? So I'm wondering, when you're young, And people are making such an amazing fuss over you, like you're so extraordinary. Do you risk becoming a praise junkie? Because you get so much of it. And that's maybe your measure of your worth in the world. But music isn't always about getting praise. It's about finding...
You're a voice within the music. And I'm wondering, some people can't make that transition, I think. Some prodigies never find what's unique about their playing because what was unique was that they were young and gifted.
When you were young and performing, were you nervous about it? And did you ever feel like, don't take this the wrong way? But did you ever feel like you were like a trained seal? Do you know what I mean? Like, here's the kid and he's going to perform for you. This is an amazing act because he's a kid.
Because it's almost freakish to be that talented when you're that young and to be able to memorize and play such complicated music.
And he was a professor in China, a professor of music.
But lots of people who pay no attention to classical music know Yo-Yo Ma because he's performed in so many different contexts. He's played American folk and bluegrass music, and he's played music from around the world with the Silk Road Ensemble, which he founded. He's appeared on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, Sesame Street, and The Simpsons.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. The unintentional inclusion of journalist Jeffrey Goldberg in a messaging app group chat of U.S. national security leaders outlining U.S. plans to attack the Houthis in Yemen has certainly increased awareness of who the Houthis are. I realize that is not the main takeaway of this story, but it's kind of where my guest Robert Wirth fits in.
And I want to say before we start, we are recording less than an hour after the transcript was released by Jeffrey Goldberg of the entire chat that he was mistakenly included in. So what's your reaction to this Goldberg story? Not to the transcript, but to his inclusion in this and what that says.
So, you know, you raise the question in your article, like, who do you believe, the former terrorist or the moderating force? Because al-Sharab embodies both. But your observation seems to be that he really did moderate. And maybe it's just because he wants power and he's being a pragmatist. But the fact is that he moderated. What are the signs of that that you see now in Syria?
This is when he was taking over Syria and forcing out Assad.
We need to take another break here, so let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is Robert Wirth, a contributing writer at The Atlantic. His new article is about Syria's transitional president, Ahmed al-Sharah, titled, Can One Man Hold Syria Together? A Former Jihadist Has Remade Himself in a Bid to Remake a Scarred and Divided Country. We'll talk more after a short break.
I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. What are Shiraz's biggest accomplishments so far?
So, you know, when Shara was trying to stop sectarian violence, he called in reinforcements. And you say thousands of gunmen poured into the region, including foreign jihadists who helped capture the capital in December. That doesn't sound like a recipe for stabilizing the country.
Was that because they had been under Assad's control and they were horrible? Yeah.
There's also like conflicting militias in Syria because there were different militias fighting the Assad regime. But now that the country seems more stable and Assad is gone, what's happening with these different militias? Are they still fighting each other?
Under Assad, there was a culture of informing, informing on friends and neighbors and people you work with. And you write about the shop that handled a lot of that, including like the costumes, the makeup, the wigs as disguises. Can you describe what was in this surveillance center? Sure.
So Shara is now trying to run a really large country with this, as you put it, this skeleton crew of a government made up mostly of people he's known and trusted for years, including his brother, who is the acting minister of health. And here's an example of what's happening now.
The superintendent of schools in a region where the Alawites are in the majority and the Alawites are the minority group that Assad was part of. So they're a minority group, but they were in power for years. And there's a lot of hatred of that group because of the Assad regime. So the superintendent of schools is in a region where the Alawites are in the majority.
And a video had emerged of him delivering a sermon in 2023 in which he said, "...I ask Almighty God to cleanse our eyes by purifying our country of the filth of the Alawites, Shiites, and Jews." What has the reaction been to that, to the uncovering of that video?
So who's doing the massacring?
Part of the transcript that Goldberg did initially released has J.D. Vance, vice president, saying, I just hate bailing out the Europeans again. And Pete Hexeth, secretary of defense, responds, I fully share your loathing of European freeloading. It's pathetic, with pathetic in capital letters.
If you're just joining us, my guest is Robert Wirth. He's a contributing writer for The Atlantic. His new article is about Syria's transitional president, Ahmad al-Shara. We'll be right back after a short break. This is Fresh Air. So in spite of Shara's efforts to moderate in Syria, there's still plenty of signs of radical Islam.
And I want you to describe the Dawah who were in charge of spreading Islam with songs and recitations and your encounter with them.
So, you know, just as background, explain what the Houthis have been doing that these airstrikes were retaliation for.
So where do Alawites fit in in terms of religion?
You did something that I thought was incredibly brave. You asked to join a truck with two dozen armed men. These are in pickup trucks, and they were gearing up for a raid on a mission to seize and destroy hidden drugs that the Assad regime was using as their main source of revenue in the final years of the regime. They were all armed. You didn't know them.
How did you find out what their mission was, and why did you decide to take the risk to go with them?
Yeah, I've never heard of Captagon before. So would you explain what kind of drug it is?
So what did they do, like burn all the drugs?
Thank you for watching.
He has been reporting on the Houthis for over a decade, most recently in The Atlantic, the same publication where Jeffrey Goldberg serves as editor-in-chief. Before Goldberg revealed his inclusion in the chat, we invited Robert Wirth to talk about his new article on The Atlantic, which is about Syria's new leader, Ahmed al-Sharah. Sharah is something of a wild card.
I'm going to start off by saying hi to the viewers. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
How much does Europe benefit more than the U.S. does by freeing up the shipping lanes in the Middle East?
So what message does this send to our European allies?
Was the strike itself controversial?
The Trump administration has been saying that the Biden administration's attacks on the Houthis, they didn't really accomplish much. They weren't well handled. Does that seem accurate to you?
Maybe he'll bring unity and stability to Syria, which he says is his goal. But he's a former jihadist and founded the Syrian branch of the Islamist terrorist group al-Qaeda. Shira led the attacks that overthrew the brutal Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and he's now serving as the transitional president of Syria.
So Iran backs the Houthis. In dealing with the Houthis, how much do you have to take into account Iran and what Iran's response might be?
So let's talk about your new article, which is about Syria and its new transitional president, who's a very interesting and kind of mysterious figure in a lot of ways. But first, I want you to tell us Syria's importance in the whole instability of the Middle East right now. Where does Syria fit in?
He says he wants to maintain peace, create unity and inclusion, and prevent revenge killings. Considering the ongoing revenge killings, the conflicts between militia groups, and the destruction of 14 years of civil war, this is going to be a very hard job to do. Wirth's article is titled, Can One Man Hold Syria Together?
And he's talked about moving from beyond a revolutionary mindset, which can topple a regime but can't rebuild a state. So how is he radicalized in the first place? You're right that he grew up in a pretty wealthy neighborhood in Damascus. He was considered a studious and shy boy when he was in school. So he became more radical, I think, at the age of 19. How did he become radicalized?
A Former Jihadist Has Remade Himself in a Bid to Remake a Scarred and Divided Country." Robert Worth is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and has spent more than two decades writing about the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. Robert Wirth, welcome to Fresh Air.
And I'll repeat that he founded the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda.
When you were preparing for your role as a narcotics cop for French Connection, how did you see this role as comparing to other cops that you'd seen portrayed in movies?
Would you be able to tell us how you answered them?
So when you ask yourself, what do I have to do to become that person in a role, what answers did you give yourself? What did you have to do to become that person?
You know, you were talking before about how when you do a character, you have to ask yourself, what's similar about me in this character? What's different about me in this character? What would I have to do to fill in the gap between what he would do and what I would do? In at least two recent movies, you played characters with a real sadistic streak, the sheriff in Unforgiven.
and the sheriff in The Quick and the Dead. And these were characters who definitely had a strong sadistic streak. What do you do to get in the spirit of a character like that?
Well, it's green. You know, the great sadists always have a lot of charisma.
So it must be fun to play roles like that.
Do you get offers for Kindly Old Gentleman kind of roles?
You've actually dropped out of acting a couple of times, didn't you?
So in one of the final scenes in Succession, the father has died. The children are fighting to keep the company while the head of another company is trying to buy it out. Kendall has pitched himself as the successor at the final board meeting before the decision is made. They're about to vote and each of the three siblings has a vote too. And the decisive vote is going to be the sister, Shiv's.
And before she says what her vote is going to be, she calls a meeting in another room with you and Kieran Culkin's character. And she explains why she's not going to vote for you. And this refers back to when you confessed to your siblings that you had accidentally killed a young man while you were very high and he had a drug contact.
And you were too high to be driving and you accidentally drove off the road into a lake and you couldn't rescue him from the car. So what you did was like run away and then like pretend like you had nothing to do with it. But you confessed to your father who covered it up for you and then you were indebted to him.
So I want to play that scene where the three siblings are in a separate room and Shiv, your character's sister, is explaining why she's not going to vote for you.
He never came out and insisted that his disease wasn't AIDS, it was liver cancer. He was disbarred weeks before his death in 1986. Strong's performance personifies what was written about Cohn on his patch on the AIDS memorial quilt. It read, "'Bully. Coward. Victim.'" Let's start with a scene from early in the film, when Trump and Cohn first meet.
Such a great scene. And I should mention that Sarah Snook playing Shiv and Kieran Culkin playing Roman. If you're just joining us, my guest is Jeremy Strong. He stars in the new film The Apprentice as the unethical lawyer Rory Cohn, who became Donald Trump's lawyer and mentor when Trump was a young man. In the HBO series Succession, Strong played Kendall Roy.
We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Jeremy Strong. In the new film The Apprentice, he plays Roy Cohn, the unethical lawyer who became Donald Trump's lawyer and mentor when Trump was a young man trying to establish himself as a real estate developer. Jeremy Strong is up for a Golden Globe as Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Apprentice.
Strong's breakout role was in the HBO series Succession, in which he played Kendall Roy, one of the siblings competing to become the successor to their father, who reigns over a media empire but is old and possibly nearing death. So in the final scene of Succession, you've lost the company. You've lost everything that you've ever had or ever wanted.
And you're sitting on a bench next to the Hudson River. The only thing that separates you is a guardrail. And you look so dejected and in such despair that it looks like you are seriously considering jumping into the river and ending it. Hmm. And the series ends like that. When I interviewed Jesse Armstrong after the end of the series, I asked him about that scene.
And I want to play my question and what Jesse Armstrong had to say. And Jesse Armstrong wrote this episode and was the showrunner and creator of this series. So here we go.
My understanding is that Jeremy Strong improvised a take in which he climbs over the railing from the pedestrian side of the river to the river side and looking as if he's really maybe about to jump in and his bodyguard like runs over to prevent that from happening. And that was improvised. Were you there when Jeremy Strong improvised that?
Trump has just gotten accepted to a private dining club in Manhattan. Cohn is seated at a table with several mobsters, including fat Tony Salerno, the boss of the Genovese crime family. When Cohn notices Trump, who he's never met, he asks his friend to bring Trump to the table. Cohn is interested in finding out who Trump is. Trump is played by Sebastian Stan. Jeremy Strong as Cohn speaks first.
So, Jeremy Strong, did you improvise that scene? Did you know you were going to do it?
Yeah. Was that something? So how did you end up doing it?
So when you're thinking of doing something as radical as changing the last moment of the series... Yeah, but it's only radical because maybe you weren't there for the way we made the whole show.
I want to talk a little bit about your life. So you grew up in, I think, what you've described as a rough neighborhood in the Jamaica Plain area of Boston. And then your family moved to a suburb. What was the difference in neighborhoods and what was the difference in who you were in each neighborhood and how you tried, if you tried, to fit in?
You mentioned your father worked in juvenile jails in the area. And I think he was kind of the equivalent of a warden. Is that fair to say? Yeah.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Today, we're kicking off our end-of-the-year series featuring some of the 2024 interviews we particularly enjoyed, starting with a great actor.
Well, let's take a short break here and then talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is Jeremy Strong. He played Kendall Roy in HBO's Succession. He now stars in the new film The Apprentice as the young Donald Trump's lawyer and mentor, Roy Cohn. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air.
This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to my interview with Jeremy Strong, who became famous for his role on HBO's Succession as Kendall Roy. He stars on the new film The Apprentice. It's about Donald Trump as a young man striving to become successful and his unethical lawyer and mentor, Roy Cohn, played by Jeremy Strong. Both of your parents had very dramatic jobs.
That's a lot of drama to grow up with. Was there a lot of discussion of their work in the house? Were you always hearing stories about kids who got into trouble and people who were dealing with imminent death and were in hospice?
Were there parts of yourself when you started acting as a child that you were glad to be liberated from?
Early in your career, you interned with or worked on crews for films with Daniel Day-Lewis, Dustin Hoffman, and Al Pacino, three very intense but very different actors. What was your relationship in each of those things? Like which films, which actors did you crew for?
It was about the Shakespeare play, Richard III.
Jeremy Strong, welcome to Fresh Air. I love the film and that that scene has so much energy to it. You have such swagger in it.
What would you say to your letters asking to work with Daniel Day-Lewis or Dustin Hoffman?
Did you get to talk to Daniel Day-Lewis or observe his method or anything?
Well, let's take a short break here and then talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is Jeremy Strong. He played Kendall Roy in HBO's Succession. He now stars in the new film The Apprentice as the young Donald Trump's lawyer and mentor, Roy Cohn. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air.
Oh, it is totally my pleasure. You know, a biopic is different from a film based on an original story. So you had a character who was a known person who you had to portray. What did you do to know, to watch, to listen to him before playing him?
This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to my interview with Jeremy Strong, who became famous for his role on HBO's Succession as Kendall Roy. He stars on the new film The Apprentice. It's about Donald Trump as a young man striving to become successful and his unethical lawyer and mentor, Roy Cohn, played by Jeremy Strong. So I want to end with a song.
There are two musical moments in Succession that really stand out. One was when you're practicing, you're kind of doing a soundcheck for your birthday party that you've planned. And it's a very elaborate, really ridiculous party that you've planned that doesn't work out well. But you're rehearsing or doing the soundcheck with the Billy Joel song, Honesty.
Oh, really? How did you choose that song? And I should mention that you sing it with conviction and earnestness, and everybody in the room is just cringing.
But why did you choose honesty?
The song I want to end with is L to the O.G.
Good. So if I listen to it any more times, so will I be able to. Okay, so this is like the rap that you do at your father's 50th anniversary of his business.
And he wrote the great theme song to Succession.
So just one more question about that. The way you say L to the OG, the way your voice raises on the OG. Yeah. It's like a question mark. Usually in hip hop, there's a lot of assertion, you know, and almost arrogance, you know, like this is who I am.
So was that a choice to make it sound like a little like tentative and insecure, like a question as opposed to like an exclamation mark?
That's really funny. So one more question and then I will let you go because I've kept you a long time. How did it feel to end your relationship with Kendall when the series ended? Did you feel liberated from him or did you miss him?
Well, it's just been great to talk with you. I admire your work so much. Thank you so much for being on our show.
And let's end with L to the OG.
So this is Jeremy Strong, who stars as Roy Cohn in the new movie, The Apprentice. And here's L to the OG, which he sings in succession. Thank you again.
Like many fans of HBO's Succession, I became a big fan of actor Jeremy Strong through his portrayal of the character Kendall Roy, one of the siblings hoping to take control of their father's media empire while the father is growing old and possibly nearing death. Strong won an Emmy for that performance and a Tony for his recent starring role on Broadway in Ibsen's An Enemy of the People.
My interview with Jeremy Strong was recorded in October. He's nominated for a Golden Globe for his role as Donald Trump's lawyer and mentor Rory Cohn in the film The Apprentice. The award ceremony is Sunday, January 5th. The host will be Nikki Glaser. We'll hear my interview with Glaser on Monday.
And tomorrow on Fresh Air, as our holiday week series continues, we'll hear Tanya Mosley's interview with TV journalist Connie Chung. Chung will talk about her climb to the top of her white male-dominated field, her love of hard news, and her nearly 40-year marriage to tabloid talk show host Maury Povich. I hope you'll join us.
To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer today is Adam Staniszewski.
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Bodonato, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakunde, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesberg. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
Did you ever fact check any of it? Like, do you feel a responsibility to not only be have acting truth, but have, you know, like fact truth?
And I should mention here that the film was written by Gabriel Sherman, who is a journalist who wrote a book about, you know, Murdoch and Fox News.
Yeah, I should have said Ailes, right?
Right. Well, that's that's the thing. Like, I feel like your recent career is so connected to Trump.
What I want to know is, do you feel very adjacent to Trump like that? You know, Trump, because your characters have been so, you know, related to Trump in one way or another and very directly related in The Apprentice.
Oh, yeah, yeah, I know.
Because I was going to ask you if you notate your scripts as if they were music. Because like in the scene that we just heard, there's real music in your voice. You've got a rhythm.
Now Strong is starring in the film The Apprentice, which came out in October and is now available to rent for streaming. The Apprentice refers to the young Donald Trump as he's trying to establish himself and his father's business as a real estate developer. The person who is mentoring him in how to become successful is Trump's lawyer, the infamous Roy Cohn, played by Jeremy Strong.
Well, why don't we listen to the real Roy Cohn's voice? This is from an interview with Tom Snyder on his late night show, Tomorrow.
Really? As broadcast in 1977. So here we go.
So what was it like playing somebody who you find, like, is despicable, too strong a word?
One of the things you didn't do is use a prosthetic nose. Roy Cohn had a very distinctive nose. Yeah. And there's kind of like a ridge in the middle of it. And the ridge became discolored. And I think a lot of actors would have had some kind of prosthetic on their nose to duplicate Roy Cohn's nose. You did not do that. Was that your decision?
Strong is nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance. Roy Cohn was known for prosecuting and winning the federal government's case against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. on charges of giving nuclear secrets to the Soviets. In a controversial decision, they were sentenced to death and executed in the electric chair in 1953.
Yeah. So, you know, the film is in part how Trump became so litigious, like suing so many people and getting sued a lot too. So the movie's in part about that. And To underscore how litigious he can be, he threatened to sue the film to prevent it from being distributed. His lawyers wrote a cease and desist order to try to prevent it from opening.
So there's been a lot of complicated behind-the-scenes goings-on in terms of finding a different distributor and more funding and dealing with this threatened lawsuit. So how involved were you in that part of the story and in even knowing what was going on?
Who were they afraid of?
Let's talk about Succession a little bit.
Okay, great. Thank you. So Succession is the HBO series about a media mogul who owns a Fox News kind of conservative cable network. He owns theme parks and cruise ships. He's old, his health is fragile, and his four adult children are competing to see which of them will take their father's place.
So you auditioned initially for Roman, the Kieran Culkin character, and then Adam McKay, who was an executive producer of Succession, after you didn't get the part of Roman, he asked you to audition for Kendall, which is the role you became famous for. And, you know, Kendall is this mix of, like, confident, sometimes confident. Overconfidence.
And insecurity, uncertainty, indecisiveness, sometimes decisiveness, but the decision is frequently not the right one. So there's this constant conflict going on within him. What did you relate to about that brew of contradictions within him?
In 1954, during the communist witch hunt period, Cohen was the chief counsel to Joseph McCarthy's Senate investigations into the communist influence in the U.S. Cohen and McCarthy were also leaders in the anti-gay movement that led to an executive order banning gay people from serving in government. But Cohn was a closeted gay man who died of AIDS.
Support for NPR and the following message come from the estate of Joan B. Kroc, whose bequest serves as an enduring investment in the future of public radio and seeks to help NPR produce programming that meets the highest standards of public service in journalism and cultural expression.
Yeah.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. One night, when my guest Rich Benjamin's mother was staying over at his Brooklyn apartment, he awoke to her screaming, Please don't kill me! Please don't kill me! She was having a nightmare. Here's the backstory. Her father, Rich Benjamin's grandfather, was appointed president of Haiti by a temporary government in 1957.
Did you get a lot of hate mail?
What did your mother, growing up in America after the age of 13, tell you about race in America and about colorism? And I ask about colorism in part because your grandfather, one of his goals was to help lead an opposition to the mulatto elite, and mulatto was the word used in Haiti, and So if you had whiteness in your background, you were more likely to be in the elite.
So what does she teach you about race and colorism?
Let's take another break here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Rich Benjamin, author of the new memoir, Talk to Me. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
Your father was originally from Guinea in Africa. And while you were in high school, he got a job in Guinea, which he really wanted to take. He really wanted to return. And he was an economist. He took the job. Your mother went with him. And you're right. There were virtually like no schools or colleges in Guinea at the time. So you and your siblings stayed behind.
And your grandmother moved in to take care of you. And you felt pretty abandoned, similarly to how your mother felt abandoned by her father. Can you talk about that period and what it was like to know that your mother was in another country while you were still in the U.S.?
Yeah, your mother ran UNICEF programs in several African countries.
When you were a young man, you didn't want people to know that your mother was from Haiti. And there's a scene in your book early on where you're in a taxi with your then-boyfriend, and the cab driver detected a Caribbean accent and asked if you were from Haiti, and you said, no, I'm from New York. And he said, well, where are you originally from? And you said, New York.
And he said, you have a Haitian accent, you have a Haitian face, but you didn't want to tell him you were Haitian. Why not?
Yeah, and the boat people were people trying to escape Haiti on like little makeshift boats heading toward the U.S.
When did you change your mind about that?
So you went to Wesleyan University, and there you joined the fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon, which is, I think, the same fraternity that George W. Bush had been in? Yes, indeed. And this was during a period, which we're probably still in, of a lot of drinking. And were you out when you were in that fraternity?
Yeah, because fraternities are so much about big frat parties with lots of beer and more beer and even more beer. And it's all about meeting girls and hooking up with girls. So I'm trying to figure out what that experience was like for you, being gay and being in a fraternity like that.
So you were hiding being gay and maybe also hiding being Haitian-American?
Were you still having to perform being somebody who you weren't?
What was the performance like?
And everybody's trying out new personalities, trying to figure out who they are away from their parents if they're going to out-of-town college.
That's right. You wanted to get as far away as possible.
Yeah. So when you started going to gay bars, it was during the AIDS epidemic, which is such a difficult time to start your sexual life. You must have been afraid of getting AIDS at the same time you really wanted to have a sex life.
Well, we have to take a short break here, so let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is Rich Benjamin. He's the author of the new book, Talk to Me. We'll be right back after a short break. This is Fresh Air. When you started going to gay bars, you also started using a lot of cocaine. Did you have an end-of-the-world feeling because of the AIDS epidemic, so party now?
So you said your grandfather was a labor leader, but he was more than just a labor leader. He was very popular, very charismatic, and was able to organize mass protests.
In that period when you were a young man and using a lot of cocaine, you got arrested because you were very high. You saw a Mercedes and go ahead, tell the story.
Then the police came and took you to the Manhattan detention center known as the Tombs. What was the cell like?
Did that experience change your life? Like, how long were you in jail? And did that experience change you in any way?
If you're just joining us, my guest is Rich Benjamin. He's the author of the new book, Talk to Me. I want to ask you about an earlier book you wrote in 2009. It was called Searching for Whitetopia, An Improbable Journey into the Heart of White America. What did you consider whitetopia, a white version of utopia? And what was your goal in writing the book? What did you really want to learn?
You were threading back and forth if it was 27,000 miles. Yeah.
Did you get any answers to those questions?
Tell us more about what you found about immigration.
I know there were a lot of golf courses in the places that you visited and you played golf with a whole lot of people who you interviewed. What about guns?
So what did you learn in terms of thoughts about diversity? Because right now there's an emphasis of cutting diversity, equity, and inclusion, DEI, throughout the federal government.
But 19 days after taking office, he was overthrown by a military coup. Soldiers with submachine guns stormed into a cabinet meeting, took him away, and gave him a letter of resignation to sign. His wife was also kidnapped by soldiers. They were both ejected and sent to the U.S. Soldiers also came for the president's children, including Benjamin's mother, who was 13 at the time.
So what was it like for you as a black man to be in the communities that you describe as white-topia?
Well, we have to take a short break here, so let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is Rich Benjamin. He's the author of the new book, Talk to Me. We'll be right back after a short break. This is Fresh Air. So getting back to Haiti for a minute, after your grandfather was removed from the presidency by the military, and it was a coup that the U.S.
had a hand in, the Eisenhower administration, When you look at what happened to Haiti afterward, when you look at President Duvalier, who was a brutal dictator, and when you look at the chaos now with gangs having taken over the capital, Port-au-Prince, do you wonder what Haiti might have been like if your grandfather had remained president?
Well, Rich Benjamin, it's been a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much.
Rich Benjamin's new memoir is called Talk to Me, Lessons from a Family Forged by History.
So what role did the Eisenhower administration play in the coup?
If you'd like to catch up on fresh air interviews you missed, like this week's interviews with Ann Applebaum about the Trump administration's move toward authoritarianism, or with epidemiologist Dr. Adam Ratner, author of the new book Booster Shots, The Urgent Lessons of Measles and the Uncertain Future of Children's Health, check out our podcast. You'll find lots of fresh air interviews.
And to find out what's happening behind the scenes of our show and get our producers' recommendations for what to watch, read, and listen to, subscribe to our free newsletter at whyy.org slash fresh air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger.
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Rebodenato, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman, and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
After your grandfather was overthrown by the military coup, Duvalier was elected president. And he had what some people consider as a kind of reign of terror. He became a dictator. His police really cracked down on any kind of dissent. And he was president for how many years?
Yeah, he declared himself president for life.
So let's talk about your mother a little bit. So she was kidnapped by the soldiers and taken to barracks. She was raped there. How much did she talk to you about that? That night when she woke up screaming, don't kill me, did you already know the story that she was raped?
When did she tell you? How did you find out?
So she told you eventually that when she told her father, the former president of Haiti, that she was raped by the soldiers, he didn't believe her. And that created an anger that never left her. And also, although he may have been a man of the people, he wasn't a family man. And she felt betrayed by that, too. She was asked to lead your grandfather's funeral procession in Haiti.
Yeah. So she was asked to lead his funeral procession and she had really mixed feelings about it because she was still angry with him. And I'm thinking, like, what a position to be in. Like, you're the daughter of a president who was beloved by workers who were challenging the elite. Right. And he's still celebrated by people who were alive then.
The children were taken to barracks where his mother was raped. She never got over the terror of that day. Through her aunt's negotiations with the military government, she was able to get out of confinement and go to New York, where she was reunited with her parents. The family never really talked about the coup and the trauma.
And you don't really want to do it, but you have to do it. Do you have any insights into how she felt when she was actually leading the funeral procession?
Including his own because he beat her.
When you went to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, you went to a high school that was named after your grandfather. And I should add here that there was a period after he was overthrown when you weren't allowed to print his name.
It wasn't until Benjamin went to Haiti to help after the 2010 earthquake that he decided to do some research to better understand his family and himself. As part of his research, he sued the U.S. State Department to get access to classified documents, which revealed the U.S. played a role in the coup. His new memoir is called Talk to Me, Lessons from a Family Forged by History.
Tell us what your mother taught you about education and how it should make you uncomfortable.
Why wasn't it safe for them?
You became an activist. You worked for the think tank Timos for a while, a progressive think tank.
It's also about being black, the son of immigrants, and gay. He says he's enjoyed advantage and endured exclusion. Benjamin's first book, published in 2009, is called Searching for Whitetopia, An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America. Rich Benjamin, welcome to Fresh Air. What did you learn about the Eisenhower administration's role in overthrowing your grandfather's presidency?
I'm just curious. I don't want to get too caught up in this. But did you feel like you were being effective, that you were reaching a sliver of Fox's audience?
Because I think there are a lot of couples who separate who remain friends, but they don't want to be romantically involved anymore, and they want more freedom outside of the home. But I could see where there'd also be a lot of discomfort and tension and nervousness around each other. So if there's anything that you can offer about how that arrangement worked out? Yeah, I mean...
Yet this flattens it into sociology and self-help. July's mind is far too unruly and interesting for that. John goes on to describe the book as perverse, unrepentant, sometimes dirty, and often laugh-out-loud funny.
My guest is Miranda July. Her novel All Fours is on many best books of the year lists. We'll talk more after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
All Four's story revolves around a 45-year-old woman, a slightly famous artist, writer, and performer, who decides to take a break from the routines she's stuck in and drive from her home in L.A. to New York. Her husband thinks it's a good idea and even suggests the best route for the drive.
But about 30 minutes away from home, she stops at a gas station and feels this electric connection to a young man there, and he seems to feel it too. They end up having an affair in a motel room she rents and redecorates, and she spends the entire three weeks there. Their affair is both sexual and chaste. They're both married. He won't engage sexually, which would be disloyal to his wife.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with writer and filmmaker Miranda July. Her films include You, Me, and Everyone We Know and Kajillionaire. Her new novel, All Fours, is on many 2024 best of lists. It's about a woman wanting to shake up her life. She's thinking of leaving her marriage and is having a very erotic affair.
When she discovers she's entering perimenopause, she fears the best part of her life may be ending and she may lose her libido. She worries about getting older. There are parallels to Miranda July's life. I want to ask you about being the parent of a non-binary child, which is the position more and more parents seem to be in. How old is your child now? Twelve.
Yeah, so they use the pronoun they, them. What are some of the things you have to deal with as the parent of a non-binary child in terms of even questions like, do you want your child to take hormones? Do you want them to have a puberty block or do they want to have it? Is your voice going to take precedence over theirs or do you hope to be on the same page?
Do you want to just follow what they want knowing that they're not an adult yet and that their mind could possibly change? There's so many questions I think that the parents of non-binary children have to deal with. And especially now in a world where that's being like demonized in politics.
But they touch and dance, and the intentional eroticism becomes all-consuming for her. But then the three weeks are up. She returns home and has enormous trouble reentering her life as a wife and mother. Miranda July is also a filmmaker, actor, performance artist, and visual artist. Miranda July, welcome to Fresh Air. It's such a good book. I really enjoyed reading it.
Of course, yeah. Have you changed a lot having more space in your life on your own? Because I would imagine you co-parent with your former husband and that you don't have your child every day to take care of. And in some ways, that's a real loss. And in other ways, it gains you some independence and personal time.
And I wonder what that shift in time and that shift in the balance of independence versus having somebody dependent on you all the time has changed you for better or worse, has changed your life. Or for better and worse.
My guest is Miranda July. Her latest novel is called All Fours. We'll be right back after a short break. This is Fresh Air.
And I'm looking forward to talking with you about it. So you were afraid to write this book and what people would think of you. Elaborate on what your biggest fears were.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest Miranda July was a bit afraid of what people would think of her after publishing her second novel, All Fours. The book is partly about sexuality and has some very explicit sexual scenes. But that's true of many books.
This is fresh air. Let's get back to my interview with writer and filmmaker Miranda July. Her latest novel, All Fours, is on many best of the year book lists. So I want to talk about your formative years. You gravitated toward punk as a teenager. And what drew you to it? And what were your first experiences listening to punk rock or, you know, going to clubs?
You actually moved to Portland to be part of the Riot Grrrl scene.
One of the jobs that you had early on while trying to support yourself, I guess, while you were doing your art, was working at a peep show. How and why did you get that job?
And you're separated by glass, right? Yeah.
What did you learn doing that about sexuality or about men, about yourself, about what it means to get really turned on looking at somebody who's basically on exhibit behind glass? Yeah.
Were you able to see the Peep Show as a form of performance art?
I have one more peep show question. So when men were staring at you and telling you their sexual fantasies, did you find it at all flattering or really creepy? Like what was your experience of that watching them? Like they're there to watch you, but you're watching them.
You think you're looking at me, you're not.
What were some of the conversations that you know about about your book that you found most interesting? Like what were some of the themes that you're glad your book provoked? You know, the themes in the conversations.
Miranda July's latest novel is called All Fours. This is fresh air.
This is Fresh Air. Jazz historian Kevin Whitehead is going to review a newly released recording of a concert he attended in 1978 by pianist Sun Ra and his orchestra. Kevin says the colorful Philadelphia bandleader didn't always connect with traditional jazz audiences, but he'd found a second home doing so in Baltimore. ¦
Well, one thing about getting older is I think Wikipedia has relieved the burden of that because for most people, their birth date is on the Wikipedia page. And so you can't really hide it even if you want to anymore. And I resent the fact that women especially are supposed to hide their age. Like, why can't we own it? Why can't we proclaim it?
Why should we have to reinforce the idea that a woman getting older is a really terrible thing?
Jazz historian Kevin Whitehead reviewed Sun Ra, Lights on a Satellite, live at the Left Bank. Kevin's latest book is Play the Way You Feel, The Essential Guide to Jazz Stories on Film. If you'd like to catch up on fresh air interviews you missed, like this week's interviews with Billie Eilish and Phineas, or with Ronnie Chang of The Daily Show and the series Interior Chinatown,
or about TikTok and its uncertain future, check out our podcast. You'll find lots of interviews. And to find out what's happening behind the scenes of our show and get our producers' recommendations for what to watch, read, and listen to, subscribe to our free newsletter at whyy.org slash freshair. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director is Audrey Bentham.
Our engineer today is Adam Staniszewski. I'm Tariq Rose.
Her larger fear was the theme of a woman reaching midlife and entering perimenopause, the time in a woman's life when she's transitioning into menopause and is experiencing some of the many symptoms associated with that time of life. For her main character, it's the fear of losing her libido, dealing with mysterious moods and anxiety, and the thought of being seen as an old woman.
There's a line in your book where you're buying something from an older woman. And you think about how you sometimes really hate old women. Well, it's not – yeah.
So the character, this is where the character has gone to the hotel. She's felt this like erotic charge from this younger man. She's 45. He's 31. Who she met at, who she looked at at a gas station and he looked back at her. And then they met briefly in a diner.
So she's unpacking her suitcase at this motel and the reading is about what she's thinking as she's unpacking her clothes and which one she's going to leave in the suitcase and which one she's going to actually unpack and wear.
Did you share a similar almost fear of older women or a dislike of them that your character has?
But the book has gotten the opposite reaction she feared. It's on many of this year's 10 best lists, including the New York Times, in which it was described as this year's literary conversation piece, and in The New Yorker, where it was described as a study of crisis, the crisis of being how middle age changes sex, marriage, and ambition.
Your character is experiencing things differently. and fears that relate to perimenopause. But some of the things she's experiencing, she doesn't know relate to perimenopause until she actually goes to her gynecologist. Was it that way for you that you had symptoms of perimenopause that you were attributing to other things?
So one of the things the book is about is the feeling that you need to change your life, but not knowing how to do it and knowing that there will be consequences and rewards if you do. And part of the consequences will be for the other people in your life. If you're leaving a marriage, if you're breaking up a home in a way that will affect your young child, um,
And I know you've experienced similar things, and this might be too personal, but was there a lot you had to weigh before changing your life, knowing that it might be the right thing for you, but there would also be consequences that everyone in your family would be facing, including you, because I'm sure there'd be a downside as well.
July's moving, very funny book is at once buoyant about the possibilities of starting over and clear-eyed about its costs. When our critic John Powers reviewed it, he said, I gasped in surprise at All Fours, Miranda July's hilariously unpredictable novel. All Fours is sometimes described as a book about perimenopause, the transitional stage before menopause.
So this may be too personal, but please don't answer it if it is. You and your former husband, is that the right way to describe it, lived together for a while with your child, but more as friends than as a married couple. How did that work? I think a lot of people would be curious about that.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. I always look forward to a new Richard Price novel, and after nearly 10 years of waiting, he has a new one called Lazarus Man. During those 10 years, he co-created and wrote for the HBO series The Night Of and The Outsider, and wrote for the HBO series The Deuce. Before that, he wrote for The Wire, one of the best TV series ever.
Also, I know you love malaprops, like words used inappropriately. And this character says that we'll work directly with the young girls to teach them mannerisms, etiquette, and how to be classy young ladies. I think he means manners, but he's saying mannerisms.
This is just a small thing from the book that I just wanted to ask you. I'll read the sentence. I have often wondered in hotels how many people have had affairs, how many people have had sex on this blanket that may or may not have been washed since or the bedspread that may or may not have been washed since. Do you wonder about that when you're in hotels?
Let's take another break here and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is Richard Price. His new novel is called Lazarus Man. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross and this is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Richard Price.
His new novel, Lazarus Man, is set in Harlem, where he lives, and follows the lives of several people whose lives are changed after the collapse of a five-story building, including one man who was found in the rubble. Price is the author of several novels that have been adapted into movies, including Clockers, Freedomland, and The Wanderers.
He co-created and wrote for the HBO series The Night Of and The Outsider, and wrote for the HBO series The Wire and The Deuce. There's a story in your book that I really love. It's the woman who's a postal worker and her son was shot in the calf. He wasn't the target, but he was collateral damage. And she's sure of who did it. And he's a really large guy.
And she goes up to him with her son and says, I have no idea who did this to him, but if you know, can you tell him that my son's a really decent kid? And he runs with some troublemakers, but he's a really good kid.
And, you know, so she introduces herself. She tells him what floor she lives on. And she says, look, like, now we know each other. If we pass each other, like, we should say hello and talk to each other.
I think so, too. I so admire people who have that ability to, instead of, like, confronting somebody in anger, just kind of disarm them with humanity.
So there's a con in your book, and I'm wondering, what are some of the most interesting street cons you've come across in your life?
Let's take a short break here and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is Richard Price. His new novel is called Lazarus Man. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to my interview with Richard Price. Price is the author of several novels that have been adapted into movies, including Clockers, Freedomland, and The Wanderers.
He co-created and wrote for the HBO series The Night Of and The Outsider and wrote for the HBO series The Wire and The Deuce. You got an award in 2020 and said that screenwriting saved your life. You said, I was so ripe with despair, you could smell it on me. Screenwriting saved my life, my mental life, my spiritual life, my financial life, and actually my physical life.
So how did it change your life? What changed about your spiritual life from screenwriting?
When we spoke in 1986 after your novel, The Breaks, you said something that reminds me of something that you wrote in the paragraph that you read, this whole kind of like, maybe this time, that the whole idea of maybe this time can be a drug. You were talking about your feeling of discontent when you were younger and feeling like, You're over here, but it's over there.
When you say the circumstances around clockers changed or something along those lines, what do you mean?
That was about cops.
You're 75 now. Is there anything surprising you about getting older?
And the minute you're over there, it's over here. This feeling of restlessness and discontent and maybe wanting to be someone else.
The kind of age where you start having friends who are getting sick or dying or, you know, having signs of dementia. Yeah. And what's it like, assuming that's happening in your life, that you have friends to whom that's happening? How are you handling that?
Right. In your acknowledgments, you thank your children who raised you. What do you mean by that?
Several of his earlier novels were adapted into films, including Clockers, Freedomland, and The Wanderers. He also wrote the screenplay for the film Al Pacino considers his comeback film, Sea of Love.
Did it relieve the burden of being trapped in yourself since you were responsible for others?
Richard Price, it's always great to talk with you. Thank you so much, and congratulations on the novel.
Richard Price's new novel is called Lazarus Man. Coming up, Maureen Corrigan reviews what she describes as two much needed books. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. If you're in search of some inspiration, beauty, and leavening humor in what you read in the coming weeks, our book critic, Maureen Corrigan, thinks she may have just what you're looking for.
You wrote this novel during the COVID shutdown, at least part of it during the COVID shutdown. And I'm wondering if you were feeling more vulnerable at that time. I mean, you live in Manhattan, which was a city that had, like, trucks that had been turned into morgues. Were you thinking a lot about mortality and the unpredictability of life?
If you'd like to catch up on fresh air interviews you missed, like this week's interview with journalist Annie Lowry about what scientists are learning about the causes of chronic maddening itch and how to treat it, or with Zannie Minton-Bettos, editor-in-chief of The Economist, about international reaction to Trump's agenda, check out our podcast. You'll find lots of fresh air interviews.
And to find out what's happening behind the scenes of our show and get our producers' recommendations for what to watch, read and listen to, Subscribe to our free newsletter at whyy.org slash fresh air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer is Adam Staniszewski. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by
By Phyllis Myers, Roberto Shorrock, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producers are Molly C.V. Nesper and Sabrina Seaworth. Susan Yakundi directed today's show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
So you go out and talk to strangers?
Price is considered one of the best writers of urban fiction and one of the best writers of dialogue, and I think that's true of his new novel, which is set in Harlem, where Price has lived since 2008, the same year that the novel is set. The story revolves around the collapse of a five-story building whose impact is like a very small-scale 9-11.
You know, the book is called Lazarus Man. I'm wondering what the role of religion was in your life growing up.
Did you both keep that deal?
Your character of Anthony says this later. When things go good, we say God is good. But when things go south, that's apparently on us. Do you find a lot of truth in that?
Sure, yeah. No, absolutely.
It's devastating for the people in the neighborhood, including the survivors and the people grieving for loved ones who've died. The collapse changes the lives of each of the main characters, including a young street photographer, a police community affairs officer, a funeral director who can't keep up with the quota of bodies he needs to stay in business,
There is a fair amount of gratitude in the novel. And I think gratitude and a gratitude practice has sometimes come to seem like a cliche. On the other hand, gratitude is a really important thing to have in your life and to be able to find gratitude in life. And I'm wondering for you as a writer, how do you take something that could be a cliche and turn it into something that's not?
I want to talk with you a little bit about race, writing about race and race in this novel. Anthony, the character who was found under the rubble after the five-story building collapsed, he's biracial. His white father was kind of a race man. He taught African-American history. And you're right.
What his father could never understand was how all of his righteous defiance in the end had cost him nothing financially. because he could come and go in his angry white skin as he pleased.
and a 42-year-old man who has been feeling like he's lost everything and has little to live for and is found buried in the rubble. It's remarkable that he's still alive, which is why the novel's called Lazarus Man.
Despite marrying a black woman and having mixed-race kids, there was no such thing as an honorary brother, no matter how many times you raised your fist in solidarity or how many prison writing workshops you conducted or how many times you got up in some cop's face.
And I'm wondering, like when you write about biracial or black characters or Latino characters, as you've done like throughout your career, have you faced any pushback by people saying you're appropriating other people's stories and you have no right to tell them?
You've always, to my knowledge, lived in multi-ethnic, multi-racial communities, including when you were growing up in the projects in the Bronx.
So that must be helpful in writing.
Reviewing the novel in the Washington Post, Ron Charles wrote, For a nation riven and terrified, Lazarus Man is the strangest of urban thrillers, a thoughtful, even peaceful story about stumbling into new life. Richard Price, welcome back to Fresh Air. Because I love your writing, I want to start with a reading from the very beginning of the book.
One of the characters founded a group called Put the Guns Down. This is like an anti-youth violence group and also founded a youth mentorship program, Young Scholars for the Future. And these are all former gang members, many of them who'd been in prison, who now want to be of service to young people and kind of convince them they don't want that life anymore.
So one day in the park, they're there and giving inspirational speeches from former gang members. And I just want to quote a little bit of it. Sure. So the founder of the group says, in terms of mentoring young people, we'll become their surrogate fathers because that's what they need. Because in my experience, and no disrespect to you ladies, but in my experience, it takes a man to raise a man.
I'm not leaving out the young girls. We also have females in our organization who will work directly with the young girls to teach them mannerisms, etiquette, and how to be classy young ladies. You know, I have such respect for the people who—this is me talking, no longer quoting the book. I have such respect for people who do this kind of work. But there was this inherent sexism.
Yeah, so talk about that a little bit.
Your plays have been performed in South Africa and in America. I was thinking that American audiences might find it easier to give themselves over to your plays in that the kind of racism that is addressed in your plays is the kind of racism that exists in South Africa. And what I'm saying here is that I think American racism is a more covert term.
When I spoke with Fugard in 1986, I asked him why he remained in South Africa, where he lived under the apartheid system he opposed.
kind of racism than the apartheid kind and because it's happening over there and we are not directly implicated in it, it's easier to perhaps not internalize some of the statements that you're making within your place.
Is there a time that you have in your mind when you think you would actually leave South Africa, if things reached a certain point?
My interview with Ethel Fugard was recorded in 1986. He died Saturday at age 92. After we take a short break, we'll listen back to an interview with soul singer Jerry Butler, who died last month. And we'll remember jazz drummer Roy Haynes. Today is the centennial of his birth. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
The great soul singer Jerry Butler died last month at the age of 85. We're going to remember him by listening back to our interview from 2000. He first recorded with the group The Impressions, which he co-founded with his friend Curtis Mayfield. Butler sang lead on The Impressions' 1958 hit For Your Precious Love, which he also co-wrote.
After leaving the group, Butler went solo and had the hits He Will Break Your Heart, Let It Be Me, Make It Easy on Yourself, I Stand Accused, What's the Use of Breaking Up? and Only the Strong Survive, which is the title of his memoir, which had just been published when we spoke. The Philadelphia radio DJ Georgie Woods nicknamed Butler the Iceman because his style and stage presence were so cool.
Butler was born in rural Mississippi in 1939. Three years later, he moved with his family to Chicago, where he continued to live. He became politically active in the city, serving on the Cook County Board of Commissioners from 1985 to 2008. When we spoke, he was serving his fourth term. We started with his 1969 hit, Only the Strong Survive. He co-wrote the song with Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff.
Jerry Butler, welcome to Fresh Air.
Tell us the story behind this song.
What would you say is the importance of this song in your career?
Do you feel constrained there at all by limitations of what will be allowed to be performed on stage?
Now, you first sang gospel music. You were part of a group called the Northern Jubilee Singers, and Curtis Mayfield was in that group, too. And, of course, you also sang together in The Impressions. How did you first meet?
Had your voice changed yet?
What about Curtis Mayfield? His couldn't have. He was only nine. How did he sound?
Now, did you and Curtis Mayfield leave gospel music for Rhythm and Blues at about the same time?
What's an example of a hope to die love song?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I think it's time to hear your first hit, For Your Precious Love, which was recorded in 1958 when you were with the Impressions. And you say that the lyric was originally a poem that you wrote when you were in high school?
Was it changed at all for the lyric, or is it exactly the same?
Okay, this is 1958, Jerry Butler and the Impressions.
My guest is soul singer Jerry Butler. That's his 1958 hit with the Impressions, For Your Precious Love. Now, let's talk about how you recorded that song. You had been with a group that was, I think, called The Roosters?
Right. So who changed the name to The Impressions?
We're listening back to the interview I recorded with Jerry Butler in 2000. He died last month at age 85. We'll be right back with more of the interview after a short break. This is Fresh Air. Were there any squabbles about who would get to sing lead on your first recordings?
Do you ever feel that if your work is not censored, then you're not doing your job?
Did that have to do with your leaving?
Explain more about that.
Let's hear what I think was the first hit you had when you went solo, He Will Break Your Heart.
And how did this become the song that you made?
Okay. Recruited in 1960, this is Jerry Butler with Curtis Mayfield. It's been so much fun to talk with you. I want to thank you so much.
My interview with Jerry Butler was recorded in 2000. He died last month. He was 85. Jazz drummer Roy Haynes, who played with jazz luminaries from Lester Young and Charlie Parker to Gary Burton and Pat Metheny, was born 100 years ago today. Jazz historian Kevin Whitehead will have an appreciation after a break. This is Fresh Air. Today is the centennial of the birth of jazz drummer Roy Haynes.
He almost made it to the occasion. He died in November at age 99. Haynes was one of the most in-demand drummers in jazz, working with Lester Young, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Stan Getz, and Sarah Vaughan, and many others, before he turned 30, and later with Gary Burton, Chick Corea, Pat Metheny, and others.
Jazz historian Kevin Whitehead says Haynes was a powerhouse who liked to prod his fellow players.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. As a playwright, actor, and director, Athol Fugard defied South Africa's apartheid system, and the government punished him for it. He died Saturday at the age of 92. We're going to listen back to the interview we recorded in 1986, eight years before the end of apartheid.
What do you think is the power of theater or art in general to help topple the apartheid system? Do you think of art in those terms? Do you think of art as having an overt political function?
Kevin Whitehead is our jazz historian and author of the book Play the Way You Feel, The Essential Guide to Jazz Stories on Film. Roy Haynes Centennial is being marked today with a jazz memorial and centennial celebration at St. Peter's Church in New York City.
If you'd like to catch up on Fresh Air interviews you missed, like this week's interview with comic and actor Bill Burr, or with journalist David Enrich, whose book Murder the Truth is about how freedom of the press is being threatened by tech billionaires, corporations, and political figures, check out our podcast. You'll find lots of Fresh Air interviews.
And to find out what's happening behind the scenes of our show and get our producers' recommendations for what to watch, read, and listen to, subscribe to our free newsletter at whyy.org. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Thea Chaloner directed today's show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley.
I'm Terry Gross.
You've had collaborative relationships with many black actors, and I'm sure that there are many obstacles in having that kind of relationship in a separatist country. Perhaps one of the first relationships you had like that was with Zakes Mokai in The Blood Knot. Were there any obstacles in actually getting together and working together on the play and then afterwards on performing it?
You also in the 1960s were a co-founder of a group called the Serpent Theater, which was also integrated. What were some of the difficulties then of rehearsing together? Were you allowed into the black townships? Were they allowed into the white communities?
Fugard was a white South African who wrote about the emotional and psychological consequences of his country's white supremacist system. When Fugard co-starred in his 1961 play The Blood Knot with black actor Zakes Mukai, they became the first black and white actors in South African history to share a stage.
Your play Master Harold and the Boys is based in part on the relationship you had when you were young with a black man who was a waiter I think at a cafe that your mother ran and There's an incident in the play that I think is based on an incident in your life where the young white boy, who's the son of the mother who owns the cafe, who's really very close with the waiter, spits in his face.
From what I understand, it was very difficult for you to write that part in. Can I ask about the personal significance that that event had for you
Soon after, Fugard was approached by a group of black actors seeking his help to start a company. Together, they formed the Serpent Players. The company was frequently harassed by the authorities. A few members were imprisoned. Fugard's reputation for defiance spread, and in 1967, the government revoked his passport. It was restored four years later.
Is there a moment when you can point to and say, this is when I realized that the system of apartheid was evil, was unjust?
Fugard wrote more than 30 plays, including Master Harold and the Boys and Bozeman and Lena. He co-wrote the plays Sizwe Banzwe is Dead and The Island with the black South African actors John Connie and Winston and Shana. His plays have been staged in the US. Six of his plays were produced on Broadway. He won a Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2011.
I know one thing that drives a lot of white people who live in South Africa crazy is that every time you sit on a bench or board a bus or enter into certain stores, you are in a way making a complicit act with apartheid, if that is a segregated bench or bus or store. And I wonder how you reconcile that now.
This is where you kind of lose me.
Well, no, because the Me Too movement for women is about sexual assault.
Well, I don't want to get into an argument about this, so I'll just say— Well, what's funny is this is how I discuss things. I will just say that—what was the other thing that you just said? I just lost it for a second trying to—
But people were protecting him. You know, people were protecting the musicians, the.
No, I mean, I think cancel culture probably went too far. I think it's an issue by issue thing.
And there's a real kind of herd mentality around some of it. I think that's really up for a nuanced discussion about what deserves cancellation and what's just like... Nuanced discussion is not one of my strong points. Yeah. Okay. So I'm going to use this opportunity to take a short break, and then we'll be right back.
If you're just joining us, my guest is Bill Burr, and he has a new comedy special. It begins streaming on Hulu March 14th. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air.
So you're in Glengarry Glen Ross now. Fantastic cast. It's you, Michael McKean, Bob Odenkirk, Kieran Culkin, David Mamet, especially in his earlier work like Glengarry Glen Ross. These are like verbal fireworks. And there's so much anger and resentment and subterfuge that goes on in his writing. Really dark characters.
To sell them real estate. That isn't nearly what they describe it as being.
Yeah. Well, you talk about that one of your specials, like you're driving and somebody cuts you off and you're really furious at them and you're hollering at each other. And then you think like, yeah, I've done that, too.
You've never been on Broadway before. Was this an ambition? Were you one of the guys who really wanted to be on Broadway? Or were you just surprised to be there?
Okay, that's Bill Burr from his new comedy special. He's also one of the stars of the new Broadway revival of the David Mamet play, Glengarry Glen Ross. The revival has an incredible cast, Burr, Kieran Culkin, Bob Odenkirk, and Michael McKean. Burr co-starred in the film King of Staten Island, which was loosely based on the life of the film's star, Pete Davidson.
You know, we've been talking about, you know, anger and also channeling that into your work as an actor and a comic. I watched a clip of you on The Moth. The Moth is a storytelling podcast that is also a public radio program. And you're so different in that. You're sitting on a stool, not kind of pacing back and forth on the stage. You hadn't shaved your head yet, so you have red hair.
But you're sitting on a stool telling a story that has a few laughs in it.
Just getting back to the moth. So you're sitting there. You're talking pretty quietly. It's a... quiet voice. You sound kind of introspective. And it looks on this like blurry video that you're avoiding making contact with the audience.
So how did you get from there to your onstage persona of being kind of loud, frequently angry?
Bercow created, co-wrote, and starred in the animated series F is for Family. Although he's known for comedy that's often contrarian and angry, the new comedy special, Drop Dead Years, opens like this.
Let's talk a little bit about your childhood.
Your father, apparently, from what I've heard you say, had real rage problems, real anger problems.
It's very funny when you say it and you're literally right.
Did your father go off on you?
I think you're really good at transforming your real anger and your history of real anger and your history of being the target of real anger into comedy. And an example of that I want to play is from the animated series that you starred in and co-wrote F is for Family. And in the opening episode, the family's sitting around the dinner table, and the phone rings.
And the father really goes off on it, and you play the father. So let's hear that scene, and then we'll talk. I'm not answering that.
And at that point, he's put down the phone so hard that he tears the phone from the wall.
That's a really funny scene. Did you write that scene?
Bill Burr, welcome to Fresh Air. It's a pleasure to have you on the show.
It must be great to see yourself through their eyes. They probably have a different picture of you than you think other people have. They don't have this vision of you as like the angry guy on stage.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest Bill Burr was recently described by New York Times comedy columnist Jason Zinnemann as one of the greatest living stand-up comics. In Rolling Stone, Burr was described as the undisputed heavyweight champ of rage-fueled humor. Bill Burr has a new comedy special on Hulu called Drop Dead Years. It starts streaming Friday, March 14th. Here's an excerpt.
Good. It seems unusual for you to start on a note of vulnerability like you do in this new special. Does this mark a change in your public or private self?
So you're a father of two. And one of your series that I think you co-created, Old Dads, right? Yeah.
Well, one of the things in Old Dads is that the older fathers, which includes you, don't relate to some of the younger parents and how they're parenting their kids. Did you find that with yourself, you know, being a father?
You do a podcast where you talk like an hour straight. I know I do. Or more, often more. Your mind probably is always on overdrive.
Oh, really? Well, those are really interesting insights and you got them from doing mushrooms.
I feel a responsibility to say here that it's recommended that if you do mushrooms, you do it in a therapeutic setting. So if things do go bad, you have somebody to guide you through it, because you really don't know what to expect. You might want help.
So I'm tempted to do something and I don't know whether I should do it or not. Do it. Okay. You'll probably be sorry you said that.
Okay, so here's what I'd like to do. There's a bit that you do and I found myself both laughing and stopping laughing and then figuring out like, I'm not sure which way to take this. And so what I'd like to do is- That's amazing.
Good, so let's play it, and then we can talk about it, if that's okay with you.
Okay, great. So this is a part, you've just talked about men and all of, like, a lot of men's flaws. Then you say, you know, you're going to talk about women.
Okay. So that's my guest, Bill Burr. Okay. So here's what I want to talk with you about. I want to talk to you about perspective. Because when I listen to that, I think that is really funny if you're coming from the perspective of, of course, men have to be involved because the whole point of feminism is
is becoming equal and getting men who perceive women as less than or as incompetent or stupid or any of the patronizing things or insulting things, misogynist things that men may think. Men have to change in order for feminism to succeed, in order for women to get the equality.
Because women were already subservient. Men already controlled everything. It's historically been that way. But let me finish my point. So I think it's really funny if your perspective is like, this is funny because obviously men have to change in order for feminism to succeed. But it's not so funny to me if your perspective is, What do they want from us men? Why don't they just leave?
This is their issue. Why don't they just leave us alone? And that to me isn't funny because that would mean like you don't get it. You don't get that men who still think that women are lesser than or secondary or not smart enough, not capable enough. not deserving of equality. If you're coming from that perspective, it's not funny. In what world would I be coming from that perspective?
I'm just going to finish my sentence. If you're coming from that perspective, it's not funny because it means you're clueless, that you don't get it, in which case it's not so funny. But if you do get it, it's really funny because you're coming from the perspective of getting it and mocking the men who don't. So your turn.
And women have gone through exactly the same thing if they're not beautiful or young enough.
But that's the thing. When I was growing up, the only jobs for women were nurses, teachers, cashiers, secretaries. There was very little else you could do. Well, okay, sex worker, yeah. There's very little else you could do. The doors are basically shut.
Yeah. So just getting back to that joke one more time. It's the kind of open-ended joke that you can see from either perspective.
I knew you wouldn't like this. I'm enjoying the hell out of this.
Was it your wife, your therapist?
A lot of women make more money than their husbands do. Wait, is that true? If that's true, then what is the problem?
But it depends. I'm sorry. Let's just get back to the joke.
You didn't have me in the corner.
Okay, because historically women didn't, but now a lot of women do because women are allowed to be lawyers. Women are allowed to do all kinds of jobs that pay that they weren't allowed to do before, including being doctors.
It is. I happen to like my work a lot. But anyhow.
Totally agree. So I tried to establish that you could see that joke from two different perspectives, one of which I found really funny and the other which I found clueless. Do you want to leave it ambiguous like that so that bros in the audience can see it one way?
You said you love debating.
No, but it's interesting to me that you see yourself coming from both of those perspectives and that you have both of those perspectives.
I just want to say in case it's not clear, I think you're hilarious. There's some jokes where I stand back and I go, I'm not sure how to take that. But I think you're a great comic.
I love your voice. I love your delivery. I love your spontaneity. I'm waiting for having said that. No, no. However. However? No, no. The only however is sometimes I just don't know how to take the jokes and I can interpret it one of two ways.
I really enjoyed it. Thank you.
At the start of your new special, you said that you started doing stand-up because it was the easiest way of walking into a room and making people like you.
So what kind of hurt? Are you talking about insults or being ignored, bullied, mocked?
Have you been abused in all those ways?
He's talking about driving on the freeway in L.A. where he lives when he's caught in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Meanwhile, there's hardly any cars in the HOV lane, the high-occupancy vehicle lane, which is reserved for vehicles with at least two people. He's tempted to get into that lane even though there's no one else in his car, but he knows the HOV rules are strictly enforced.
Because it was mean? Um...
I want to back up a little because when you were describing your anger and trying to change, you said you realized you'd been abusive. Do you mean verbally or physically?
Good. I just wanted to clarify that.
Well, that's one of the things you've talked about is that you had real road rage sometimes.
And who's the they? Besides the people who eat almonds?
I'm going to stop you. You just blamed all of this on white women. Yes. Where are the men? Where are the men in what you're saying?
I was like, not only do I find what he's doing interesting, but I love that the audience hates it. Because it was such an, it was, it felt fantastic.
so guttural you know they were just like no I don't want you to do that and this kind of interaction between an artist and the audience and he maintains his intention he keeps going and it was just it was a really interesting example of art and just react to it the way you want to react to it you know yeah are there things you had to sacrifice in your life when Stephen became famous and had this kind of consuming career and you had children wow
Yeah, yeah, I think so. I mean, I decided it was, listen, I think I'm incredibly lucky to have been able to be home with our children. But Stephen's hours were really long and difficult. And I felt that I just wanted to be home with them when I could. So I ended up spending a lot of my time as a stay-at-home mother, which I had never expected to do. And it was real privilege.
Yeah, I think there were sacrifices. I had trained to be an actress, and I decided not to be an actress even before we got married. But then later in life, I had opportunities to do some performing, which I chose frequently not to do because it would take me out of town, and I felt that our family needed somebody at home.
I mean, I don't in any way want to suggest I ever felt cheated because it was such a privilege to be able to have the life I had. I feel incredibly lucky that I was with my children. I mean, even though Stephen had a busy job, he wasn't gone. He just came home late. So we were always together as a family. And in show business, that's super unusual.
So I think we've had an incredibly lucky time, frankly. Very blessed.
Hell with the family. I had someone say to me once, Terry, that I think is so funny. I guess you'd been doing the Colbert pour for a year or two, Stephen. And I was... chairing a book fair in our kids' school, and there was an author who said that she wanted to meet me because I was Stephen's wife. And I remember saying to my friend, my life is just getting really weird. This is just weird.
And she turned to me and said, the life you ordered has arrived. And I thought it was such a funny way, but it is true. It all comes as a package, right? If you want to be a performer or if you want to be an artist, and with fame comes attention, comes opportunity, but also comes sacrifice of some way.
Yeah, it is hard to deal with.
Yeah, you're not cooking to make food for yourself. You're just cooking to make a process.
Probably on mine, too, actually. I mean, I was lucky enough to have had my father for a long time. He just passed away this past April. And at his funeral, when I delivered the eulogy, I mentioned how as a little girl I used to like to put my feet in my father's footprints on the sand. And I think metaphorically, that's how I felt about him.
I admired my father so much that I always wanted to try to live up to be the person he was. And the same for my mother. I hit the jackpot with my parents. I really loved them. And I think for me, it wasn't being a model child. It was being a person who cared about the community that they lived in and gave of themselves and their time to make progress.
the world a better place in whatever way they could. And my parents were both selfless, community active. They did a lot in the town of Charleston.
But this is my first time.
Well, I do get to eat what he makes, which is often delicious, always. Often? Often. I would say often.
I grew up Presbyterian. And we were religious, but – Decidedly not Catholic.
We are not Catholic. You know, my family, I think it's a Protestant thing maybe. Church was an event, right? We had to all get dressed up every Sunday and it was a social event and all of that. And as I got older, I sort of moved away from that aspect of my faith, you know. But I still consider my faith a very strong part of my life.
And we raised our children in the Catholic Church, so I've been going to the Catholic Church since we've been married. But I never have become Catholic, so I'm still Presbyterian.
I was nervous about Stephen's mother because of all 11 children, I'm the only spouse who did not convert to Catholicism. But you're the baby, and I think she let you get away with it.
You didn't ask me to.
Oh, I don't know. I mean, my favorite recipe in the book is the one that we start with, my mother's cheese biscuits, because those were things that she made always. And so now when I make them, I feel like she's with me and it's comforting. And I love them. They're wonderful to give and they're delicious and fattening. I think comfort food should be fattening.
I think we both enjoyed that rediscovery of recipes that we'd grown up with, which we maybe had made them in our adulthood, but not really spent time with them the way we spent time with them writing this book.
Sure. Iceberg.
No, no, no. But we have had fun. You know, and this whole process has been a lot of fun.
There's a lot of detail in a cookbook.
You have to be right about whether it's a teaspoon or a tablespoon.
Were your recipes fact-checked? Yes, by a lot of people.
Our niece, Lucy Wickman, was fabulous. She helped test it, everything.
And, you know, sometimes there were mistakes that, you know, we only caught at the last minute. I think it was last Thanksgiving, Stephen, I asked one of our children to make one of the pies in the cookbook.
We were in the hospital. That's right. So the kids saved Thanksgiving last year completely. They made everything. But one of this pie recipe that was my mother's recipe for a chocolate pecan pie came out wrong. And I looked at it and I was like, why? That's too much flour. And they said, well, we used the recipe that you gave us, which I just sent them. And it had too much flour.
We had to go back and change it.
Yeah, it was scary. We thought, what else could have gotten wrong? So we had to go back and look at everything again.
Yes. It's true. Yeah.
I remember, Stephen, I don't know where that comes from.
Well, I remember the first time I was listening when you and Terry had your first conversation. And when you came to this point of the interview, Stephen said, Terry, I've been thinking so long about how I would say thank you. Oh, I remember that.
So I feel like that myself right now. Thank you so much, Terry. This has been such a wonderful experience.
Imagine the salt content.
Well, yeah. My parents, you know, everything was very local. So I think a lot of Charlestonians love this. It's shad roe, which is really hard to get. It's, you know, the roe of a shad fish. And I hated that.
They would have that all the time, too.
He solved it by just having the appendix taken right away.
Here we go. I'm so glad you asked this question.
I was in New Jersey and he was at the theater and I kept saying, you know, how are you feeling? Because I knew he wasn't feeling well. So I'd say, how's it going? And he wouldn't answer my calls. Right.
Yeah, this is what he said to me, which is so funny to me.
I said, you need to go to the hospital. He said, no, I just want to go home and go to sleep. And I said, what do you think I can do for you? What do you think I could possibly do for you at home that would make you feel better?
Yeah, I bypassed Stephen completely and called Pablo and said, just I'll meet you at the emergency room. Don't even tell him where you're going. Just go to the emergency room. I'll meet you there. He's out of the picture now. He has no voice.
Yeah, shout out to nurses. We had great, great nursing care. They were wonderful, really. Evie, you saved his life.
I mean, or Stephen was foolish enough to risk his life. We could look at it that way, too. We could look at it both ways.
No, I think you probably thought you had a kidney stone or something like that.
But, you know, you raise children or you just become a functioning adult. Sometimes we know when one's supposed to go to the hospital.
Yeah, but, but, but. Exactly, Terry. But, but, Stephen.
Sometimes you're going to hurt the show by going on.
Which you do have, though.
Yeah, it had burst, and that led to the blood poisoning.
Well, thank God for good medical care, right? Because we had great care, and we had to go every day for antibiotics for a long time.
She had been asking – the nurse had been asking – All kinds of questions. You know, when was the last time you did this? What about this? And you were just like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. And then she said, OK, we're going to give you a little morphine. You're like, really? OK, fine. If you think that's necessary, you know.
And then not 30 seconds later, Stephen looks over to the nurse. He's like, hi, what's your story?
Nancy looks at me, you know, I'm afraid you're not the first person who's had morphine love for Nancy. And she looked at me with this laughing eyes. She's like, oh, I see. I think the morphine's acting. I think you're feeling better.
I don't think that he was going to die. I was worried that he could be sick for a very, very long time. You know, I was just worried that if it really turned into sepsis and, you know, that that could be. catastrophic impacts of that. So I guess I was worried for a while there.
Well, a lot of things, like a lot of things that happen in life, you learn a lot on the fly, right? I didn't know much about that, but we have friends. We had a lot of people I called and said, what do you think? What do you think? I got a lot of great advice. We got, as I said, wonderful medical care. And you sort of immediately learn how scary things can become so quickly, you know?
I think we take our health for, I know I take my health for granted a lot. And, you know, we're all just one bad thing away from something happening, right?
It's been too long.
Absolutely. Absolutely for me. So we lived next door to the Dock Street Theater in Charleston when I was a little girl, and I took acting classes all through my sort of middle school, high school years, and I did a lot of community theater.
And I was already doing a lot of acting, but I'd never thought, oh, I could maybe think about doing this until I met people who were professional actors at the Spoleto Festival. You know, it changed my perspective of what a life in the arts could be like.
I can remember being at a Spoleto performance and Merce Cunningham came out on stage. I think John Cage had done the music and Merce Cunningham was dancing, but he was really old at this point. And he stood center stage and sort of like moved his arm around and people in the audience started booing. And I thought it was fantastic.
When you were president, did you ever find that your political position and your religious views ever came into conflict?
Jimmy Carter, recorded in 2005. Our remembrance of Jimmy Carter will continue with more of that conversation and another interview I recorded with him and his daughter Amy when she was 25 about family life in the White House after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
We're remembering Jimmy Carter with excerpts of interviews I recorded with him over the years. Let's get back to the one we recorded in 2005, 30 years after Carter's successful campaign for the presidency. George W. Bush was president at the time. You mentioned that when you publicly stated that you were born again when you were running for president, that it worked against you.
People misunderstood what you meant by that. And you thought it hurt you in the election. It's funny because, you know, President Bush is born again. He discussed that when he was running for office. And, you know, it seemed to help him very much in his campaign. So... Would you reflect a little bit about what's changed?
Let me ask you about evolution, since intelligent design is before the courts now. How do you deal with the fact that science tells us different things than the Bible does about the creation of men and women and the earth?
Jimmy Carter recorded in 2005 after he'd written his book Endangered Values, America's Moral Crisis. Coming up, family life in the White House. We'll listen to an excerpt of an interview I did with Carter and his daughter Amy when she was 25. This is Fresh Air.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. On this day of Jimmy Carter's funeral, which has also been declared a national day of mourning, we listen back to more excerpts of the interviews I recorded with him over the years. At 100 years old, Carter was the oldest living former president in American history. with one of the longest and most productive public lives after leaving the White House.
Or inspirational or calls to patriotism.
This is Fresh Air. We're remembering Jimmy Carter by listening back to excerpts of interviews I recorded with him after he left the White House. In 1995, I spoke with Carter and his daughter Amy. She was nine when her father was elected president. She was 25 at the time of this interview. She and her father had just finished a children's book, Jimmy did the writing, and Amy did the illustrations.
Their book, The Little Baby Snooglefleeger, was based on stories Carter used to tell his children. It was about a lonely boy who is befriended by an intimidating underwater creature known as a snooglefleeger.
I'd like you to read a poem called Of My Father's Cancer and His Dreams. And you're welcome to introduce this, if you'd like, or to just begin the poem. But I think it would be nice for you to tell us first when you wrote it.
Jimmy Carter, do you think you invented an undersea creature in part because you were stationed on a submarine in your military days?
Amy Carter, your father describes the little baby snuggle fleas as an ugly creature. How did you decide to draw it? The colors you used, the shape you gave it, where did you get your visual impression from? How did you come up with it?
I should say for our listeners who are hearing unusual sounds in the background that that is not the snoogle fleeger. That's actually the sounds of construction near the NPR studio in New York. What was it like for the two of you to collaborate on something? You know, sometimes it's very hard for family members to work together, particularly to learn to drive from each other.
But what was it like to work on a book together? I mean, Jimmy Carter, you're the father and therefore are used to being in control or wanting to have control, but that's not the attitude to have when you're collaborating with somebody.
Amy, I know that there was a period when you were at Brown University when you engaged in a student protest against CIA recruiting on campus. That ended up in a big court case. You spent a lot of time away from your actual schoolwork and ended up, I believe, being expelled. I'm wondering if that was a turning point in you deciding what you wanted to do.
I mean, what you wanted to study and what you wanted to be. I mean, were you pursuing art then or... Did that kind of little crisis get you onto a different and ultimately maybe more satisfying course?
Amy, it sounds like you're a mix of very shy and defiant. I think that's exactly right.
So, Jimmy Carter, you were governor and president. Was there much time when you were in those positions to actually tell stories to Amy?
How does a first family put aside time as family time? What family time did you actually have together in the White House?
Amy, how much family time did you actually have in the White House years?
I completely identify. I completely identify. I used to bring a book with me to a lot of family events and be roundly chastised for it. You know, I, I used to be really bored, to be honest, with a lot of adult events when I was a kid. It was like, well, they're talking about adult things and, you know, I don't care. I'd rather watch TV.
But Amy, when you were surrounded by adult events, it was, you know, like presidents from other countries and, you know, probably, uh, you know, famous performers who are doing White House performances and things like that. Were you interested in, in these very, uh, famous adults or were they uninteresting to you also?
Jimmy Carter and his daughter Amy, recorded in 1995, will conclude our tribute to him after a break. This is Fresh Air.
When I interviewed Jimmy Carter in December 2001 about his memoir Christmas in Plains, he grew up in Plains, Georgia, it was at the beginning of a somber holiday season when the country was still mourning the losses of the September 11th attacks. I would like to wish you a Merry Christmas, but it strikes me as not exactly as a merry period. And I'm wondering what language you're using here.
When you're sending your best sentiments about Christmas this year, are you using the word merry?
Boy, I bet you get a lot of frequent flyer miles through your work with the Carter Center.
You're a member of all the VIP clubs?
Do you fly first class with the miles most of the time?
Jimmy Carter, recorded in 2001. If you missed the first program in our two-part series, Remembering Carter, you can listen to it on our podcast or stream it at freshair.npr.org. We're grateful to have had him on our show several times and to be able to reflect on his years of service to our country and his commitment to working for affordable housing, democracy, and peace around the world.
Rest in peace. Today's edition was produced by our executive producer, Danny Miller, and our director, Roberto Schorach. Our technical director is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Reboldonato, Sam Brugger, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman.
Some of these earlier interviews were produced by Amy Sallet. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
Have you read that poem? Did you read that poem to your family before publishing it?
Yeah, I was thinking of Rosalind.
In your dedications in this book, you dedicate the book in part to your father who, let me turn to the page actually so I can quote it. I write to my father, Earl, who labored all his life but also loved the good times. His innate goodness curbed by the southern mores he observed. A man who relished discipline, who reached out to his son with love, always tempered with restraint.
What were the southern mores he observed that you were referring to there?
Those post-presidency years were devoted to public service. He and his wife Rosalyn teamed up with Habitat for Humanity, building or repairing thousands of homes in the U.S. and other countries around the world, including Mexico, South Africa, Haiti, Vietnam, India, and the Philippines.
Did you ever try to change him on that? Do you think it's possible for a son to change a father?
So you were still pretty young.
Okay, it's time for another poem. Okay. I have another request.
This is called Itinerant Songsters Visit Our Village.
And it's really a poem about poetry and writing poetry and learning to write poetry.
Do you know, by the way, let me stop you here, that his daughter, Lucinda Williams, is a wonderful singer and songwriter? She is great. Yeah, yeah. I was wondering if you liked her music.
He flew around the world to war zones to mediate violent conflicts and monitor elections in fledgling democracies. And Carter wrote several memoirs about his presidency, his childhood, his deep religious faith, his reflections on getting older, and life after leaving office. That gave me the opportunity to interview him several times.
I like this poem a lot, and I like how you describe in the poem you trying to write about great themes, war and peace and troubling visions, and then you turn to specific details and very specific things that happened to you. Tell me more about how you learned to do that in your poems.
Did Miller Williams give you advice about that, too?
When you're president of the United States, you're the most, you know, important person in the country and you have the most power and so on. And then when, you know, fairly late in life, you start writing poetry more seriously than you ever wrote it before. I mean, you're getting started, you know, pretty late with that and everything.
There might be this feeling, well, how could I possibly be any good? And as former president, I'm only allowed to do things that I can really excel in, you Did you ever go through a crisis about that and think, like, if you wrote poems, they'd better be the best poems? Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to measure up to your own standards.
We'll start with a side of Jimmy Carter most Americans were unaware of when he was in the White House, his lifelong interest in and love of poetry. When we spoke in 1995, he'd just published a collection of his poems titled Always a Reckoning. Carter was the first former president to publish a book of poems.
Well, did you get rejection slips from anybody?
Now, did that hurt a lot?
There's another poem I'm going to ask you to read called Difficult Times.
Was that a poem to Rosalind?
So did you give her the poem after you wrote it?
Did that help warm things up?
Jimmy Carter recorded in 1995, after the publication of his poetry collection, Always a Reckoning. In 2005, I spoke with him about his book, Endangered Values, America's Moral Crisis.
Carter was the first American president to tell the public that he was born again, but he believed in the separation of church and state, and in this memoir, he focused on his concerns about the intertwining of politics and religion. You were the first president to say that you were born again. And you said that during the election when you were asked by a reporter.
What do you think the assumptions are that people make when they hear a former president is also a poet?
After you proclaimed that you were born again, how did that change perceptions of you?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Our guest today is actor Simu Liu. He's best known for his breakout role as Shang-Chi, Marvel's first Asian superhero, in the film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Now he stars with Woody Harrelson in the new film Last Breath. He spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Boldenaro.
I'm sorry about your mom.
Simu Liu stars in the new film Last Breath. He spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Boldenado. To find out what's happening behind the scenes of our show and get our producers' recommendations for what to watch, read, and listen to, subscribe to our free newsletter at whyy.org slash freshair. And this week we have a special exclusive for our newsletter subscribers. I just interviewed comic Bill Burr.
It was hilarious and a wild ride. Also, very hard to edit down to fit our broadcast. It's airing Monday, but we're offering an early listen of an extended version of that interview if you subscribe to our newsletter. To sign up, go to whyy.org. It'll come directly to your inbox Saturday morning. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.
Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Roberta Chirac, Phyllis Myers, Anne Maribel Donato, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Anna Bauman, and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Susan Yakundi directed today's show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
The cancer doesn't wait.
I'm in good health at the moment.
Yeah, with an emphasis on unwarranted. Exactly.
So that's Jason Isbell from his new album, Foxes in the Snow. The song is called True Believer. You had asked me earlier, like, give me an example of a line where I sound critical of my ex or of an ex. So from the song we just heard, two separate lines, take your hand off my knee, take your foot off my neck. And then all your girlfriends say, I broke your bleeping heart and I don't like it.
There's a letter on the nightstand. I don't think I'll ever read it. So that sounds, it sounds angry and you sing it angry. Yeah.
When you get to, I finally found a match. No, what's the next line? I'm trying to remember what the next line is.
Oh, yes, right.
The second one... Take your hand off my knee and your foot off my neck. I love these songs, so I'm not criticizing you or the song. I'm just wondering what it's like to write songs that are critical of somebody you've been so close to, or at least seem to be about that.
So let me reintroduce you here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Jason Isbell. His new album is called Foxes in the Snow. We'll be back for more music and conversation after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
I want to ask you about your early life. You grew up in two churches. Your father was part of the Pentecostal church. Your grandfather was a preacher in the church. Your mother was with the Church of Christ. In the Pentecostal church when you were growing up, the church you went to had instruments. It sounds like there were maybe electrified instruments.
Okay, whereas in your mother's church, Church of Christ, instruments weren't allowed. It was just singing. So how could you be sure which was the true Christian approach when you were growing up with two opposite approaches to music? And you started playing music when you were six, when you got a mandolin. So you're really deeply involved with music.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest Jason Isbell was described in Variety as the poet laureate of American rock. The quibble I have with that is that I'm not exactly sure I'd call it rock because there's country and folk music blended into many of his songs. Maybe the word Americana more suits him. He's won nine Americana Music Awards and six Grammys.
There's a song from an earlier album. The song is called Why a Beretta. And I just want to quote a couple of the lines in it. You're right. And I don't know if this is autobiographical, but you're right. I was raised in the blood, and we were all saved before we even left home. And there's a line, I thank God you weren't brought up like me with all that shame and certainty.
So, you know, we often talk about the shame instilled in us by some religions. But I want you to talk about the certainty, the certainty that you were brought up with that you may be later rejected.
So you were taught to read the Bible literally. And I know that there was a period, and I don't know how old you were when you were doing this, you assigned yourself to read a passage from the Bible every night. What was that about? Why were you doing that?
So what made you think that that's what you needed to do to protect yourself?
Well, let's take another short break here, and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is songwriter, singer, and guitarist Jason Isbell. His new album is called Foxes in the Snow. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air.
I want to play another track from the new album, and this is called Crimson and Clay. And I know you say you don't think about what you're going to do before you start writing a song. You just sit down and start writing it. Nevertheless, I'm going to ask you, is there anything you want to say to introduce the song and what inspired it?
That was Bury Me from Jason Isbell's new album, Foxes in the Snow. Jason Isbell, welcome back to Fresh Air. I love this album. Congratulations on it. And I love this song. And I hope I don't mangle this, but I want to quote some of the lyric. This is the chorus. I ain't no cowboy, but I can ride. I ain't no outlaw, but I've been inside.
You want to quote that part?
Is that the part with the little noose?
There's also crosses on the wall.
So I assume the wooden crosses were Christian crosses, but I was wondering, were they Klan crosses?
Well, I'll tell you what, why don't we hear the song, and then we can talk about it more after we hear it. So this is Crimson and Clay from Jason Isbell's new album, Foxes in the Snow.
And there were bars of steel, boys, and there were bars to sing. And there were bars with swinging doors for all the time between. That's so great because you're talking about a jail with bars of steel, music, which has bars delineating each segment, you know, each like four notes or whatever. And bars with swinging doors, those are like old Western saloons that have those swinging doors.
That was Crimson and Clay from my guest Jason Isbell's new solo album, Foxes in the Snow. You know, I love how the chorus keeps going like, guess the highway didn't kill me after all. Guess the city didn't kill me after all. And then guess a small town didn't suit me after all. I want to ask you about the highway. I guess the highway didn't kill me after all.
And the next line is, well, I thought I was a goner in that trail of fire in Arkansas. If that is at all autobiographical, what happened?
Was it with your parents?
Oh, because I know, didn't you live in a trailer for a while with your parents?
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And you were a drinker for years. So that's just, it's like, were you in jail too?
So you imagine you managed to incorporate some of your own story into this kind of cowboy song.
What does it mean?
His lyrics are as well written as a good poem or short story. They're often very personal, and that was especially true of his album Southeastern, which was released in 2013 and was his first album since Getting Sober. It's also true of his new album, Foxes in the Snow, on which he sounds especially naked because it's solo. His band, the 400 Unit, sits this one out. It's just Isbell and his guitar.
I'm going to tell you my dilemma as a listener. And I'll preface this by saying I really love this album. So I first interviewed you in 2013 after Southeastern, your first album since Getting Sober. And at that time, you seemed so much in love with your wife, who I think you were already married, Amanda, who's also a songwriter and singer and violinist.
And then I interviewed her in 2022 when she had an album out that included a couple of songs about fractures in the relationship. And your new album includes songs about factors in your relationship and ending a relationship, the pain of separating, the guilt of all of it, falling in love with someone new after. And listening, I sometimes think like, am I supposed to be taking sides here?
Because I like her songs. I like your songs. I can see both sides, you know. It's kind of like friends of yours are breaking up and you're supposed to choose who stays your friend afterwards, you know. And then I thought, like, no, that's not what I want to do.
What I want to do is really enjoy both of your songs and appreciate each point of view and know that there's things in each of those points of view that I identify with. So I want to talk with you about writing these songs, but I also don't want to trespass on your privacy. So let's find a way to talk about it without getting too personal and making anyone uncomfortable.
I love that idea. Start something new. So I guess the first thing I'm wondering is, if you write a song that is critical of the person who you've been married to and who's the mother of your daughter, do you feel guilty about it? Do you fear, is there a form of self-censorship that comes in because you don't want to hurt the other person? Or do you just write what you want to write?
And I think this is something that particularly memoirists run into all the time.
Um, the song I'm about to play, for example, which is Gravel Weed. I was a gravel weed and I needed you to raise me. I'm sorry the day came when I felt I was raised. So it's kind of like you needed her to help you get through a period. And now, like, you don't need her anymore because you got through it.
That's true. You say when I felt I was raised. Yes.
So you think you're being self-critical?
Some of the songs are about the blame, anger, and guilt when a relationship ends and about the exhilaration of falling in love again. His ex-wife, Amanda Shires, is also a songwriter and singer and violinist who performed with Isbel. She's written her own songs about the cracks in their relationship.
So let's play the song. And I'll say, I'm from Brooklyn, and I had to look up what a gravel weed was.
Well, I looked it up, and it looks like it grows really tall with flowers.
In the part of the country where you're from, which is Alabama.
All right. Let's hear the actual song written and performed by my guest Jason Isbell.
That's Jason Isbell, Gravelweed, from his new album, which is called Foxes in the Snow. I want to quote another line from there, which is, But now I've lived to see my melodies betray me. I'm sorry the love songs all mean different things today.
They were in a 2023 documentary together called Running With Our Eyes Closed, which is about the making of Isbel's 2020 album, Reunions, on which she played fiddle. The film also ended up being about the tension in the marriage, which was exacerbated during the COVID lockdown when they spent more time together than they ever had.
Can you talk about that a little bit, having written love songs about one person and then written, inspired, I think, by the same relationship songs about the relationship ending? How do those old love songs sound to you now? And do you still play them? Can you still play Cover Me Up, for instance?
So many love songs and breakup songs have been written in every genre for centuries. How do you find new things to say, new words to use in a love song? I mean, Ira Gershwin even wrote a lyric, what can you say in a love song that's never been said before?
I want to play another track from your new album, and this is called True Believer. Do you want to say anything about writing this song before we hear it? This is another relationship song, another breaking up or broken up kind of song.
Yeah, I do too. Thank you.
Jason Isbell got his professional start with the band The Drive-By Truckers. Before we hear some of the relationship songs, let's start with a song that opens the album. I love this one. It's called Bury Me.
Fosca's love for Giorgio is supposed to be superior to Clara's by virtue of not being carnal. At least that was what Sondheim and Lapine said in interviews. Regardless of Sondheim and Lapine's original intentions, the dichotomy represented on stage wasn't between body love and soul love, but between health and infirmity, the pang of happiness, and the unaccountable lure of death. Unquote.
Before I get back to doing interviews and immersing myself in the lives of my guests, I want to share some of Francis with you. On today's show, I'm going to read you excerpts of a few of his essays and play recordings he praised in those pieces. Along the way, I'll also tell a few stories about him, including the story of how we met and became a couple. Fresh air played a big part in that.
Here's the song Frances singled out. It's sung by the character Fosca on what may be her deathbed. She tells Giorgio she wants to dictate a letter for him to write, but to write it as if he were writing it to her, confessing his deep feelings for her. The song is I Wish I Could Forget You, sung by Donna Murphy.
Thank you. Francis was great at coming up with titles. That book showed up in a confounding place, a Brooks Brothers ad, maybe a page from the catalog. The photo was of a 20-something guy with his hands folded around the back of his head and on his lap a copy of Francis's book, Bebop and Nothingness. The model was supposed to look dreamy, but I doubt he'd ever dream of reading that book.
My theory is the book was chosen as a prop because the book jacket's eye-catching color scheme of blue, red, and yellow matched the model's sweater and plaid pants. We framed the ad, and it still hangs on our wall, baffling anyone who sees it. One of Francis' coinages also showed up in a surprising place. In a 1992 essay about the show Seinfeld, Francis described Kramer as a hipster doofus.
Someone from the show must have read that, because the following year, hipster doofus showed up in a couple of Seinfeld episodes. Here's Kramer.
After we take a short break, I'll conclude my tribute to Francis. And I'll feature my interview with George Clooney, who was just nominated for a Tony. He's on Broadway starring as journalist Edward R. Murrow in the stage adaptation of Clooney's 2005 film Good Night and Good Luck.
Francis loved and was influenced by film noir, and he loved Charlie Hayden's ensemble Quartet West and how it often evoked film noir, like on this track, There in a Dream. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. Putting together a remembrance of my husband Francis Davis has been a very helpful way to transition back to fresh air after his death nearly three weeks ago. We knew it was coming.
Francis wrote for The Atlantic magazine, The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and various music magazines. He had seven books and received a Guggenheim Fellowship.
He was in home hospice. But it's nothing you can really be prepared for. If you're just tuning in, Francis was a jazz critic who wrote about all aspects of popular culture—
He was a contributing editor at The Atlantic magazine, wrote for The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and various music magazines, had seven books, received a Guggenheim Fellowship, and won a Grammy for his liner notes for the 50th anniversary edition of the classic Miles Davis recording, Kind of Blue. We were together 47 years.
There's more of his writing I want to read you and more related music I want to play. I've mostly been quoting essays about people who are recognized as groundbreaking figures, but Francis also wrote extensively about emerging musicians and composers and the avant-garde. He helped launch the careers of newcomers and rediscover musicians who'd disappeared or been forgotten.
He titled one of his books Outcats, a word coined by the pianist Paul Knopf and revived by Francis. Knopf described an outcat as, quote, an outcast and a far-out cat combined. Francis wrote about many outcats. Here's how Francis used the word, quote, The word conveys undertones of exile, rootlessness, alienation, and despair, unquote.
He founded and ran the Village Voice Annual Jazz Critics Poll, which after several years moved to NPR Music and is now on artsfuse.org, where it's run by Tom Ho, who will be continuing the poll, which he renamed the Annual Francis Davis Jazz Poll. Francis also won a Grammy for his liner notes to the Miles Davis 50th Anniversary Collector's Edition of Kind of Blue.
One of my favorite Francis essays was written after Johnny Cash's death and was published in The Atlantic in March 2004. Here's how it opened. Quote, in 1956, when he recorded I Walk the Line for Sun Records, Johnny Cash became an overnight sensation, but it was as many years of singing as if he knew from personal experience all of humankind's strengths and failings and
as if he had both committed murder and been accepted into God's light that made him a favorite of liberals and conservatives, MTV and the Grand Ole Opry, Gary Gilmore and Billy Graham. From song to song, he was a cowboy or a white outcast who rode with Indians, a family man or a drifter, a believer in eternal life or a condemned murderer with no tomorrows anywhere.
His credibility owed as much to the moral effort involved in endlessly putting himself in others' shoes as it did to his professional savvy in putting a song across, unquote. In another part of the essay, Francis describes Cash like this, quote, he was in his late 30s and already had plenty of mileage on him when he was discovered by television.
Longer hair and the shadows and dents of middle age brought out the character in his face, unquote. The shadows and dents of middle age, that's an image that has always stuck with me. One of Francis's favorite Johnny Cash songs is from John Frankenheimer's 1970 film, I Walk the Line, for which Cash wrote the score. The songs reflect what's going on in the main character's mind.
Francis wrote, quote, The movie was a flop at the box office, but the film's song, Flesh and Blood, perhaps the single most beautiful song Cash ever wrote, and one whose lyrics could stand alone as inspired nature poetry, reached number one on the country charts, unquote. Here's the song, Flesh and Blood.
and always in my heart.
It's been surreal to have that famous trophy in our home. In his liner notes, Francis wrote, quote, But this hardly explains the album's hold on three successive generations of listeners. The pieces on Kind of Blue were meant to serve as springboards to improvisation, and did they ever, unquote.
After we take a short break, we'll hear my interview with George Clooney, who's on Broadway starring as journalist Edward R. Murrow in the stage adaptation of Clooney's 2005 film Good Night and Good Luck. He was just nominated for a Tony. This is Fresh Air. George Clooney was just nominated for a Tony. He's making his Broadway debut in Good Night and Good Luck.
It's adapted from the 2005 film of the same name, which he directed, co-wrote and co-starred in. In the Broadway production, he stars as journalist Edward R. Murrow, a different role than the one he played in the film. The story is about how Murrow challenged Senator Joe McCarthy's tactic of smearing people by accusing them of being communists or associating with communists.
At the time, Murrow was hosting the CBS TV news program See It Now. Murrow and his crew decided to do a program about Lieutenant Milo Radulovich, a U.S. Air Force reservist who was kicked out for being a security risk without being told what the charges were after he refused to denounce his father and sister, who were accused of being communists.
In this scene from the movie, two Air Force colonels are pressuring Murrow's producer, Fred Friendly, to cancel the broadcast. Friendly is played by George Clooney.
George Clooney, in a scene from his 2005 film Good Night and Good Luck. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for David Strathairn, who played Murrow, the role now played by Clooney on Broadway. Clooney has starred in such films as Ocean's Eleven, Siriana, Michael Clayton, The Descendants, Oh Brother Where Art Thou, and Hail Caesar.
He first became famous for his role on the medical series ER. His father is the broadcast journalist Nick Clooney, who's also a former movie host on the cable channel AMC. Here's the interview I recorded with Clooney in 2005 when the film Goodnight and Good Luck was released. George Clooney, welcome to Fresh Air. What did Edward R. Murrow mean to you when you were growing up?
Now, in the movie, you don't have an actor playing McCarthy. The only time we see McCarthy is through his actual videotapes, through his television appearances, such as the hearings and the videotape that was made for the Edward R. Murrow's See It Now broadcast. Why did you choose to have him play himself instead of having an actor portray him?
Now, as an actor and director... Talk a little bit about how Murrow looks on TV compared to how McCarthy looks on TV.
Francis went on to describe John Coltrane's solo on the track Flamenco Sketches, quote, I'm going to play an excerpt of that Coltrane solo because it's beautiful. And because Francis had a contract to write a book about Coltrane, although he never finished the book, he was steeped in Coltrane music and research and wrote about him in shorter essays.
The film is so much about faces. You know, the film is shot in pretty high contrast black and white and there's so many close-ups of faces because it all takes place basically in the office and in the studio. And the faces are so interesting to look at.
They're mostly, you know, mostly middle-aged and slightly younger than that and slightly older than that men who are kind of creased and who've lived and who haven't had plastic surgery. And it's just really wonderful to see these faces.
You are one of the, quote, Hollywood liberals who is sometimes attacked by the right. Do you find it amusing when you are targeted by the right and singled out for criticism because you're a, quote, Hollywood liberal? Or is it disturbing to you?
When you were growing up, your father was on TV. He had his own show. He was a news anchor. Did your father seem like a different person on camera and off?
What would he do when he made a scene?
In this solo on flamenco sketches, you'll hear Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Bill Evans piano, Paul Chambers bass, Jimmy Cobb drums. That was an excerpt of John Coltrane's solo on the track Flamenco Sketches from the Miles Davis album Kind of Blue. A piece that was a turning point for Francis was his profile of tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins, titled An Improviser Prepares.
You grew up on a – well, your grandparents had a tobacco farm. Sure. So were you near that?
There's a lot of cigarette smoke in your movie. And Edward O'Murrow died of lung cancer. He was quite a smoker. It's just amazing to see him smoking on camera or even smoking in the hallway of the office. You just can't do that anymore.
Did you have to work hard to get the actors to inhale? No.
One of the many things I really like about your film is the performance by Diane Reeves, the singer in it. And the music director for your film is Alan Spiridoff, who had been the music director for your Aunt Rosemary Clooney, who I'm an enormous fan of. I love her recordings. What did her music mean to you when you were growing up? It was not your generation.
Oh, right. I see. Yeah.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. This is my first show back in about two and a half weeks. Today's show is all about why. My husband, my partner of 47 years, Francis Davis, died after a long illness on Monday, April 14th.
I know exactly what she was talking about, too, because her voice was basically shot in the last couple of recordings she made, but her phrasing was so beautiful, and the emotion was so beautifully conveyed.
You stayed with your aunt when you first got to Hollywood. Did you think you were talented when you started working? Did you think you actually had something?
Well, ER, when you got ER, that certainly must have changed your life a lot. I mean, suddenly you were a star and people become so close to you when you're on TV every week. There's this kind of bonding that I think people go through.
You knew something about fame. You know, your father was on TV. Rosemary Clooney, your aunt, was incredibly famous. But what surprised you most when it happened to you? What were you unprepared for?
I want to thank you very much for talking with us.
My interview with George Clooney was recorded in 2005 after the release of his movie Good Night and Good Luck. He's now on Broadway in the stage adaptation of the film. He co-wrote it and stars as Edward R. Murrow. His performance has just been nominated for a Tony.
And to find out what's happening behind the scenes of our show and get our producers' recommendations for what to watch, read, and listen to, subscribe to our free newsletter at whyy.org slash freshair. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorrock.
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Boldenado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Yakunde, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavey-Nesper. Thea Chaloner directed today's show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
After it was rejected by the magazine that greenlighted it, Francis sent it to the attention of Bill Whitworth, the revered editor of The Atlantic magazine. And although Bill didn't publish it, he wanted to see more. The Atlantic became Francis' longest professional affiliation. He became a contributing editor, and Bill became a treasured friend.
Here's how Francis describes Sonny Rollins in that 1984 profile, quote, "...when conjuring up an image of the quintessential jazz man, heroic, inspired, mystical, obsessed. As often as not, it is Rollins we picture, because no other jazz instrumentalist better epitomizes the lonely tightrope walk between spontaneity and organization implicit in taking an improvised solo."
Everyone who listens to jazz can tell a story of a night when Rollins could do no wrong, when ideas poured out of him so effortlessly. The irony is that the nights when Rollins is at wit's end can be just as thrilling for illuminating the perils endemic to improvisation. Here's Sonny Rollins' unaccompanied opening on his 1972 recording of Skylark.
You may know about Francis from his writing about jazz and popular culture, or from the time he was a jazz critic on Fresh Air, when it was a local show, and in the early days when we went national. Often when I introduce a guest, I quote from reviews and profiles that sum up their contributions better than I think I could.
That was the opening to Sonny Rollins' recording of Skylark. The song was co-written by Hoagie Carmichael. Francis once wrote that Carmichael, who was from the Midwest, looked like a Corn Belt Samuel Beckett. Francis and I met through music. He was managing the record store on the University of Pennsylvania campus, which was just a few blocks away from where WHYY was in the 1970s.
This was decades before you could find nearly anything on the Internet. At the time, 1978, Fresh Air was a local three-hour show five days a week, which was way too much time to fill. So I was on the lookout for good features. I thought, why not try a feature in which Francis would play and talk about great but hard-to-find jazz recordings? I asked him to write a script and record an audition.
This was before he'd started his writing career, and I was astonished by the quality of his writing. That's how he started his weekly fresh air feature called Interval. I fell in love with his writing and with him. Music, movies, books, these were passions we shared and loved talking about with each other. I need to take a short break here.
To sum up my husband's place as a writer, I'm going to quote from a couple of the obits. In the New York Times, Adam Nossiter wrote, "...his specialty was teasing meaning from the sounds he heard, situating them in America's history, culture, and society." That approach, and the fluency of his writing, made him one of the most influential writers on jazz in the 1980s and beyond.
I'll continue this remembrance of my husband, Francis Davis, after a break. This is Fresh Air.
This is Fresh Air. There's more I want to tell you about my husband, Francis Davis. He died Monday, April 14th, after eight months in home hospice, doing his best to maintain his strength despite his enemies, COPD and Parkinson's. Francis wrote about jazz and other forms of music and popular culture,
In this remembrance, I'm reading passages from his essays and playing related recordings that he praised. When PBS was planning to broadcast a three-part series on the history of the blues, Francis was asked to write the companion book. He wrote the book, but the series was never completed and never broadcast.
The status of the series and how it would affect the book was very stress-inducing, and that was in addition to the pressure of writing the book. As he was finishing it, he started to not feel well, and after it was done, he ended up in the hospital with a serious, possibly life-threatening infection that took days to diagnose. It was terrifying.
After he was sent home, he still needed IV antibiotics. I was taught, briefly, how to administer the drugs through the IV line and was warned that if there are air bubbles in the tubing, that could be dangerous. And I was told that anything that touches the opening of the tubing or the medication could contaminate it.
I thought, are you out of your mind giving me the responsibility of doing what trained nurses do? I'm proud to say, Frances survived my nursing, but I almost didn't. Here's a passage from the 1995 book, The History of the Blues, the book that Francis handed in before the hospital. The passage is about blind Willie Johnson. Quote, he had few equals as a slide guitarist.
He used a pocket knife in lieu of a bottleneck. Johnson's music was charred with purgatorial fire. More than 60 years later, you can still smell the smoke on it. He was a man of God, perhaps even a religious fanatic, but he ranted like a man possessed by demons. His life was tragic, even by the cruel standards of the day. He died in 1947, long after his brief recording career had come to an end.
He made his living by playing on Texas street corners, a blind man with a guitar and a tin cup, shaking the faith of passersby with the absolute certainty of his. Were Johnson alive today, he might be livid to find his name in so many books on the blues. He performed mostly traditional hymns, hardly any secular material.
Yet his style had more in common with those of the blues performers of his day than that of any of his fellow guitar evangelists, and no one was more original.
In terms of its intensity alone, its spiritual ache, there's nothing else from the period to compare with Johnson's 1927 recording of Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground, on which his guitar takes the part of a preacher and his wordless voice the part of a rapt congregation, unquote. Here's Blind Willie Johnson's 1927 recording of Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground.
The headline of the NPR obit by Nate Chenin described him as a giant of jazz criticism. In addition to jazz, Francis also wrote essays about other forms of music, as well as movies, TV, and books. For me, reading him is now my best way of feeling like I'm spending time with him. I've been reading him a lot lately.
That was Blind Willie Johnson. After Francis' blues book was published, he received a confounding invitation to sell the book live on TV on the cable home shopping network QVC. Apparently one of the hosts was a fan.
As I recall, Francis was sandwiched between fake emerald costume jewelry and the road whiz, an early kind of GPS that told you where the closest restaurants, gas stations, and bathrooms were. Let's just say the book did okay, but the road whiz did a whole lot better. As I mentioned, Francis was hospitalized after handing in the manuscript for The History of the Blues.
The essay he wrote after he got out of the hospital was titled Infection. It was a review of the original cast recording of the Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine musical Passion.
The musical tells the story of an Italian soldier, Giorgio, who's forced to leave his beautiful, vibrant mistress, Clara, with whom he's deeply in love, after he receives orders that he's being transferred to a faraway garrison. His new commanding officer's sickly cousin, Fosca, falls in love with Giorgio and becomes obsessed with him.
She lives in the world of the sick and marginalized, and he's healthy and strong and wants to get away from her. Francis and I loved the show. Here's an excerpt of his essay. Quote, In a situation in which part of my role as a good patient was to monitor my moods and bodily functions and dutifully report even the slightest change, I no longer saw Fosca's morbid self-absorption as quite so absurd.
We listened to excerpts from both interviews, starting with the more recent one recorded in 2019 when he'd just written his memoir titled Me. We talked about an early lesson John learned about handling stardom, his difficult childhood, how he became addicted to shopping and collecting, and his early musical influences. So the book has a very candid description of your life.
And of course, you'd think he was gay. But, you know, he wasn't publicly out and. I think it was an era when it was like it was okay to be gay as long as you didn't mention it, as long as like no one had to hear it.
You know, I was reading a 1973 Rolling Stone interview with you in which you said that your act is going to become a little more Liberace-ized. And I thought, wow, 1973, you were thinking about making your act more Liberace-ish.
That was Elton John speaking with me in 2013 from Vegas during his million-dollar piano residency at Caesars Palace. I should note here, the piano really did cost one million dollars.
Before we get into some of the candid details that you write about in the book, you were in the band early in your career as the keyboard player in Long John Baldry's band. The band was called Bluesology. You tell this really funny story at the beginning of the book where he had just had a big hit.
Oh, I love Blossom Deary. We'll link to the full versions of both my 2013 and 2019 interviews with Elton John in our show notes. Our Fresh Air Plus bonus episodes are produced by Nick Anderson. Our engineer for this episode is Adam Staniszewski. I'm Terry Gross. Thanks for your support of our work here at Fresh Air.
So now he was famous and, you know, young women were coming to the concert and kind of like really getting getting excited and screaming. And he says on mic, he says, why don't you say what he said?
What did that teach you about stardom and how to handle it?
Not how to handle it.
Of course, also with you, when you had young girls screaming at you and everything like you were gay, they didn't know that.
And he was gay, too. Exactly.
That's right. That's right. So what was it like for you knowing you were gay, knowing they didn't realize you were gay and they were probably having all these like sexual fantasies about you? Yeah.
If you're already a Fresh Air Plus supporter, thank you so much for your ongoing support of our show and of NPR. But if you haven't signed up for Plus yet, we hope you will. You'll get weekly bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening for every episode of our podcast. And you'll be supporting the NPR shows you listen to, including Fresh Air. You can find out more at plus.npr.org. Now to the show.
Well, speaking of you and John Baldry being gay, when you decided you were going to marry a woman when you were in your early 20s, he said to you, John, you're gay. You can't marry her. And what was your reaction? Because I don't think you had acknowledged that to yourself yet.
Hi, it's Terry Gross here with a special bonus episode. It's the season of giving, and in that spirit, we thought we'd give all our podcast listeners something extra. Bonus episodes like this one, curated selections from our archive, are usually only available for our Fresh Air Plus supporters. Today, we're giving everyone a chance to hear it.
It's remarkable that you could be like a rock musician and remain a virgin until you were 23. You might be the only person.
You said you wanted to play music, but on the other hand, you write that early on, like when you were a sideman with John Baldry, that you thought what you really wanted to do was write songs. And you had auditioned for Liberty Records and they told you you were not ever going to be a pop star. You weren't pop star material.
So did you think like you really weren't cut out to be a – like maybe they were right that you weren't cut out to be a performer, that your job should be behind the scenes or as a sideman? Yeah.
You said you had no self-esteem or low self-esteem. Were the costumes, the crazy clothing that you wore, the big glasses, all that, was that in part armor to cover up your low self-esteem? No. Yeah.
Today we have two interviews I recorded with Elton John. After a career of more than 50 years of extravagance and extraordinary popularity, Elton John finished his farewell tour last year. But he performed at Lincoln Center in October of this year at the premiere of the documentary Elton John, Never Too Late. That documentary just started streaming on Disney+.
It sounds like a lot of your childhood years weren't great. Your parents bickered all the time. Your mother remarried, and you liked your stepfather, but they bickered all the time. They got married when she was 16 and he was 17. You wonder if they were ever... if they ever should have been together in the first place.
And your mother sounds like she was a very moody and frequently angry person who could hold a grudge. And you even describe how when you, you don't remember this, but I think it was an aunt who told you that when your mother was toilet training you, she'd beat you with a hairbrush until you were bloody and she'd beat you until you used the potty.
So is that kind of typical of what your childhood was like?
What did you collect as a kid?
Well, you became an obsessive shopper later in life and you collected everything.
Elton John's music spans genres and generations, from Rocketman to the soundtrack for Disney's animated feature The Lion King. In 2019, he executive produced a biopic of his own life called Rocketman. It was a box office hit and won John and his longtime collaborator, lyricist Bernie Taupin, the Academy Award for Best Original Song. I spoke with Elton John twice on Fresh Air.
He was an amateur trumpet player, wasn't he?
Yeah, so why was he so set? I realize he didn't like rock and roll, but still he must have appreciated that you were such a talented musician. And you were studying classical music, too, at a conservatory.
Right. You could say that, but it also, let's face it, you've had an amazing life. He must have been so proud once you became famous and hopefully a little embarrassed that he tried so hard to discourage you from doing what you do.
He didn't even try to capitalize on your fame? Like, that's my son.
Just curious, how much do you think of that as like the music, that it was rock and roll? And do you think any of that estrangement was because you were gay?
Okay.
That was an excerpt of the interview I recorded with Elton John in 2019. Now we'll hear an excerpt from our 2013 conversation when he was in Vegas during his million-dollar piano residency at Caesar's Palace. In this excerpt, we talked about how he was influenced by the flamboyant pianist Liberace. We are recording this on Thursday, September 19th, right before you perform at the Emmy Awards.
Right. And our listeners will be hearing this after you've performed at the Emmy Awards. And you're doing a tribute to Liberace because the movie about him, Behind the Candelabra, is nominated for like 15 awards. And who knows how many, if any, it will have won by the time this was broadcast. But anyways, you know, he was you could say, oh, you'd look at Liberace.
I know the smell you mean. Yeah. Your father wanted to be a writer. Did you ever read anything he wrote?
From 2017 to 2019, she hosted the Hulu series I Love You America, in which she had conversations to help her understand people she didn't necessarily agree with. She's been in several movies, and she's a regular on the animated series Bob's Burgers. She recently roasted her friend Conan O'Brien at the Kennedy Center ceremony, at which he was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
So he wanted to be a writer but instead had a factory outlet women's clothing store. But when you were in college after one year at NYU, I guess he knew you wanted to be a comic and perform. He offered to pay for room and board for you for three years if you wanted to drop out of college.
Did he feel bad that he gave up his dream and not want you to give up yours?
Her memoir The Bedwetter was adapted into an off-Broadway musical. It was recently reworked, played at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., and she's hoping it will move to Broadway. Now she has her fifth comedy special. It's called Postmortem. Toward the beginning of the special, she's talking about sexual fantasies and sex talk. Not surprising territory for her.
Sarah Silverman, it's been such a pleasure to talk with you again. And, you know, I'm sorry about the loss of your parents. Thank you. Thank you. So be well and thank you. Oh, man, thank you.
And then she quietly makes an abrupt turn to this.
The New York Times calls the play Oh Mary unhinged, so campy and so unexpected. They've also called it one of the best comedies in years. Those looking for a close to historically accurate version of Mary Todd Lincoln should definitely look elsewhere because this play is a reimagining based on very few facts.
Sarah Silverman, welcome back to Fresh Air. I think this is a very meaningful and funny special, and I'm grateful that you did it. Thank you. Sarah, I don't remember you ever doing anything as emotional as this new special. What made you think about doing a special about your parents' death?
Here, the First Lady is depressed, sad, beside herself, and constantly drinking, not because of the Civil War or even the deaths of her children. She longs for her only true love, Cabaret, and her husband, the President, will try anything to stop her.
That's Tony nominee Cola Scola as Mary and Tony nominee Conrad Ricamora as Abraham Lincoln. Cola Scola first received rave reviews for O'Mary when it premiered off-Broadway in 2024 before transferring to Broadway. In addition to all the Tony nominations, the play was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.
Cola Scola first came up in the cabaret and alt comedy scenes of New York after moving to the city 20 years ago. They also gained a cult following through their online shorts. They have starred in shows including Search Party, Difficult People, and At Home with Amy Sedaris, and have written for shows like Hacks, Z-Way, and the other two. Cola Scola, welcome to Fresh Air.
OK, great. Well, do you remember when you first learned about Mary Todd Lincoln and what you learned about her or at least like what your early memories were of her or the president?
Well, can you talk about how you first came up with the idea? I think it was in 2009. Yeah.
Well, you've said that this play is very personal.
Well, you've said Mary is me.
How is this play about you?
I want to unpack what it is about cabaret that Mary loves and maybe that you love, too. What sets cabaret apart from other kinds of performing? There are some things that are maybe factual about cabaret. You know, it's intimate. There's interaction with the audience. It's about personal storytelling.
Well, like Mary, you are a well-known cabaret singer. And you came up through this downtown New York scene with people like Bridget Everett and Murray Hill, who people might know from the HBO series Somebody Somewhere, among other things. Can you describe what that scene was like? This is the mid to late 2000s.
Well, there's footage online of you performing at the last show in 2012, which was kind of a celebration of, you know, the show coming to an end. Would you mind if we played a little bit of your performance?
That's Cola Scola performing in 2012. I love that performance. And the joy of you singing a Taylor Swift song, that's the Taylor Swift song, 15, about being in high school.
Well, I will say that I would pay good money to hear you sing the Taylor Swift songbook.
And that story that you tell on stage during your cabaret act, is that true? You were young. Do you have memories of that?
And you ended up living with your grandmother.
Well, you said that you loved to hear your grandmother's stories. What were some of your favorite stories that she would tell you?
Well, I read that you used to stay at home on Mondays because on Mondays your grandmother would have lunch with her friends and you really wanted to hang out with them.
In your comedy, you often do characters that are middle-aged women, like Mary and like these women that you're speaking of. Do you think your appreciation for women of that certain age sort of began with your grandmother and her friends?
When did you find performing? I think your first play was when you were 11? Yeah.
Did you use anything from the eulogy in the comedy special?
What was it like being a kid in the nursing home?
Did you tell the Jeff Ross story in the eulogy?
Well, you know, Grapes of Wrath, a serious play. But you ended up finding community there, like an extended family.
Now you were in shows, like you said, you were in Fiddler on the Roof, Little Shop of Horrors, Les Miserables. What kind of parts did you play?
So when you sort of pictured yourself as a performer in the future, it wasn't as an actor in plays.
Well, you've said that you always associated, quote unquote, theater with pretending to be straight.
That's what you're talking about?
Even back then you felt that way?
Cole Escola, congratulations on the Tony nominations, and thank you so much for joining us.
And there's great photos of your parents in there too and of your sisters. Yeah. So the thing about giving a eulogy is like you really want to do it. And at the same time, it feels like, well, it must have felt for you like you were doing a comedy special or putting on a show when maybe you just wanted to grieve.
On the other hand, it gives you a chance to live in the memory of the person or people that you lost. And then you wonder if you can get through it without totally breaking up and weeping.
Because Janice is your stepmother. She's the one who died nine years apart from your father.
You were with your father and stepmother when she was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. So I want to play a clip from your special postmortem about your father's reaction.
Okay. So this clip starts with you talking about Janice's reaction, your stepmother's reaction to the news and what she has to say to the doctor.
I'm happy to say that comic writer and actor Sarah Silverman is back for a return visit. Her stand-up comedy is always original, brave, and funny. Whether it's talking about sex, abortion, being Jewish, racism, or just daily life, she's willing to take risks to make a point and make it funny. She regrets a few jokes she told in the past and later apologized for them.
So your father ran or owned a discount women's clothing store called Crazy Sophie's Outlet. He did his own TV commercials.
Radio ads. Okay. I'm not sure if I asked you this before, but can you describe the clothes that he sold?
Did he bring them clothes that he expected you to wear, but you didn't want to wear them?
She has a new surprising comedy special, which I'll tell you about in a moment. But first, more about Sarah. She was a writer and featured performer for one season on Saturday Night Live. She played a writer on The Larry Sanders Show. From 2007 to 2010, she starred in the series The Sarah Silverman Program.
Hi, it's Terry Gross. Before we start our show, I want to take a minute to remind you that it's Almost Giving Tuesday, which is so named because it's become a day of expressing gratitude by giving money or any kind of help to an individual or group or organization that matters to you. We've found a way to turn Giving Tuesday into Giving and Getting Tuesday. Thank you. It's a win-win.
So join us at plus.npr.org. That's plus.npr.org. Or you can always make a gift at donate.npr.org. Thank you, and thanks to everyone who's already supporting us. And now, on with the show.
From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with Fresh Air Weekend. Today, how life can change in a second. Hanif Qureshi's writing career got off to a remarkable start after briefly writing porn to make a living. His first screenplay, My Beautiful Laundrette, was nominated for an Oscar.
That's the National Health Service.
And in America as well, in the U.S., so many health care workers, including caregivers and aides, are recent immigrants or immigrants who've been here for a longer time. Oh, and so many people who take care of children are also immigrants. And yet there's this strong anti-immigrant feeling in America, as I'm sure you know, and I think in England as well, right?
He describes being unrecognizable to himself, disconnected from his body, totally dependent on others. feeling helpless and humiliated, dealing with rage, envying other people who could do even basic things like scratch an itch. While spending too much time on his back staring at the ceiling, he reflected on earlier periods of his life. He shares those reflections in his book.
Your father emigrated to Britain in the late 1940s from Pakistan. Was he from a Muslim family? My understanding is he was relatively secular then.
Now, I thought he came from Pakistan.
Yeah, and partition happened in, was it 1947, when India basically divided into two with Pakistan becoming a new Muslim state.
I see. So what was it like for him and then for you as being his son to be part of a new wave of immigrants? Is it fair to say England was largely white at the time?
He spent a year in hospitals before he was able to return home with round-the-clock caregivers. He started writing the memoir just days after the accident by dictating to one of his sons. The book's narrative is occasionally interrupted by asides like, excuse me for a moment, I must have an enema now.
Well, I want to thank you so much for talking with us and for sharing so much of your life.
Hanif Qureshi's new memoir is called Shattered. The streaming service BritBox has a new mystery series called Ludwig, starring David Mitchell as a very improbable yet effective investigator. Our TV critic David Bianculli says everything about this new series is charming, surprising, delightful, and refreshingly lighthearted. Here's his review.
Qureshi is the son of a British mother and a father who emigrated from Pakistan in the late 1940s. Hanif Qureshi, welcome back to Fresh Air. We first spoke in 1990 on Fresh Air, and you've been on two times since then, so welcome back. How are you now? How much movement do you have?
David Bianculli is a professor of television studies at Rowan University. He reviewed Ludwig, which is now streaming on BritBox. Coming up, New York Times reporter Clay Risen talks about his new book, Red Scare, Blacklist, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America. And he describes the through line from that era to our own. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.
In 2022, he fell, lost consciousness, and when he came to, he saw these objects he didn't recognize until he realized they were his hands.
This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. Dave Davies has our next interview. Here's Dave.
And physio is physical therapy.
And your arm is strong enough to maneuver the controls of your motorized wheelchair.
So I'm trying to figure out what happened. You were dizzy and then you woke up in a pool of blood.
Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
Isabella's your partner, now wife?
You write about how it initially felt to feel disconnected from your body, to see your hand and not feel connected to your hand. You write, I had become divorced from myself. Would it be okay to ask you to describe what that felt like, that sense of disconnection from your own body?
We'll talk about life before and after the fall. Also, journalist Clay Risen takes us back to the anti-communist frenzy of the post-World War II era. Risen sees a through line running from that era to our own. And TV critic David Bianculli reviews the new mystery series Ludwig. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross.
You started writing your memoir just days after the accident by dictating it. Was writing especially important to you? I know you're a writer. I know you're very dedicated to writing. Your life has centered around writing and family. But was it helpful to distance yourself from kind of removing yourself from what was happening so you could look at what was happening, examine it and describe it?
Your partner, Isabella, spent every day during visiting hours in the hospital with you. And you were hospitalized for about a year. And one time when she was brushing your teeth and you felt like a helpless baby and a tyrant, two really conflicting, maybe not so conflicting. Can you describe both of those feelings?
Yeah, I was thinking that as I said it, yeah.
I first became aware of Hanif Qureshi when the 1985 film My Beautiful Laundrette was released. He was nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay about a side of contemporary England that had rarely been explored on screen, Pakistani immigrants and their children. The film was a lively romantic comedy about gay love, family, racism, and punk rock.
You have paid caregivers too, right?
So they're paid to do this. That's their job. That's what they're trained to do. Do you feel guilty or embarrassed or humiliated when they're helping you?
You once accused Isabella of going all Betty Davis on you, making it seem like she was the one being the tyrant. That's harsh. What brought that on?
It was directed by Stephen Frears and co-starred Daniel Day-Lewis as a young man in a relationship with the son of a Pakistani immigrant. Qureshi has since written other screenplays and novels, including The Buddha of Suburbia. His new memoir, called Shattered, begins in 2020 after a fall that injured his spinal cord, leaving him unable to move his arms or legs.
If you're just joining us, my guest is screenwriter, novelist, and playwright Hanif Qureshi. His new memoir is called Shattered. It's about the year he spent in hospitals after the fall that injured his spinal cord, leaving him unable to move his arms and legs. We'll be back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.
Your father was an immigrant, and I want to get into that a little bit later. But I just want to talk about the contrast between the racial ethnic aspects of the hospital in Italy where you had your accident and in London, the hospitals you eventually moved to because you're from London, your partner's from Italy. So in Italy, just about everybody who worked in the hospital was white.
When you went to hospitals in London, all the therapists and nurses, they were all people of color, often immigrants. And you were the only person here who speaks standard Middle English was you.
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Yeah. I gots to pee.
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Which played a bigger role in your life, religion or philosophy, when you were coming of age?
Oh, one thing I thought was very clever, in the good place, when you're in the part that people think is heaven, you're not allowed to use four-letter words. You're not allowed to use expletives. So if you want to use the F word, you end up saying fork. Now, since you can't use the F word on network television,
I thought like that is so clever because everybody will know the intent of the word because it's explained to you why somebody is using a word and then they just keep using it, you know, as necessary. So you're not saying the word, but everybody knows the word that you intend. Like, for instance, when you say fork, everybody knows exactly what you mean.
So is that in part a way of using the language that you wanted to use without having to use it?
So a very popular moment on Parks and Recreation is when two Fresh Air critics were name-checked. Our TV critic David Bianculli and one of our music critics, Ken Tucker. And I want to play that clip, and I'll just set it up briefly. So Leslie Knope, played by Amy Poehler. is on the local public radio or community radio station getting interviewed by one of the hosts.
And here he is promoing what's coming up.
I love it. So do you remember who came up with that and why? And also, I want to know, didn't you think, no one's going to get this? Like 1% of your audience is going to get the joke.
I should mention the voice of the public radio host was Dan Castellanata. Am I saying his name right?
Yeah, I see his name in credits all the time, but I never knew how to pronounce it because he's the voice of Homer on The Simpsons. Anyways, thank you for that.
What's the TV that meant the most to you when you were growing up?
Do you think TV meant even more to you than it otherwise might have because it was kind of taboo at home?
What are some of the most consequential changes you've seen in the world of creating television series? And I think in some ways you came in just on the cusp of a big change because The Office is really a game changer in terms of TV sitcoms.
The Office.
It's still on Comedy Central. Yeah.
I would imagine you have a lot of money. No, I'm not going to ask the question you think I'm going to ask. At least I don't think it's the question you think I'm going to ask.
Thank you very much. So a lot of people might be wondering, like, why are you still working? You have money. You don't have to work. So what is the meaning of work to you? What does work mean in your life?
Michael Schur, it's been great to talk with you. Thank you so much for this interview and for your shows.
It was forking great. Michael Schur created the new series A Man on the Inside, which is now streaming on Netflix. Coming up, we'll talk with actor and comic Jimmy O. Yang. He co-starred in the HBO series Silicon Valley and in the film Crazy Rich Asians. Now he's starring in the new Hulu series Interior Chinatown. This is Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross.
Our next guest is actor and stand-up comic Jimmy O. Yang. He co-starred in the HBO series Silicon Valley and the film Crazy Rich Asians. Now he's starring in the new Hulu series Interior Chinatown, based on the National Book Award-winning novel of the same name. He spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Baldonado.
Thank you.
Later, a talk with comic and actor Jimmy O. Yang. He stars in the new Hulu series Interior Chinatown. Yang is known for his roles in Crazy Rich Asians and the TV series Silicon Valley. He's also done stand-up specials and wrote the memoir How to American, an immigrant's guide to disappointing your parents. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross.
Jimmy O. Yang spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Baldonado. His new TV series, Interior Chinatown, is streaming on Hulu. Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer is Adam Staniszewski.
Thank you.
From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with Fresh Air Weekend. Today, the co-creator of the TV series Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, who also created The Good Place and wrote for The Office, Michael Schur. He has a new comedy series called A Man on the Inside. Like The Good Place, it stars Ted Danson and draws on philosophy and ethics.
David Bianculli is a professor of television studies at Rowan University. He reviewed the new series A Man on the Inside. All eight episodes just started streaming on Netflix. Here's the interview I recorded a few days ago with the series creator, Michael Schur. Michael Schur, welcome to Fresh Air.
This series is based in part on a documentary from Chile about a man who goes undercover to solve a crime in an assisted living facility. What did you find moving about the Chilean documentary and why did you see it as having comic potential?
Did you do research going into an assisted living facility?
I'm glad that was your experience. I apologize in advance for being Ms. Buzzkill. But my father was in assisted living for a few years toward the end of his life. And I helped him move in. I visited a lot, even though I live far away. But he told me on the phone at the beginning, you know, there's no one I can talk to here. Everybody's like in cognitive decline.
And then I felt like, oh, come on, you know, I'm sure it's not that bad. And so the next time I visited him, a woman came up to me and said, hi, nice to meet you. My name is, and I was a school librarian for many years. And I thought, see, you know, she was a school librarian. She's got to be, you know, pretty smart.
And then I met her a few minutes later again, and she said, hi, my name is, and I was a school librarian for many years. And every time I ran into her, that's exactly what she said. And I realized, oh, she's having serious cognitive issues.
My guest, Michael Schur, is one of the people behind some of the most beloved TV comedy series of the recent past. He wrote for The Office, co-created and wrote for Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and created and wrote for The Good Place. He created the new comedy series A Man on the Inside. All eight episodes just started streaming on Netflix.
You know, you've done so much about ethical decisions, especially like on The Good Place and in the book that was almost like a companion to it. And one of the questions in the series is, is it OK for the Ted Danson character to go in and video and audio record people without their knowledge? Because he's right. He's there to spy. I mean, he's the John Le Carre of assisted living.
And, I mean, he's even reading a John le Carre book in bed before the plot kicks in, before he knows about this job. Yeah. So, yeah. And the episode's called Tinkered Taylor, Older Spy.
A great title. But anyway, so he's, you know, one of the questions is, is it ethical to record people without their knowledge? Did you think about that a lot?
You work with Ted Danson on two series. Yeah. On The Good Place and now on your new series, A Man on the Inside. I love watching him. I think he's like fantastic. What is great about working with him?
Before we hear from him, our TV critic David Bianculli is going to review the series. David says there's a couple of things that A Man on the Inside has in common with The Good Place. They both star Ted Danson, who became a star playing the bartender on Cheers, and both shows are entertaining and surprisingly philosophical. Here's David's review.
My guest is Michael Schur. After writing for The Office, he co-created Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Then he created The Good Place and the new series, A Man on the Inside, which is streaming on Netflix. We'll be back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross.
Let's get back to my interview with Michael Schur, one of the people behind several beloved TV shows. After writing for The Office, he co-created Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. He created The Good Place and the new series, A Man on the Inside, starring Ted Danson, who also starred in The Good Place.
Your previous series, The Good Place, was all about ethical dilemmas and who gets to go to the equivalent of heaven and who gets sent to the equivalent of hell and how your character and your decisions and your actions are measured to determine that. And you wrote a whole book that's part funny, part serious about philosophy and the great philosophers.
What made you want to do something like a comedy series that's really about judging behavior and judging moral and ethical decisions?
Well, in doing your research, you think that his mother was a sex worker and that his sister became a sex worker while his mother was in jail and she needed to earn some money. And as a kid that Armstrong helped out, worked for sex workers. And as a young man, he tried being.
Well, let's stop at that for a second because he spent a couple of years there after being arrested for possession of a gun. He was still a minor and for shooting it in the air. You think it was his mother's gun.
So he was sent to the Colored Waif's home for boys for, what, a couple of years?
And that's where he really got his start as an instrumentalist.
Well, let's hear another recording by Armstrong. I'm going to play Cornette Chop Suey. And you say about that, that it had the effect on instrumentalists that heebie-jeebies had on singers. So what is the importance of this song in terms of American music and in terms of Armstrong's career?
Who do you think was the first Black pop star? The answer is Louis Armstrong, according to one of the leading experts on Armstrong's life and music, my guest, Ricky Riccardi. He's just published his third book about Armstrong.
So we're going to feature the stop time part in this recording. So you described the stop time part as thrilling, but I want you to describe what stop time is for people who don't know.
This one is about Armstrong's early years, his rough childhood, his first recordings with other bands, and his famous first recordings with his own group, the Hot Five and Hot Seven.
As Riccardi points out, those two early groups that Armstrong led, recorded between 1926 and 1928, over the course of 25 months, those recordings have been studied by up-and-coming musicians around the world because they provide the foundational language necessary to master the art of improvisation.
Thank you.
That was Cornette Chopsuey, Louis Armstrong's Hot Five, recorded in 1926. Ricky Riccardi, it's just been such a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much.
For instrumental soloists and vocalists, Riccardi says Armstrong's innovations as both a trumpeter and vocalist set the entire soundtrack of the 20th century in motion. Riccardi has been the director of research collections at the Louis Armstrong House Museum since 2009. It's the world's largest archive focusing on one musician.
It gave Riccardi access to previously inaccessible documents, including 700 hours of Armstrong recordings of his thoughts and his music, the unedited and unsweetened version of his autobiography, and several chapters of an unpublished autobiography by his second wife, Lil Hardin, who was also the pianist in the Hot Five.
She wrote or co-wrote several songs Armstrong recorded and was instrumental in landing his first recording date. Through writing about Armstrong, Riccardi's new book has a lot to say about segregation in New Orleans in the first part of the 20th century. The new book is called Stomp Off, Let's Go, which is the title of a song he recorded with another band led by Erskine Tate.
Ricky Riccardi, welcome to Fresh Air. What a joy it was to do the research for this, you know, being forced to listen again to Hot 5 and Hot 7 recordings. I love Armstrong's recordings, particularly like the ones through the 1940s. But you've written about all of them, like his whole life of recordings. So let's start with one of his great recordings. And this is West End Blues.
And it's what you describe as one of the most iconic recordings of the 20th century. Tell us why.
So why do you consider Armstrong the first black pop star?
Well, I want to play a song that made him a star, and that's Heebie Jeebies from 1926. It's a Hot Five recording. And it's considered the first example of scat, at least the first time it was called scat. So the story that's always told is that Armstrong started singing syllables, scat, instead of words because he dropped the sheet music and didn't remember the words.
There's other versions of the story of how he started scatting. Which do you think is the most authentic story?
Okay, so let's listen to this 1926 recording of Louis Armstrong's Hot Five, his first scatting on record, and this is Hebe Jebe.
They call it the heebie-jeebies dance.
So that was Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five, recorded in 1926, heebie-jeebies, which is considered the first recorded scatting. It's interesting, when he played in New Orleans with King Oliver, and when he played in New York with Fletcher Henderson before starting his own bands, nobody wanted him to sing. And he became so famous and so loved for his singing. Why didn't they want him to sing?
But you were one or the other?
And he was singing before he was playing trumpet.
You know, it's really remarkable and lucky for us that Armstrong was able to reach such iconic status and have such a long and productive career considering the circumstances he grew up in. Describe for us the neighborhood he grew up in in New Orleans and just remind us, too, of the year he was born.
My guests are Billie Eilish and Phineas. Their latest album is called Hit Me Hard and Soft. We'll be back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.
This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Billie Eilish and Phineas O'Connell, their brother and sister and songwriting and performing partners. And their new album is called Hit Me Hard and Soft. Phineas, what's it been like for you, especially early on when Billy was very young and you were still in your teens, your late teens?
What was it like for you to have an audience dominated by teenage girls when you're a guy and you're also older? You're four or five years older than Billy.
Billie, I've read that some girls or young women in the audience are throwing their bras onto the stage when you perform. How often does that happen? Do you have any idea how that started? I mean, that's like a classic. Well, it used to be panties that, you know, women would throw at male stars, you know.
But on a related note, you often dress on videos and in performance on stage in really baggy clothes. And I was thinking, since you grew up with a lot of hip-hop, in a lot of hip-hop performances on stage and in videos, the dancers or the women in the videos are usually dressed, and especially earlier in the period when you were growing up, were dressed in really...
tight and scanty kind of clothes. And the men are wearing like baggy hoodies and pants that are so baggy they're like falling down. And in that sense, did you take your cue from the men in hip hop in terms of dress as opposed to the women?
Phineas, you have a new album and I want to play a song from that. So I want to end with Family Feud because your family is so important to you both and the way you still operate as a family, because I think your parents are often touring with you, or at least they used to. So this is your song, Phineas. It's from your new album. Do you want to just say a couple of words about writing it?
Billy Eilish, Phineas O'Connell, thank you both so much. I really appreciate you coming on our show, and good luck with the rest of your tours.
When it's just the two of us Sleep all day, I'll wake you up When it's just the two of us That's Family Feud from Phineas' new album for Cryin' Out Loud.
Billie Eilish and Phineas' latest album together is called Hit Me Hard and Soft. My next guests are Stephen Colbert and Evie McGee Colbert. They're partners in their marriage, as well as in their production company, and she makes regular appearances on his CBS show, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
During the COVID lockdown, when he hosted The Late Show from their home, she was his partner on the show, acting as a producer, sound engineer, and serving as an audience of one. I loved hearing her laughing at his jokes.
They're typically not partners in the kitchen because they have different approaches to cooking, but now they have a new cookbook they co-authored with the great title, Does This Taste Funny? Recipes Our Family Loves. Shrimp are well represented in the book. because Stephen and Evie grew up in coastal South Carolina, where they still have a home.
Each recipe in the book is preceded by the story behind it and memories associated with it, so you actually learn about Stephen and Evie as you read the recipes. If you watch Colbert's show, you know he likes a good drink. The book has a whole chapter on drinks. Each episode of The Late Show opens with a monologue, typically satirizing a major event in the news.
Colbert doesn't pull his punches, especially when it comes to threats against democracy. Stephen, Evie, welcome to Fresh Air. It's such a pleasure to have you back on the show, Stephen, and to talk to you, Evie. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.
Oh, yeah. So first question to you, Stephen, how do you find time to cook? I can't believe that you find time. I don't have time to cook and I don't have half the job that you do. I make like omelets and heat roasted chicken. Yeah.
This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. My guests are Billie Eilish and Phineas O'Connell. As you probably know, they're siblings who write songs together. She sings on their albums, he produces and plays several instruments. They've been writing and recording together since she was 13 and he was 18.
So, Evie, if Colbert is doing all this cooking but doesn't eat it, do you get to eat it? And do you do a lot of the cooking that you actually both eat?
When I was growing up, my mother wasn't much of a cook, but she had two, like, fantastic dishes that she made. And I always look forward to those. But Monday nights, I'd almost be in tears because Mondays are bad enough when you're going to school.
And she'd sometimes make broiled mackerel, which is a very bitter fish, especially when you're a kid. Yeah, and with, like, canned string beans. Oh, God. I know. Yeah. And lettuce with no dressing on it.
And I'd nearly be in tears. Later in the week, the food got better. So I'm wondering with each of you, the recipes in your book look absolutely sumptuous. But were there meals that you had that nearly brought you to tears when you were growing up? Oh, my God.
Considering the number of records they've broken in the last few years, they're more than popular. They're a phenomenon. Their album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, was the second in Grammy history to win in the major categories Best Record, Album, Song, and New Artist, all in the same year. Phineas was the youngest person to receive a Grammy for Producer of the Year, non-classical.
Oh, no water? You're supposed to add a can of water.
Have you ever brought to tears anticipating something your mother was going to serve for dinner?
Seasonally, yeah, yeah. Stephen Colbert and Evie McGee Colbert have a new book called Does This Taste Funny? Recipes Our Family Loves. We'll be back after a short break. This is Fresh Air Weekend.
From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with Fresh Air Weekend. Today, Billie Eilish and Phineas O'Connell, the sister and brother music partners who are a global phenomenon. We'll talk about working together, becoming famous in their teens. family, how her voice is changing, and how her signature baggy clothes were inspired by hip-hop.
This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to our interview with Stephen Colbert and Evie McGee Colbert. They're married. She makes regular appearances on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. They're partners in a production company. And now they've co-authored a new cookbook called Does This Taste Funny? Recipes Our Family Loves.
Evie, are there things you had to sacrifice in your life when Stephen became famous and had this kind of consuming career and you had children?
Billy was the youngest to win two Oscars, one for the theme for the Bond film No Time to Die, and another for What Was I Made For? from the Barbie movie. She collaborated on both songs with Phineas. They're continuing to break records. Billie was the youngest most listened to artist on Spotify this year.
Right. Then you're going to be home. I mean, you're not traveling to different locations.
Right.
You're both from prominent families. Steve and your father died when you were 10. But before that, he'd been a director of a program at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. And he worked at the National Institutes of Health. And then the family moved to South Carolina. And he became the first vice president for academic affairs at the Medical University of South Carolina.
That was in 1969. Yeah. And, Evie, your father was a prominent civil litigator. He served in the South Carolina House of Representatives for three terms. He was a Democrat. Because your fathers were prominent, were you expected to be model children? Huh.
Yeah.
Their latest album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, is now nominated for six Grammys, including all the major categories. Each of its tracks reached over 150 million streams on Spotify. Phineas also has an independent career as a producer and recording artist. His second solo album was recently released called For Crying Out Loud. Billie spent her teen years in front of her fans and the press.
Stephen, I've known about your deep faith and Catholicism since The Daily Show when you were kind of like the religion correspondent and you had a regular feature called This Week in God.
Yes. And, you know, you still talk about religion on The Late Show. And you satirize religion. You satirize Catholicism. You satirize the Pope. So I was really surprised when the Pope invited you to the Vatican as part of a larger event. And I don't remember what the event was, but Jim Gaffigan was there. I think David Sedaris was there.
In 2019, music critic John Pirellis wrote in the New York Times, Eilish, age 17, has spent the last few years establishing herself as the negation of what a female teen pop star used to be. She doesn't play innocent or ingratiating or flirtatious or perky or cute. Instead, she's sullen, depressive, death-haunted, sly, analytical and confrontational, all without raising her voice.
Yeah.
Did you get to meet the Pope one-on-one?
Let's start with a song from Hit Me Hard and Soft. This is L'Amour de ma Vie, which is French for The Love of My Life.
I'd like you each to leave us with your favorite comfort food.
When you say carefree years, do you mean before your father died?
Yeah, taste is powerful. It's true.
And also working, it sounds like working together so closely on the show worked out okay.
Well, I don't cook fancy things or ambitious things, but I enjoyed seeing the recipes. I enjoyed all the anecdotes. So I'm so glad we got to talk. It's just been such a pleasure and a joy to speak with you both. You too. Thank you so much. And to you. And to you. Stephen Colbert and Evie McGee Colbert have a new book called Does This Taste Funny? Recipes Our Family Loves.
Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terri Gross.
Billy Eilish, Phineas O'Connell, welcome to Fresh Air. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. Billy, it strikes me you're singing more in a fuller voice. What's changing about your voice and how you choose to use it?
Did you want to do a whispery voice? Was that like a style choice or just like that's the way your voice was?
Yeah. And Phineas, I assume you do the arrangements.
I want to play a track because I like the instrumentation, the arrangement so much, and it's called The Diner. So Phineas, do you want to say a little bit about the instrumental track of this?
Later, Stephen Colbert and Evie McGee Colbert. They're married, she does bits with him on a CBS late-night show, and they've collaborated on a new cookbook.
So let's hear The Diner.
That was The Diner from the new Billie Eilish album, Hit Me Hard and Soft. And my guests are Billie Eilish and Phineas. Phineas, you're not on all of the current tour that Billie is on, and you've just released your second solo album. Does that have significant meaning in terms of the nature of your music partnership?
That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.
Billy, can you talk a little bit about when you were a teenager and you had all these like teenage teenagers, especially teenage girls as like such dedicated fans? What was it like for you to grow up? as a teenage star with so many teenage listeners, kind of idolizing you.
And then judging from what I've seen and read about you, you've been kind of insecure about yourself, not necessarily of your music, but for any insecurity you have, to have all these people turning you into an idol must have been, or maybe was, a little disorienting? Definitely.
Well, you were homeschooled, so it's not like you were hanging out in the schoolyard or in the classrooms with your peers.
What was a Coen Brothers approach to directing you from your point of view as an actor? What was it like to work with them?
The movie A Serious Man is also about struggling with your faith. Yes. Because the Michael Stubar character has conversations with rabbis, and he's kind of losing his faith because everything's going wrong in his life.
I know you were on Finding Your Roots, and you found out that some of your ancestors were religious leaders in the Pale of Settlement. Right, right. And the Pale of Settlement was, during the Russian Empire, it was a large area of what we now call Eastern Europe that was basically the ghetto for Jews. Jews had to live within this expanse of land. Right.
And so, so many American Jews, their grandparents or ancestors lived in the Pale of Settlement. What did it do to your own faith or religious practice, if you had any? I know you're born Jewish. I have no idea how observant you are. But what did it do to your level of observance to find out about people on your family tree being religious leaders?
Do you practice any—do you observe the holidays and the Sabbath and all that? Like, how far do you go?
What you're saying reminds me of something that you've told another interviewer, which is you said, I have a huge ego with no confidence. You want to explain?
I love that line so much.
Do you tell jokes? I mean, you obviously have a great sense of humor, but do you actually tell joke jokes?
Oh, great. Do you want to tell us one that you love?
Well, Richard Kind, thank you so much for talking with us.
That's my guest actor Richard Kind in his current role on the Netflix show Everybody's Live with John Mulaney as the announcer and Mulaney's sidekick. He does sketches, too.
The show conforms to the late-night format in the sense that there's an opening monologue, but then it becomes a panel discussion on a specific subject like funerals, loaning people money, and getting fired, with guests like Pete Davidson, Michael Keaton, Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Henry Winkler, John Waters, and Wanda Sykes.
Everybody's Live is live on Netflix Wednesday nights and streams after that. Richard Kind has been in hundreds of movies and TV shows. In the series Only Murders in the Building, he was the neighbor Vince Fish, a.k.a. Stink-Eyed Joe, with a highly contagious case of pink eye. In the animated film Inside Out, he was the voice of the imaginary friend Bing Bong.
In the Coen Brothers film A Serious Man, he was the deeply troubled brother. Earlier in his career, he co-starred in the series Mad About You and was a cast member of the Carol Burnett show Carol and Company. His youthful ambition was to be in a Stephen Sondheim musical. He's been in two.
He starred in a production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at the Stephen Sondheim Center for the Performing Arts. And in the musical Bounce, he originated the role of Addison Meisner and got to work with Sondheim. Kind was in the Michael J. Fox series Spin City. In Curb Your Enthusiasm, he was Larry David's cousin Andy.
And I think he's still angry that a recent series he co-starred in, East New York, was canceled after one season. Angry because he thought it was really good. Let's start with a clip from the latest episode of Everybody's Live with John Mulaney. Mulaney explains that Kind got hit on the head with a Kiss album, which left him with a traumatic brain injury, and now he thinks he's Gene Simmons.
He's dressed like Simmons, his hair is like Simmons, and he talks like Simmons, too. After he says something vulgar to Mulaney, Mulaney starts to apologize to the audience.
Richard Kind, welcome to Fresh Air. I have to ask you, because this question is as much about me as it is about you. So when I interviewed Gene Simmons many years ago, he said to me, if you want to welcome me with open arms, you'll also have to welcome me with open legs.
I got a lot of mileage out of that, though.
Yeah, got a lot of attention.
Yeah. Insulting me was actually doing me a favor.
Okay, okay. So, Everybody's Live, your new late-night talk show, is adapted from last year's Netflix series, Everybody's in L.A. How did Mulaney describe it to you when he asked you to be his sidekick?
Because it's live. Yeah, yeah.
You're an actor, and you've been in so many things, but you're not a big celebrity. Like, everybody's seen you in at least one thing. So many people know who you are, but you're not famous in the way that your good friend George Clooney is famous. That is correct. And you've said you like it that way.
Well, you got to be Zero Mostel. I did. You've been in his role in two shows. And a funny thing happened on the way to the Forum. I did.
And the producers.
I want to play a clip from the series Girls 5 Ever about a girl group that reunites.
That's a great scene. I love that scene. It's a great scene. Was that supposed to be a parody of you?
Is that how you feel, that you're a little bit of a fraud?
So you had a significant role in a film I really love, A Serious Man, that was made by the Coen brothers. And Michael Stuhlbarg plays a man whose wife is leaving him. He might be losing his teaching job. A student is kind of blackmailing him. His whole life is falling apart. And he's also wrestling with the concept of God and with his Judaism. You play his brother. You're a gambler. You're broke.
You have a sebaceous cyst that's become a big problem. You're in misery. And it's a kind of modern-day version of the book of Job. At least that's how I think of it. And I'm wondering if you thought of it that way and if you read or reread the book of Job to do the role and if people talked about it on the set. Not at all. I'm glad I asked.
Can you physically describe the monastery?
It is such a beautiful place. I don't mean the monastery itself, but Big Sur. And so I'm kind of wondering if going on a retreat there is like being in a privileged bubble. Or it's like getting in touch with something so elemental, so essential about nature, about the world.
How do you spend your day at the monastery?
Thank you so much.
When we first booked today's interview weeks ago, we had no idea how timely it would be and for such a tragic reason. My guest, Pico Ayer, has written a new memoir about what he's experienced and learned in the more than 30 years that he's been going on retreats in a Benedictine monastery to practice silence and for contemplation. to get both out of himself and the world, and deeper in.
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But the book begins with fire, and fire is a theme throughout. The monastery is surrounded by 900 acres of trees, and on one side, the ocean. It's in California's Big Sur, one of the most beautiful places in the U.S. On the first page, a monk is describing to Iyer a wildfire that came close to burning down the monastery. It wasn't the first time, and it wasn't the last time.
At one point, the road was blocked and there was no way out. A little later in the book, we learn that Iyer's family home in Santa Barbara, where they had lived for about a quarter century, where he was living at the time with his mother, that burned to the ground. At the time, that fire was part of the worst fire in California history.
He was at home, alone with his mother's cat, when he was suddenly surrounded by flames five stories high and had no way out. After three hours of terror, he was rescued by a Good Samaritan traveling around in a water truck with a hose. He and his mother lost everything, but he survived and the cat survived. His memoir is titled A Flame, Learning from Silence.
A Flame is about the flame of passion and commitment in the monastic life, even for visitors on a retreat like him, and it's about the destructive, deadly flames of fire. Ira is best known for his travel writing and for reporting and reflecting on the cultures and religions of the world.
His previous book, The Half-Known Life in Search of Paradise, found him traveling around the world to discover what different cultures and religions perceive as paradise. Iyer has known the Dalai Lama for decades and is the author of an earlier book about him. He spent a lot of time in monasteries, but remains secular. His mother was a professor of comparative religion.
He was born and grew up in England, where his parents moved from India to study. When his parents moved to the U.S., he remained in an English boarding school. He received degrees from Oxford and Harvard. We recorded our interview Monday. Pico Ayer, welcome back to Fresh Air. It's a pleasure to have you back on the show.
This is a very moving book and a really fascinating book because of your experiences at the monastery.
Are you in the house that your mother had rebuilt after it burned to the ground?
Why do you think your mother and the monastery keeps rebuilding when they know they're in the path of wildfires?
So you were trapped with flames five stories high. I don't even know how they would get that high since you weren't living in an apartment building or anything. But it seems like so terrifying. And I just wonder what went through your mind when you didn't think you had a way out.
And did images, almost like biblical images or images of Hindu funeral pyres, because your parents were from India, they're Hindu, did those kind of images flash before your eyes?
So you managed to get out of the house, but you were surrounded by flames in your car.
How were you changed after the fire? You'd lost all your possessions. You probably lost your manuscripts, your books, things that were really precious to you, probably photos, all kinds of things. You cared for your mother. She was in great distress. But you probably had a new outlook on being alive. How are you changed? And was it the fire that led you to seek out monastic retreats?
I wonder if things are really different for people who were parents who weren't a parent at the time.
So at the Benedictine Monastery, where you took refuge after the fire, They practice silence there, and you practice silence with intervals of talk as well. What did you find appealing about silence? Is that something you'd ever sought out before?
It's funny, speaking for myself, sometimes when I'm really alone for an extended period of time, my mind is quieter. But other times, the chatter gets louder because there's nothing to drown it out. There's no outside world or outside of maybe like the TV or books or whatever. But there's nothing to drown out the chatter or to distract. Did you experience that too at any point?
From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with Fresh Air Weekend. Today, itching. The kind that scratching only makes worse. The kind that can take over your brain.
Your husband made a T-shirt for you. Describe what was written on the T-shirt.
Do you ever, like, enter into a conversation with somebody and you're itching really badly and you're not going to say anything about it and you think, the person I'm talking to only knew what's going on inside. This conversation might be very different.
Her issue is related to a rare and degenerative liver disease. Part of her article is about her own itch and the extremes it's led her to. Lowry is a staff writer at The Atlantic, focusing on the economy and politics. She's a former staff writer at The New York Times and New York Magazine. Annie Lowry, welcome to Fresh Air. Is today an itchy day for you?
Your article ends with this, I'm here, my body tells me, I'm here, I'm alive, I'm dying, I'm here. It sounds like a meditation. Is this something that you repeat to yourself a lot?
What kind of insight?
So before we go, should we apologize to our listeners for making them itch in case we've done that?
I'm going to make the counter argument. I think this is very helpful to anyone who has itch.
Annie Lowry, thank you so much for talking with us. This interview has really been a pleasure, even though we've been talking about chronic itch and rare disease. You've brought a sense of understanding and a sense of humor to it all, and I greatly appreciate that. Thank you so much for having me. Annie Lowry is a staff writer at The Atlantic.
We've been talking about her article, Why People Itch and How to Stop It. If you're in search of some inspiration, beauty, and leavening humor in what you read in the coming weeks, our book critic, Maureen Corrigan, thinks she may have just what you're looking for.
So people are very dismissive of itch. And I want you to describe what your kind of itch feels like.
Maureen Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed Water, Water, the latest collection of poems by Billy Collins, and the illustrated adult fable The Dog Who Followed the Moon by James Norbury. Coming up, we'll hear from screenwriter and novelist Richard Price. His new novel, Lazarus Man, is one of the most anticipated books of the season.
I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. Several of his earlier novels were adapted into films, including Clockers, Freedomland, and The Wanderers. He also wrote the screenplay for the film Al Pacino considers his comeback film, Sea of Love.
Price is considered one of the best writers of urban fiction and one of the best writers of dialogue, and I think that's true of his new novel, which is set in Harlem, where Price has lived since 2008, the same year that the novel is set. The story revolves around the collapse of a five-story building whose impact is like a very small-scale 9-11.
It's devastating for the people in the neighborhood, including the survivors and the people grieving for loved ones who've died. The collapse changes the lives of each of the main characters, including a young street photographer, a police community affairs officer, a funeral director who can't keep up with the quota of bodies he needs to stay in business,
and a 42-year-old man who has been feeling like he's lost everything and has little to live for and is found buried in the rubble. It's remarkable that he's still alive, which is why the novel's called Lazarus Man.
Reviewing the novel in the Washington Post, Ron Charles wrote, For a nation riven and terrified, Lazarus Man is the strangest of urban thrillers, a thoughtful, even peaceful story about stumbling into new life. Richard Price, welcome back to Fresh Air. Because I love your writing, I want to start with a reading from the very beginning of the book.
When we spoke in 1986 after your novel, The Breaks, you said something that reminds me of something that you wrote in the paragraph that you read, this whole kind of like, maybe this time, that the whole idea of maybe this time can be a drug. You were talking about your feeling of discontent when you were, you know, younger and feeling like, You're over here, but it's over there.
And the minute you're over there, it's over here. This feeling of restlessness and discontent and maybe wanting to be someone else.
You wrote this novel during the COVID shutdown, at least part of it during the COVID shutdown. And I'm wondering if you were feeling more vulnerable at that time. I mean, you live in Manhattan, which was a city that had, like, trucks that had been turned into morgues. Were you thinking a lot about mortality and the unpredictability of life?
So you go out and talk to strangers?
You know, the book is called Lazarus Man. I'm wondering what the role of religion was in your life growing up.
Did you both keep that deal?
Your character of Anthony says this later. When things go good, we say God is good. But when things go south, that's apparently on us. Do you find a lot of truth in that?
Sure, yeah. No, absolutely.
Okay, so you mentioned that you were especially itchy on the bottom of your feet, your hands, and your scalp. Are those, if I use the word, popular sites for itch? And if so, why? I mean, a lot of people go around scratching their scalp.
There is a fair amount of gratitude in the novel. And I think gratitude and a gratitude practice has sometimes come to seem like a cliche. On the other hand, gratitude is a really important thing to have in your life and to be able to find gratitude in life. And I'm wondering for you as a writer, how do you take something that could be a cliche and turn it into something that's not?
Our guest Annie Lowry, a staff writer for The Atlantic, has written an article called Why People Itch and How to Stop It. She has severe chronic itch. Also, we hear from screenwriter and author of one of the most anticipated novels of the season, Richard Price. He wrote for HBO's The Wire and co-created HBO's The Night Of and The Outsider.
I want to talk with you a little bit about race, writing about race and race in this novel. Anthony, the character who was found under the rubble after the five-story building collapsed, he's biracial. His white father was kind of a race man. He taught African-American history. And you're right.
What his father could never understand was how all of his righteous defiance in the end had cost him nothing financially. because he could come and go in his angry white skin as he pleased.
Despite marrying a black woman and having mixed-race kids, there was no such thing as an honorary brother, no matter how many times you raised your fist in solidarity, or how many prison writing workshops you conducted, or how many times you got up in some cop's face.
And I'm wondering, like when you write about biracial or black characters or Latino characters, as you've done like throughout your career, have you faced any pushback by people saying you're appropriating other people's stories and you have no right to tell them?
You've always, to my knowledge, lived in multi-ethnic, multi-racial communities, including when you were growing up in the projects in the Bronx.
So that must be helpful in writing.
In your acknowledgments, you thank your children who raised you. What do you mean by that?
Did it relieve the burden of being trapped in yourself since you were responsible for others?
Richard Price, it's always great to talk with you. Thank you so much, and congratulations on the novel.
Richard Price's new novel is called Lazarus Man. Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer is Adam Staniszewski.
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Boldenado, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producers are Molly C.V. Nesper and Sabrina Siewert. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
I'm going to quote you. You write, itch becomes a constant, obnoxious, and shrill reminder that you are in a body. Describe what it means to you to be constantly reminded that you're in a body. Why don't you want that kind of reminder? And does it make your body feel like an opponent?
Well, let me ask you if you experience this. Sometimes when I get the kind of itch that if you scratch it, it just gets worse. So the first time you scratch it, it's like it explodes. It's almost like it bloomed, it blossomed, it's climactic. But at the same time, you know, the climax and then it ends, right?
Several of his novels, including Clockers, were adapted into films. He has a new novel. And Maureen Corrigan recommends two books if you're looking for inspiration, beauty and humor. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. Stress and anxiety can lead to itch. So I would imagine a lot of Americans have done a lot of scratching over the past few months.
But with itch, it's like it explodes and then it kind of keeps up at that like high level. It doesn't stop. Yeah.
Yeah. So that's a strange thing about itch. I just realized I'm scratching my scalp as we talk.
So, you know, in the itch-scratch cycle, if you scratch and itch, it releases histamine to that site and histamine makes you itch more. Is there any logic behind that?
So you're not supposed to scratch an itch because it can release histamine and amplify the itch instead of quieting it. But the doctor who's called the godfather of itch, Gil Yostapovich, you say he doesn't even suggest to patients that they shouldn't scratch their itch because if you're seeing him, you have pretty severe chronic itch. So why did he explain to you why he doesn't even suggest it?
My guest is Annie Lowry. We're talking about her Atlantic Magazine article, Why People Itch and How to Stop It. We'll hear more of our conversation after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Annie Lowry about her Atlantic Magazine article, Why People Itch and How to Stop It.
There's the kind of itch that you scratch and poof, no more itch. But sometimes, the more you scratch, the more you itch. And then there's the kind of itch that is so alive, explosive, persistent, and all-encompassing that nothing seems to help. And it hijacks your brain.
It's about what researchers are learning about the causes of chronic itch. Lowry suffers from severe chronic itch resulting from a rare liver disease. I would like you to describe the chronic progressive illness that you have that's responsible for the severe itch that you experience.
You write that scientists are thinking that it is sometimes a disease in and of itself. What is meant by that?
You point out that if you're in pain, there's so many pain clinics and pain medications and pain experts and pain support groups. If chronic severe itch is one of your problems, you can see a dermatologist, but there aren't a lot of centers that specialize in itch. And you couldn't even find a lot of support groups that deal with itch. And I think a lot of people have issues with itch.
That's the kind of itch that my guest Annie Lowry writes about in her Atlantic Magazine article titled Why People Itch and How to Stop It. It's about what researchers are learning about itch and how that's opening the door to new treatments. Lowry suffers from itch so intense she's dug holes in her skin and scalp and once asked a surgeon to amputate her limbs.
Why do you think, not as many as pain, but why do you think so little attention is being paid to itch and why comparatively little research has been done about itch when compared to pain?
From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with Fresh Air Weekend. Today, musician and documentary filmmaker Amir Questlove Thompson is back to talk about his newest documentary on Sly Stone and his band The Family Stone. It's called Sly Lives, The Burden of Black Genius. Also, Sebastian Stan talks about his Oscar-nominated portrayal of Donald Trump.
Yeah. And that has, like I said, the message of inclusivity and togetherness. But as someone in your documentary points out, that alienated a lot of black listeners in the sense that, you know, police were beating up black people, which, of course, you could say today as well. But it was a very it was and also like black power was was becoming a thing.
formed a multiracial band with his brother, sister, and other musicians, and went on to record hits like Everyday People, Dance to the Music, Family Affair, and Stand. Their music influenced Prince, George Clinton and Funkadelic, The Ohio Players, Earth, Wind & Fire, and many hip-hop artists. The film also covers the problems that came along with fame and drugs that took Sly down.
It's been so great to talk with you. And I just like all these projects you're doing. It's really remarkable. I really look forward to the Earth, Wind and Fire movie now.
Amir Questlove Thompson's new film is called Sly Lives, a.k.a. The Burden of Black Genius. It's streaming on Hulu. My next guest, Sebastian Stan, is nominated for an Oscar for his starring role as Donald Trump in the film The Apprentice. It begins in 1973 when Trump is 27, still working for his father's real estate development company and trying to make a name for himself.
The company is being sued for discriminating against black people in its rental units. Trump convinces his father to hire Roy Cohn as their attorney. Cohn was infamous for being the chief counsel to Senator Joe McCarthy's Senate investigation into suspected communists.
Cohn becomes Trump's mentor, teaching him how to admit nothing and deny everything, go on the attack, and intimidate through the threat of lawsuits or through actually filing lawsuits. Cohn is played by Jeremy Strong, who's also nominated for an Oscar.
Last month, Stan won a Golden Globe for his starring role in A Different Man, as a man who's disfigured by a genetic condition that has grown fleshy tumors on his face. The tumors disappear after taking a new drug, and he emerges quite attractive, but remains alienated and withdrawn from other people.
In the film I, Tonya, Sebastian Stan played Tonya Harding's boyfriend, who plots to disable her ice skating competitor Nancy Kerrigan. In the miniseries Pam and Tommy, he played Tommy Lee, Motley Crue's drummer and Pamela Anderson's husband. A lot of Stan's fans know him from the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Bucky Barnes, a recurring character in the Captain America films.
Let's start with a scene from The Apprentice. Trump is planning to build Trump Tower and is trying to convince New York City Mayor Ed Koch that it will be so extraordinary, Koch should give him tax breaks. It will be so good for New York. Roy Cohn is also in the room. You'll hear him jumping into the conversation.
Questlove is the co-founder of the hip-hop band The Roots, which is the house band for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. If you feel as if you just heard him on our show, you did when we talked about his other new documentary focused on Saturday Night Live's music guests and music sketches over the past 50 years. That one's called Ladies and Gentlemen, 50 Years of SNL Music.
Sebastian Stan, welcome to Fresh Air. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. I think you're great.
So after choosing that clip, first of all, I should say some listeners were probably thinking he doesn't sound like Trump. What would you say to that?
You made the film while Biden was president in between Trump's two terms. What's it like watching his second term after having played him?
So let's talk about your slide documentary. I really love this film. I want to start with a song, and it's their first big hit. It's Dance to the Music. It's so catchy, and I'd like you to point out what makes this song special in its moment, which was 1967 or 8?
Playing him, I'm sure you had to be him and see things from his point of view, which requires you, the actor, to have empathy for Trump, the character that you're portraying.
Sebastian Stan is nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of Donald Trump in the film The Apprentice. We'll hear more of the interview after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. I want to move on to another new film of yours, which has been playing on HBO lately, and I assume on Max. And that's A Different Man, for which you won a Golden Globe in January.
And in this film, you're afflicted with neurofibromatosis, which is a genetic disease. That creates fleshy tumors and for you, fleshy tumors on the face. So you're kind of treated a bit like an outcast because people stare at you. They might move away. The character who you're attracted to, who seems to be very fond of you, just recoils when you try to touch her.
So then you're part of a new drug experimental trial, and the drug cures the condition. The tumors kind of fall away, and you're very attractive underneath. You have a beautiful face. It's your face. It's Sebastian Stan's face. but your character doesn't change. You're alienated, you're isolated, and that's not going to change.
Okay. So what makes this song so special in its moment?
I'm wondering how much this film made you think about looks and how looks determine how people are treated in this world, which is something a lot of us think about all the time.
Tell me about what you experienced doing that.
You grew up in Romania, and when you were growing up, I think you lived there till, what, the age of eight or nine?
Yeah, so you were very young during the end of communism in Romania when the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown. He was the head of the Communist Party there. There were protests. There were violent confrontations between the protesters and police. In 1989, as Ceausescu and his wife tried to escape, they were captured. He stood trial, found guilty, and was executed there.
How aware were you as a child of what was happening in the country you were living in?
They televised it?
How was he executed?
Oh, that was it?
So your father was able to get out of Romania before the communist government fell. And I know he helped other people get out as well. Was he still married to your mother at the time?
Were you ever able to talk to him about this?
Were you surprised to hear some of the things he told you about his past?
When you came here, you had already lived in Romania. You had to learn German from scratch when you and your mother moved to Vienna. And I think, how old were you when you came to the U.S.?
Okay, so you grow up in Romania where there's an hour of TV a night and it's probably just propaganda. And then you move to America where everybody just like watches TV and goes to the movies and this is before – probably before the heavy days of the internet and social media. Yeah.
None of that.
You say blew your mind, but I can imagine that a lot of pop culture did because you weren't a part of it. You didn't get to grow up with it the way everybody around you in America did.
What did you do to try to catch up?
It seems like you spent part of your early life in hiding. Literally, you had to watch what you said in Romania. In Vienna, you had to learn German to fit in, and you had to learn that from scratch. You come to America, you try to be like other teens, even though you had a totally different background than American teens did.
So there's a lot that you had to acquire and a lot probably that you had to hide.
So I'm thinking about your mother here. Your mother moves with you and your new stepfather to New York. It's always hard to uproot a child and uproot them to another country. That's probably super hard.
But I'm thinking the life you have now, the respect and fame that you've achieved, all that you've accomplished must make her feel really good about the decisions that she made and alleviate any guilt that she might have experienced at the beginning when you were trying so hard to acclimate to a new country.
So at the Oscars, I always wonder what's it like if you lose and the camera is on you and you have to pretend like I'm so happy for the winner. That's so wonderful.
Sebastian Stanis, it's just been great to talk with you. Thank you so much and good luck at the Oscars.
Sebastian Stan is nominated for an Oscar for his starring role in the film The Apprentice. Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
In the film The Apprentice, he plays Trump early in his career. The filmmakers received a cease-and-desist letter from Trump's lawyers, And Trump called the filmmakers human scum.
Literally?
All right. Thank you for that. Let's hear a dance to the music.
So that was Sly and the Family Stones, 1968 hit, Dance to the Music. And the drumming is so infectious. It's hard not to move when you hear that. And it's not fancy.
Stan is originally from Romania, born during a communist dictatorship. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.
So, but there's a lot going on in that song, including like the, the kind of scatting part of,
But then he also does a lot of things that become beats for hip-hop artists later.
My guest is Amir Questlove Thompson. His new documentary, Sly Lives, a.k.a. The Burden of Black Genius, is now streaming on Hulu. We'll hear more of our conversation after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.
This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. Today, Amir Questlove-Thompson is back to talk about the life and legacy of Sly Stone. Questlove's new documentary, called Sly Lives, a.k.a. The Burden of Black Genius, is about the impact of Sly Stone and his band Sly and the Family Stone on music and culture. Sly got his start as a DJ and record producer in the early 1960s.
So I want to play another Sly track and talk about it with you because I found the film so interesting in really pointing to specifically what makes Sly's music so interesting and catchy and why so many people kind of, as you put it, use his vocabulary. So I want to play everyday people because this has significance in a lot of ways.
I mean, Sly's band is made up of black and white musicians, male and female musicians, and everyday people speaks to inclusivity, right? So can you talk about that a little bit in terms of the types of music that are drawn on in Sly's music and the kind of inclusivity that he represented within the band and in some of his lyrics?
Well, let's hear everyday people, and this is from 1969. So that was Everyday People, which, as you pointed out, has a kind of nursery rhyme part to it.
You were the music director and band leader at The Late Night with Stephen Colbert from its inception in 2015 until 2022. Toward the end of that period, which is also the period that you were nominated for a record number of Grammys in different categories. And you won five Grammys, including Album of the Year. Your now wife, Sulayka Jouad, she was very sick.
She had had a recurrence of leukemia that she'd had about 11 years before that. And she needed a bone marrow transplant, her second one, because she had one during the first occurrence. And those are just awful. I mean, basically, they give you this very, very heavy-duty chemo that nearly kills you. It kills your immune system so that you don't fight the transplant.
But a lot of people come like within like an inch of death and then have to, you know, recover and your immune system shot. So you can't be around anything or anybody that might expose you to any kind of germ. What was it like for you to be living in two worlds at once? You're getting all these accolades, you're performing on the Grammys, you're You're still at late night with Stephen Colbert.
People are seeing you every night. You have a reputation of joy, of bringing joy to where you are. And meanwhile, your wife is really suffering. I'm sure you are suffering just, you know, watching her. What was it like to have two worlds at the same time?
Can you play one of the lullabies that you sent her?
That was beautiful, John.
You know, the beginning, getting back to Beethoven, the beginning of that reminded me of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.
Am I crazy for saying that, by the way?
It's always a joy when John Batiste joins us at the piano, and that's how I felt about the session we recorded last week with him at the piano. Batiste was the bandleader and music director of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert from its premiere in 2015 until 2022.
That same year, his album called We Are received 11 Grammy nominations in seven different categories and won five Grammys, including Album of the Year. He wrote the score for this year's film Saturday Night about the first SNL broadcast. He also appears in the film as musician Billy Preston, the first musical guest. Batiste is a jazz musician who also studied classical music at Juilliard,
where he got his B.A. and M.A. and is now on the board. But his music is more expansive than jazz and classical, as you can tell just by the varied Grammy categories in which he's been nominated for or won awards. Jazz performance, American root song, contemporary classical composition,
jazz instrumental, R&B album, improvised jazz solo, pop duo or group performance, and original score for the animated film Soul. He currently has two Grammy nominations, Best Music Film and Best Song Written for Visual Media, for the documentary American Symphony. The film is about composing his American Symphony and performing the premiere in Carnegie Hall.
The film also developed into something totally unexpected, a document of the period his wife, Sulayka Jawad, was diagnosed with a recurrence of leukemia, which had been in remission for over 10 years. The occasion for his appearance today is his new album, Beethoven Blues. It features his reimaginings of Beethoven compositions.
Since we're fortunate to have him at the piano, he'll play some of the music from that album and more. John Batiste, welcome back to Fresh Air. I love your new album. The documentary about you and your wife's bone marrow transplant was really moving, so it's a pleasure to have you back on our show. And how is she?
She sounds that way from the documentary, and I'm very glad to hear that. So I want to start with some music, and you are at the piano, so you will be playing it for us. And the lead track of your Beethoven Blues album is for Elise. And I think anyone who's taken piano lessons with any amount of classical music has had to learn this. And you do some really fascinating things with it.
Why is it the lead track of the album?
Yeah, and you learned it as a kid?
So before you play it, I want to ask you, are you going to play it like you played it on the album? Because my understanding is you did a lot of improvising in real time for that recording. Or are you going to do different things with it now?
Okay, let's hear it. You're at the piano. Can you play it?
Thank you.
That was great. That's John Batiste at the piano at the studio of WNYC. And it's also the lead Beethoven tune on his new album, Beethoven Blues. And John, that sounded great. You know, you mentioned in, I think, your official statement about the album that you think Beethoven is really kind of connected to the blues, even though he's centuries before the blues.
Can you just like illustrate what you mean by that? Like play some passage of Beethoven that makes you think of the blues?
Tell me what you mean.
Don't you find it interesting that there are certain like harmonies, chords, rhythms that it took centuries or millennia to get to? You know, like jazz chords, gospel chords, like they weren't, quote, invented yet in Beethoven's time.
So there's another Beethoven symphony excerpt that I'd like you to play for us, if you will. And it's from a symphony number five, which, again, is something like everybody knows. It's da-da-da-dum, that one.
So what do you hear in this that made you want to reimagine it, improvise on it?
Yeah, love it. And so John Batiste's new album is called Beethoven Blues. He's performing for us at the piano from the studio of WNYC in New York. And everything that he's just played is also on his new album. We'll hear more with John Batiste after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.
I want to play another track from your new album, and this is called True Believer. Do you want to say anything about writing this song before we hear it? This is another relationship song, another breaking up or broken up kind of song.
Yeah, well, I do too. So this is True Believers.
My guest Jason Isbell was described in Variety as the poet laureate of American rock. The quibble I have with that is that I'm not exactly sure I'd call it rock because there's country and folk music blended into many of his songs. Maybe the word Americana more suits him. He's won nine Americana Music Awards and six Grammys. His lyrics are as well written as a good poem or short story.
So that's Jason Isbell from his new album, Foxes in the Snow. The song is called True Believer. You had asked me earlier, like, give me an example of a line where I sound critical of my ex or of an ex. So from the song we just heard, two separate lines, take your hand off my knee, take your foot off my neck. And then all your girlfriends say, I broke your bleeping heart, and I don't like it.
There's a letter on the nightstand. I don't think I'll ever read it. So that sounds, it sounds angry, and you sing it angry.
When you get to, I finally found a match. No, what's the next line? I'm trying to remember what the next line is.
Take your hand off my knee and your foot off my neck. I love these songs, so I'm not criticizing you or the song. I'm just wondering what it's like to write songs that are critical of somebody you've been so close to or at least seem to be about that.
So we're unfortunately out of time. I want to end with some music. I've picked all the music for this interview. So it's your turn. I want you to pick something to end with.
No, we haven't. I was thinking of that, too. I really love that one.
They're often very personal, and that was especially true of his album Southeastern, which was released in 2013 and was his first album since Getting Sober. It's also true of his new album, Foxes in the Snow, on which he sounds especially naked because it's solo. His band, the 400 Unit, sits this one out. It's just Isbell and his guitar.
So we'll end with Eileen, but first I want to thank you so much for talking with us. It's really been a pleasure to have you back on the show, and thanks for the new album.
Some of the songs are about the blame, anger, and guilt when a relationship ends and about the exhilaration of falling in love again. His ex-wife, Amanda Shires, is also a songwriter and singer and violinist who performed with Isbell. She's written her own songs about the cracks in their relationship.
They were in a 2023 documentary together called Running With Our Eyes Closed, which is about the making of Isbell's 2020 album, Reunions, on which she played fiddle. The film also ended up being about the tension in the marriage, which was exacerbated during the COVID lockdown when they spent more time together than they ever had.
Jason Isbell got his professional start with the band The Drive-By Truckers. Before we hear some of the relationship songs, let's start with a song that opens the album. I love this one. It's called Bury Me.
That was Bury Me from Jason Isbell's new album, Foxes in the Snow. Jason Isbell, welcome back to Fresh Air. I love this album. Congratulations on it. And I love this song. And I hope I don't mangle this, but I want to quote some of the lyric. This is the chorus. I ain't no cowboy, but I can ride. I ain't no outlaw, but I've been inside.
And there were bars of steel, boys, and there were bars to sing. And there were bars with swinging doors for all the time between. That's so great because you're talking about a jail with bars of steel, music, which has bars delineating each segment, you know, each like four notes or whatever. And bars with swinging doors, those are like old Western saloons that have those swinging doors.
And you were a drinker for years. So that's just, it's like, were you in jail too? Yeah.
For drinking too much?
So you imagine you managed to incorporate some of your own story into this kind of cowboy song.
Is it with the Gates of Heaven?
Was death on your mind when you wrote this?
I'm going to tell you my dilemma as a listener. And I'll preface this by saying I really love this album. So I first interviewed you in 2013 after Southeastern, your first album since Getting Sober. And at that time, you seemed so much in love with your wife, who I think you were already married, Amanda, who's also a songwriter and singer and violinist.
And then I interviewed her in 2022 when she had an album out that included a couple of songs about fractures in the relationship. And your new album includes songs about factors in your relationship and ending a relationship, the pain of separating, the guilt of all of it, falling in love with someone new after. And listening, I sometimes think like, am I supposed to be taking sides here?
Because I like her songs. I like your songs. I can see both sides, you know. It's kind of like friends of yours are breaking up and you're supposed to choose to like who stays your friend afterwards, you know. And then I thought, like, no, that's not what I want to do.
What I want to do is really enjoy both of your songs and appreciate each point of view and know that there's things in each of those points of view that I identify with. So I want to talk with you about writing these songs, but I also don't want to trespass on your privacy. So let's find a way to talk about it without getting too personal and making anyone uncomfortable. Mm-hmm.
So I guess the first thing I'm wondering is like if you write a song that is critical of the person who had been married to and who's the mother of your daughter, Do you feel guilty about it? Do you fear, is there a form of self-censorship that comes in because you don't want to hurt the other person? Or do you just write what you want to write?
And I think this is something that particularly memoirists run into all the time.
The song I'm about to play, for example, which is Gravel Weed. I was a gravel weed and I needed you to raise me. I'm sorry the day came when I felt I was raised. So it's kind of like you needed her to help you get through a period. And now you don't need her anymore because you got through it.
That's true. You say, when I felt I was raised. Yes.
So you think you're being self-critical?
So let's play the song. And I'll say I'm from Brooklyn and I had to look up what a gravel weed was.
Well, I looked it up and it looks like it grows really tall with flowers.
In the part of the country where you're from, which is Alabama.
All right. Let's hear the actual song, written and performed by my guest Jason Isbell.
So that's Jason Isbell, Gravel Weed, from his new album, which is called Foxes in the Snow. I want to quote another line from there, which is, But now I've lived to see my melodies betray me. I'm sorry the love songs all mean different things today.
Can you talk about that a little bit, having written love songs about one person and then written, inspired, I think, by the same relationship, songs about the relationship ending? How do those old love songs sound to you now, and do you still play them? Can you still play Cover Me Up, for instance?
So many love songs and breakup songs have been written in every genre for centuries. How do you find new things to say, new words to use in a love song? I mean, Ira Gershwin even wrote a lyric, what can you say in a love song that's never been said before?
Something that's similar and different is clothing. Like in the military, you have a uniform, which is kind of a costume, but it's a uniform. Everybody has the uniform. And in movies, like you've worn so many different kinds of costumes over the years. So do you feel like clothing... Like your interest in clothing, was that influenced in the negative or positive by the uniforms of the military?
And I don't know even if you ever saw your father or any other of your relatives or even your brother in uniform and what that meant to you.
I think you've just described your interest in androgynous style.
You've described yourself as queer, but not in the LGBTQ community. spectrum. So when you use the word queer, what do you mean?
We're all queer fish. I know in boarding school you were bullied. What were you bullied for, do you know?
Tilda Swinton, it's just been great to talk with you. Thank you so much, and thank you for making this movie. I just really love your new movie.
Thank you so much. Be well. And you.
My guest, Tilda Swinton, stars in a new, beautiful movie called The Room Next Door. She plays a war correspondent who has dodged death several times. Now she has cancer, for which she's received harsh treatments, including in clinical trials. But the cancer progresses. She's rejecting more treatment, refusing to continue suffering, and has decided it's time to end her life.
The film is about suffering and death and choice, but it's a beautiful film because of the sometimes poetic dialogue, the emotional depth.
The relationship between the two main characters and the contrast between Swinton's ghostly presence in the film and the vibrant, color-saturated world around her, including the clothes, the walls, and the furniture, and the woods, it's a form of beauty and contrast I've come to expect from the film's writer and director, Pedro Almodovar.
He's Spanish, and this is his first English-language feature film. Tilda Swinton started off in the film Avant-Garde. She made several films with the director Derek Jarman, including her first film, Caravaggio, and never expected, or maybe never even sought, commercial success. But she got it anyway.
Many filmgoers were introduced to her in the title role of the 1992 film Orlando, adapted from a 1928 Virginia Woolf novel, in which a young nobleman, a Swinton won an Oscar for her performance in the popular 2007 legal thriller Michael Clayton.
She's been in several Wes Anderson films, the Joanna Hogg films The Souvenir and The Eternal Daughter, and the Luca Guadagnino films I Am Love, Suspiria, and A Bigger Splash, the Julio Torres film Problemista, and the Coen brothers Hail Caesar and Burn After Reading. Swinton even has a place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the Ancient One.
Her new film, The Room Next Door, is adapted from the 2020 novel What Are You Going Through? by Sigrid Nunes. Swinton's character, Martha, is planning to end her life. She doesn't want to die in her Manhattan home surrounded by things she loves. She thinks it will be easier to die in a house in the woods that has no personal connection.
So she rents a beautiful home in the woods for one month, planning on dying before the month is up. She wants solitude, but she also wants a friend to accompany her. After several friends decline, she asks an old friend who Martha had lost touch with. The friend, Ingrid, played by Julianne Moore, is a novelist who has found out Martha is sick and has been visiting her.
Ingrid's latest novel draws on her own fear of death. Here's Tilda Swinton as Martha, explaining the situation to Ingrid.
Tilda Swinton, welcome to Fresh Air. I love this movie. I love your performance in it. And I want to congratulate you for making something that is so moving with such a great performance.
Yes, and Happy New Year to you. I know you had friends, including your close friend, Derek Jarman, who made the first films you were in, who died during the AIDS epidemic, and your parents died. Are there ways, I know you have a lot of people in your life who have died, are there ways in which the screenplay and your character connect with you on a very personal level?
So many of Almodovar's movies are about death or pain or hospitalization, and they're all so beautiful.
So what was it like for you after having, you know, borne witness to and helped people who were close to you and were dying? What's it like for you to be on the other side in this role as the person who is dying and wants to terminate her life?
And just in case people get the characters' names confused, Ingrid is the person who's helping your character. Your character is dying. Yes. She's accompanying you.
The friends and family whose deaths you witnessed and whose end of life you witnessed, were they fearful of death? Some of them.
Your character is kind of ghostly in it. And you're very pale because you're dying. And it's such a contrast to the world of saturated color that surrounds you. And I'm wondering, did you do anything to make yourself appear more ghostly?
You're from a military family. Seems to me you went in the opposite direction in your artistic life. You got your start in the avant-garde. And the avant-garde, it breaks the rules. It's unconventional. And in the military, there are rules that are strictly followed. And it's hard to be—unless you're thinking of an unconventional war strategy and you're in a leadership position—
It's kind of funny to see a five-year-old playing an adult in crisis.
He's totally disillusioned.
Well, you became an actor.
You were going to turn down the role in Godfather II. Yes.
But for Godfather II, I mean, Godfather I was already a success.
Mario Puzo comes up to you with the script that he'd written, and he said, this is crap.
to falling in love with the language of the great playwrights Strindberg, Chekhov, and Shakespeare, getting his start in avant-garde theater in Greenwich Village, surprising himself by becoming a movie star, nearly dying from COVID, and all the ups and downs along the way. In case you need to be reminded, some of his now classic films include Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, and Scarface.
Wait, so was the script rewritten? No.
This is a great script. I know, it was a great script. Coppola rewrote the script?
It was hard because of your personal life?
You're too young. Valium?
I didn't take it, but certainly knew all about it. I mean, it was everywhere. There were jokes about it and dramas about it. It was like one of the first really popular anti-anxiety medications.
How did you manage to get through the film? You're so good at it. I mean, you're so good in the film. How did you manage?
He's had to emotionally shut down to do what he felt he needed to do.
Did that have an impact on you? It had to.
Although he starred along with Robert De Niro in Godfather II, they never had a scene together. But they were together in Heat and more recently in Martin Scorsese's film The Irishman. Pacino won an Oscar for his performance in Scent of a Woman. He won an Emmy for his performance in the HBO adaptation of the play Angels in America, playing Roy Cohn.
Thank you so much for talking with us. Oh, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for all your great films, all your great performances, and for the book. Thank you very much.
Al Pacino's new memoir is called Sunny Boy. In the new World War II drama Blitz, Saoirse Ronan plays a London factory worker trying to protect her young son as German bombs fall across the city. It's the latest movie written and directed by the English filmmaker Steve McQueen. Blitz is playing in theaters and begins streaming on Apple TV Plus on November 22nd.
Our film critic Justin Chang has this review.
He starred in the film adaptation of David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Glengarry Glen Ross, and later starred in a Broadway revival of the show, but in a different role. Al Pacino, welcome to Fresh Air. So exciting to have you here.
I want to get to a lot of your life. I want to start by talking about The Godfather. So I want to start with a scene from the first Godfather film. You've begun your transformation into the killer Michael, into the crime family Michael. You know, you start coming home from the military. You don't want any part of the crime family. But then you're kind of pulled in after your father is shot.
Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker. He reviewed Blitz, starring Saoirse Ronan. She also stars in the new film The Outrun about a young alcoholic trying to get sober. Coming up, we'll talk with Saoirse Ronan. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. Our next guest is four-time Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan.
We just heard about her film Blitz. She also stars in the new film The Outrun. She starred in the earlier films Little Women, Lady Bird, and Atonement. She spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Boldenado.
So here's a scene from Godfather 1. You've begun your transformation into the hardened Michael. Your father's still alive, but Michael is preparing to take over from him. And you have become so hardened, like you hardly blink in some scenes, including this one. So you're with Mo Green, a Vegas casino owner, kind of modeled on Bugsy Siegel. And the Corleone family has helped back him.
From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with Fresh Air Weekend. Today, Al Pacino talks about the godfather and about growing up in the South Bronx with a single mother, little money, and friends who never made it out alive. He has a new memoir. Also, we hear from Saoirse Ronan. She stars in two new films, including The Outrun, about a young woman struggling with alcoholism.
Also on the scene is Michael's older brother, but not very bright brother, Fredo, played by John Cazale, and the family lawyer, Tom, played by Robert Duvall. Mo Green is played by Alex Rocco. You speak first.
To try to get sober, she moves back to her family's sheep farm in Scotland. Ronan had to learn new skills for that role.
Saoirse Ronan spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Boldenado. Her films The Outrun and Blitz are in theaters. Blitz will start streaming on Apple TV+, November 22nd. Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer is Adam Staniszewski.
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Bodonato, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producers are Molly C.V. Nesper and Sabrina Seward. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
I just love that scene so much.
It works. Just hearing it and not seeing it.
You know, I interviewed Michael Caine years ago, the great actor Michael Caine, and he was saying when you're playing a powerful person, you don't wave your hands around. Because when you have the power, people are looking at your every subtle gesture. They're trying to read you. They're trying to stay in your good graces and stay safe. And so weak people move their hands around.
Powerful people don't. When we started talking, you were moving around a lot. So I'm thinking, was it hard for you to be as still as Michael is when he is exerting his power? Because he knows how to not be still when he needs to, but he can be very still and very opaque and very threatening at the same time.
Yeah, I was wondering. Okay.
You literally, like, don't blink in that scene. I think you blinked once. How do you do that?
Ronan's other film currently in theaters is the World War II drama Blitz. Our film critic Justin Chang will have a review. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. My guest is Al Pacino.
So you grew up in the South Bronx. You hung out with a pretty tough crowd. Yeah. And you used to, like, jump from rooftop to rooftop. Oh, yeah. We were wild. You threw trash down. You'd be on the rooftop and throw trash down on Saturday nights to young men with their dates.
Where was the fun in doing that?
At least three of your closest friends died of drug-related deaths. Were they heroin overdoses?
How did you manage to avoid that yourself?
How old was she when she died? Did she get to see you be successful?
Your parents divorced before you were two. When you were around eight months old, you were taken away from your mother. No.
You stayed with your grandparents.
And you say at least you were placed with family and not a foster home. Why were you taken away from your mother?
After finding out about that?
Trauma you didn't even know you had. That's interesting.
But that doesn't mean it didn't affect you.
So we need to take a short break here. So let me reintroduce you. My guest is Al Pacino, and he's written a new memoir called Sunny Boy. We'll hear more of our interview after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.
And I'm a newsletter fan. I read it every Saturday after breakfast. The newsletter includes all the week's shows, staff recommendations, and Molly picks timely highlights from the archive.
So subscribe at whyy.org slash fresh air and look for an email from Molly every Saturday morning. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Al Pacino. He has a new memoir called Sunny Boy. When we left off, we were talking about growing up in the South Bronx with his grandparents and single mother.
Well, I'm going to ask Pacino about his business, by which I mean his art.
There was a point where your mother was crying and kissing you all over. And you were very young and you weren't understanding what's up. Why is this happening? And then you return home and you see there's an ambulance in front of the building. And it's your mother who they're there for. Was that, did she attempt to die by suicide? Yeah.
Did it register on you what had happened? Did you comprehend it?
It did, I know. It's you slamming the table.
Yeah. She must have loved movies because she took you to the movies when you were... Oh, she loved everything.
So I'm going to talk to Pacino about his remarkable performance in the Godfather films and other films. We'll also talk about his life. He's written a new memoir called Sunny Boy, which is the name his mother used to call him. It spans his life from the days he grew up in the South Bronx, raised by a single mother with little money.
She took you to see, when you were five, she took you to see The Lost Weekend starring Ray Moland as this raging alcoholic. It's a great film, but he gets very self-destructive. And I don't know, you were five and then you started acting out those scenes at home? Yeah, I started acting out the scenes.
It's so ridiculous.
And also, sitcom families, I mean, the idea was they're typically supposed to have children and be like an average, quote, normal nuclear family, a husband and wife and kids. And so, like, you can't have kids without being pregnant. It's just so absurd. Anyhow...
You couldn't say pregnant?
I want to skip ahead to an episode of I Love Lucy in which she's just found out she's pregnant because she's really wanted to have a baby. She is just glowing. And Ricky is about to come home. So she's always imagined what it was going to be like to tell her husband, we're going to have a baby. She's going to make him a nice meal, put her arms around him and deliver the news.
It's going to be romantic and perfect. So she makes him a great lunch, puts it on the table in the living room. He comes in. He's had a terrible day. He's in a really foul mood, and he's very, very hungry, and all he wants to do is eat. So I want to play that scene.
One of the things I like about this scene is the difference between the fantasy you imagine and the reality that you get. But Lucila Ball, I think, was very pregnant at the time because she's wearing what really looks like maternity clothes. Do you know how pregnant she was, how expectant she was when they shot that scene?
And this is set at a nightclub where he's the band leader. And he gets a note saying there's a couple here who is going to have a baby. And he asked, like, well, who is it? And nobody raises their hand or stands up. So he goes from table to table basically saying, is it you? Is it you? And then he realizes Lucy is there. And he realizes they're going to have a baby. And then he sings this song.
So that's an example, too, of how they worked the fact that Ricky Ricardo was a band leader in a nightclub into the story.
Did they send out press releases explaining that both happened on the same day?
And that's really important because they were so afraid to have a pregnant character on TV, even though the actress was pregnant, too. And it turned out to be a real boom for the show.
What was Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's relationship like on and off the set? It seemed pretty tumultuous both on and off the set.
Can I stop you there? I mean, he learned that from his father and grandfather in Cuba who both had mistresses. And he was introduced to what was then called a prostitute and is now called a sex worker when he was 15 to initiate him.
Todd Purdom, it's been a pleasure to have you back on the show.
Lucy, I'm home. That's a phrase Desi Arnaz was known for in the sitcom I Love Lucy.
That was one of his signature songs. The conga was the rhythm he helped popularize in the U.S., beating out on his conga drum as people danced to the beat of 1-2-3-kick. Arneza's movie career didn't go far, but playing Ricky Ricardo, husband of Lucille Ball's character Lucy Ricardo, made him a star.
Just getting a major TV role was quite a feat because networks and sponsors were skeptical that a Cuban refugee with an accent would be accepted by American viewers. I Love Lucy premiered in 1951 when TV was young and ended its run of new shows in 1957. It became the first show in TV history to reach 10 million people. For years, it was the most popular show on TV.
A lot of that is credited to Ball's comedic talent and to the work Arnaz did in front of the camera and behind the scenes, creating what became standard procedures for producing, shooting, lighting, and broadcasting TV sitcoms, ¶¶
The new book, Desi Arnaz, The Man Who Invented Television, by my guest Todd Purdom, is about Arnaz, I Love Lucy, the early days of TV, the seminal role he played in shaping it, his marriage to Lucille Ball, and the excesses that did him in. Purdom spent 23 years at the New York Times, where he covered the White House, was diplomatic correspondent, and L.A. bureau chief.
He's the author of the previous books, Something Wonderful, Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway Revolution, and An Idea Whose Time Has Come, Two Presidents, Two Parties, and The Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I Love Lucy is still part of current pop culture. It continues to play in reruns on TV.
Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem starred as Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in the 2021 film Being the Ricardos. In 2022, Amy Poehler directed the documentary Lucy and Desi. Todd Purdom, welcome back to Fresh Air. I really enjoyed the book. It has so much interesting TV history in it. Networks and sponsors were not enthusiastic about the idea of a Latino man starring in a sitcom.
What were their problems?
How had he been typed in his earlier years in the movies?
He'd been a successful band leader.
He wasn't a great singer either, I'll add that. And a lot of his songs were novelty songs.
Meanwhile, Lucille Ball wasn't getting the traction that she wanted in movies either.
So at the point that I Love Lucy is about to begin, she was starring in a radio sitcom called My Favorite Husband. And now that TV was beginning to catch on, the network thought we should transfer it to TV and make it a TV sitcom. And that's not what she really wanted to do. She wanted herself and Desi to who was her husband by then, to have their own sitcom.
So talk about how they made the deal to co-star in a new TV series.
And Philip Morris, of course, was a very big cigarette manufacturer. And the sponsors were so influential at that time. Their name was even in the title of some shows. What I love is, and I didn't know this until reading your book, that the opening credits in the original broadcast, not the reruns, not in syndication, but in the original broadcast, why don't you describe what the opening was like?
It wasn't the Hart logo with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, I Love Lucy. It was completely different.
So at the time, TV shows were mostly live or on kinescopes. Why don't you explain what a kinescope is?
So what was Desi Arnaz's solution to getting around the fact that you couldn't really broadcast from coast to coast and kinescopes looked really terrible? Yeah.
So when Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz shot the pilot, which was basically an audition for them, she was pregnant and wore baggy clothes to cover it up because she couldn't look pregnant on TV. And then later in the series, she was actually pregnant again with their son. And the writers...
And Lucille Bollandese-Arnaz wanted to write that into the story of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, but the network was against it. Why was showing a pregnant woman so taboo? Like a pregnant actress playing a pregnant character, why was that so taboo?
What I read about when Trevor Noah resigned is that you had just done a bit. And then without you knowing that Trevor Noah was resigning, he resigns on the air right after you're on. Were you on camera? Yes. You were on camera.
Our long national nightmare is over. Beyonce has finally won the Grammy for Album of the Year. How and why did it take so long for Beyonce to win the top prize at Music's Biggest Night? We're talking about her big wins and breaking down the Grammys for Kendrick Lamar, Chapel Roan, and Sabrina Carpenter. Listen to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR.
Why did he do it that way?
Maybe he didn't want anybody to leak it.
That's a possibility.
What was the expression on your face like as you heard him resigning?
You might have also been thinking, uh-oh, what happens to The Daily Show? What happens to my job?
Ronny Chieng, thank you so much for coming on our show. It's been a pleasure.
Ronnie Chang's new Netflix comedy special, Love to Hate It, is streaming on Netflix. My next guest, Miranda July, was a bit afraid of what people would think of her after publishing her second novel, All Fours. The book is partly about sexuality and has some very explicit sexual scenes, but that's true of many books.
Her larger fear was the theme of a woman reaching midlife and entering perimenopause, the time in a woman's life when she's transitioning into menopause and is experiencing some of the many symptoms associated with that time of life. For her main character, the fears are of losing her libido, dealing with strange moods, anxiety, and the thought of being seen as an older woman.
But the book has gotten the opposite reaction Miranda July feared. It was on many of 2024's 10 best lists, including in The New York Times, in which it was described as the year's literary conversation piece, and in The New Yorker, where it was described as, quote, a study of crisis, the crisis being how middle age changes sex, marriage, and ambition.
July's moving, very funny book is at once buoyant about the possibilities of starting over and clear-eyed about its costs, unquote. Our critic at large, John Powers, described all fours as hilariously unpredictable.
This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. He had a memorable funny scene in Crazy Rich Asians as a wealthy investment banker in Singapore. Ronnie Chang has a new Netflix comedy special called Love to Hate It, which starts streaming tomorrow. He brings an international perspective to his comedy. He was born in Malaysia. where his grandparents emigrated from China.
All Four's story revolves around a 45-year-old woman, a slightly famous artist, writer, and performer, who decides to take a break from the routines she's stuck in and drive from her home in L.A. to New York. Her husband thinks it's a good idea and even suggests the best route for the drive.
But about 30 minutes away from home, she stops at a gas station and feels this electric connection to a young man there, and he seems to feel it too. They end up having an affair in a motel room she rents and redecorates, and she spends the entire three weeks there. Their affair is both sexual and chaste. They're both married. He won't engage sexually, which would be disloyal to his wife.
But they touch and dance, and the intentional eroticism becomes all-consuming for her. But then the three weeks are up. She returns home and has enormous trouble reentering her life as a wife and mother. Miranda July is also a filmmaker, actor, performance artist, and visual artist. Miranda July, welcome to Fresh Air. It's such a good book.
I really enjoyed reading it, and I'm looking forward to talking with you about it. So you were afraid to write this book and what people would think of you. Elaborate on what your biggest fears were.
Well, one thing about getting older is I think Wikipedia has relieved the burden of that because for most people, their birth date is on the Wikipedia page. And so you can't really hide it even if you want to anymore. And I resent the fact that women especially are supposed to hide their age. Like, why can't we own it? Why can't we proclaim it?
Why should we have to reinforce the idea that a woman getting older is a really terrible thing?
From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with Fresh Air Weekend.
There's a line in your book where you're buying something from an older woman. And you think about how you sometimes really hate old women.
So the character, this is where the character has gone to the hotel. She's felt this like erotic charge from this younger man. She's 45. He's 31. Who she met at, who she looked at at a gas station and he looked back at her. And then they met briefly in a diner.
So she's unpacking her suitcase at this motel and the reading is about what she's thinking as she's unpacking her clothes and which one she's going to leave in the suitcase and which one she's going to actually unpack and wear.
From age three to seven, he lived in Manchester, New Hampshire, where his parents attended college. Then the family returned to Malaysia, which is basically across the bridge from Singapore, so he spent a lot of time there. He attended college in Australia, where he got his B.A. in finance and his law degree, while also doing stand-up comedy. Let's start with a clip from his new comedy special.
Did you share a similar almost fear of older women or a dislike of them that your character has?
My guest is Miranda July. Her latest novel is called All Fours. We'll hear more of our conversation after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Miranda July. Her latest novel is called All Fours. It's about a woman wanting to shake up her life.
She's thinking of leaving her marriage and is having a very erotic affair. When she discovers she's entering perimenopause, she fears the best part of her life may be ending and she may lose her libido. She worries about getting older. There are parallels to Miranda July's life.
Your character is experiencing things and fears that relate to perimenopause, but some of the things she's experiencing, she doesn't know relate to perimenopause until she actually goes to her gynecologist. Was it that way for you that you had symptoms of perimenopause that you were attributing to other things?
This is from a section about how he and his wife aren't ready for children, but his wife had her eggs harvested for possible future use. He's imagining what his child, if he ever has one, might say to him.
So one of the things the book is about is the feeling that you need to change your life, but not knowing how to do it. And knowing that there will be consequences and rewards if you do. And part of the consequences will be for the other people in your life if you're leaving a marriage, if you're breaking up a home in a way that will affect your young child. And...
I know you've experienced similar things, and this might be too personal, but was there a lot you had to weigh before changing your life, knowing that it might be the right thing for you, but there would also be consequences that everyone in your family would be facing, including you, because I'm sure there'd be a downside as well.
So this may be too personal, but please don't answer it if it is. You and your former husband, is that the right way to describe it, lived together for a while with your child, but more as friends than as a married couple. How did that work? I think a lot of people would be curious about that.
Because I think there are a lot of couples who separate who remain friends, but they don't want to be romantically involved anymore, and they want more freedom outside of the home. But I could see where there'd also be a lot of discomfort and tension and nervousness around each other. So if there's anything that you can offer about how that arrangement worked out? Yeah, I mean...
Have you changed a lot having more space in your life on your own? Because I would imagine you co-parent with your former husband and that you don't have your child every day to take care of. And in some ways, that's a real loss. And in other ways, it gains you some independence and personal time.
And I wonder what that shift in time and that shift in the balance of independence versus having somebody dependent on you all the time has changed you for better or worse, has changed your life. Or for better and worse.
So I want to talk about your formative years. You gravitated toward punk. as a teenager and what drew you to it? And what were your first experiences listening to punk rock or, you know, going to clubs?
Today we hear from Ronnie Chang. After Trevor Noah started hosting The Daily Show in 2015, he brought on Chang as a field correspondent who could offer a global perspective. Now Chang is one of the show's hosts. He's third-generation Chinese-Malaysian and grew up in Malaysia, Singapore, and the U.S. He has a new Netflix comedy special.
You actually moved to Portland to be part of the Riot Grrrl scene.
One of the jobs that you had early on while trying to support yourself, I guess, while you were doing your art, was working at a peep show. How and why did you get that job?
And you're separated by glass, right?
What did you learn doing that about sexuality or about men, about yourself, about what it means to get really turned on looking at somebody who's basically on exhibit behind glass? Yeah.
What were some of the conversations that you know about about your book that you found most interesting? Like what were some of the themes that you're glad your book provoked? You know, the themes in the conversations.
Well, I look forward to your next book. Thank you so much for being on our show. Thank you so much, Terry. Miranda July's latest novel is called All Fours. Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
Renu Cheng, welcome to Fresh Air. It's a pleasure to have you on the show.
What else did your father say to you when you found out you wanted to be a comedian?
Wow. Did you think that that might be true?
Nevertheless, when you were on The Daily Show and you started on The Daily Show, you didn't tell your mother.
What were you afraid of?
It's a big achievement. That's not a small achievement. Sure.
You deprive them of bragging rights.
So you grew up mostly in Malaysia, which is one bridge away from Singapore. You compared it to me to how New York is to New Jersey.
Yeah. Or how Philadelphia is to New Jersey on the opposite side.
Also, filmmaker and writer Miranda July talks about her novel All Fours. It's about a 45-year-old married woman, her erotic affair with no actual sex, beginning perimenopause, and the related fears of losing her libido and getting older. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.
So were you exposed to much stand-up in Malaysia or Singapore?
You said you were introduced to Jewish people from Seinfeld. Yes. Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld. So what did it make you think Jewish people were like?
Your new comedy special was filmed in Honolulu.
Where Doogie... Kamealoha. Yes, thank you. This is like a Doogie Howser adjacent series.
Yeah, a reboot that you were in, and you're very popular there, or so you say. Okay, yeah, sure. And you say you have a lot of MAGA friends there. Yes. And on The Daily Show, you spent a lot of time satirizing Trump.
So how do you get around arguing about politics with your mega friends?
You say you love America. This is the country that puts showbiz above everything.
Yeah. And then you get paid for saying F the president. And then money comes in and you say, if you did this in Malaysia, jail.
But now Trump has an enemies list. He's threatening retribution and he's trying to revoke TV network broadcast licenses.
So how do you feel about insulting Trump now?
Well, I hope you're right. I hope I'm right too.
My guest is comic and actor Ronnie Chang. His new comedy special, Love to Hate It, is now streaming on Netflix. We'll be back after a short break. This is Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Ronnie Chang. He's a field correspondent and one of the rotating anchors on The Daily Show. He co-stars in the new Hulu series Interior Chinatown.
His new comedy special, Love to Hate It, is streaming on Netflix. Let's hear a clip from The Daily Show. And this is from the day after Kamala Harris conceded. So it's two days after Election Day. And you say Trump's promised a peaceful transfer of power. And then you say, let's hear it for the bare minimum of democracy. And here's the rest of the clip.
That's not really true about the money, I'm sure. Partly. There's some truth to that. Okay. So you got on The Daily Show after Trevor Noah became the anchor and you knew him from performing at the same comedy festival in Melbourne, Australia, which is where you went to college. How surprised were you to get the call?
I can't hum the theme either.
I immediately went to the actual theme. And before we hear it, I want to challenge our listeners to just pause and think for a second if they can hum the theme. Now let's play the theme. You know what I realized listening back, which I hadn't ever really thought of before?
There isn't a melody. I mean, it's like you're coming in in the middle of an improvisation.
Having gone through 50 years of musical guests, what's one of the performances that had a big impact on you when you were a kid and had to be in bed at 8.30, but you managed to watch Saturday Night Live?
One of the things that you highlight in the SNL documentary is the role of SNL in the world of hip-hop. And tell the story of how Deborah Harry basically broke hip-hop on SNL.
Some of my favorite parts of the movie are the stories about things that have gone wrong, followed by clips of showing what went wrong and how it really shocked everybody behind the scenes. Right. And one of those stories is Elvis Costello. So, you know, he does one song during dress rehearsal that I guess he and Lorne Michaels had agreed on. Right. And then he stops it after a few bars.
Let's hear what happens.
That's such a great story. I love it. And I think you made a good choice. I love both songs, but I do think you made the right choice.
What do I do? Describe what happened.
He, in fact, plays the song that we already heard as the first song.
Everyone in the audience knows this is wrong, and there's no way of covering that up.
Let's hear some of what happened behind the scenes.
And the rumors were after that, I think there were two rumors after that, if I remember correctly. One was that, oh, she really can't sing. So not because of a sore throat, but because she's not capable of singing live. And therefore, they had to have her lip sync. And the other rumor was, oh, there's probably lots of acts that are really lip syncing.
Really?
So I assume that what they're lip syncing to is a live performance. That's not the record.
You're talking about in concert right now, right?
Well, you still have one mystery for me, which is how do singers manage to sing when they're doing this elaborate workout with their choreography when you're going to be out of breath?
Amir, it's been so great to talk with you. Thank you for being such a regular guest on our show. It's really, it's a joy.
Amir, welcome back to Fresh Air. It's a pleasure to have you back on.
Were there roots ever on SNL?
Good. So do you think that the Saturday Night Live band, particularly in the Paul Schaeffer era, though, I don't know what era you started watching. I assume it was Paul Schaeffer era.
One of the questions that you ask both cast members and people behind the scenes at SNL is, can you hum the SNL theme? So I want to play the attempts to hum the theme and then talk to you about it.
And I'm a newsletter fan. I read it every Saturday after breakfast. The newsletter includes all the week's shows, staff recommendations, and Molly picks timely highlights from the archive.
So subscribe at whyy.org slash fresh air and look for an email from Molly every Saturday morning.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Our guest, British actor Stephen Graham, stars in not one, but two new shows, Hulu's A Thousand Blows and the Netflix miniseries Adolescence. He spoke with Fresh Air producer Sam Brigger. Here's Sam.
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Yeah. You told us a little bit about what your inauguration day was like. Let's skip ahead to the inauguration of your successor, Ronald Reagan. What were you feeling that day as you realized that the hostages were going to be released on his watch, not on yours?
But a sour economy and a 444-day hostage crisis in Iran, in which 52 American diplomats were held captive, undercut his public support, and he lost his bid for re-election to former Governor Ronald Reagan of California in 1980.
Even though it wasn't on your watch?
Jimmy Carter, recorded in 1993. After a short break, we'll hear excerpts from other interviews I recorded with Carter, in which he talked about his work as a mediator negotiating an end to wars and ethnic violence, his deep religious faith and his insistence on keeping church and state separate when he was president, and his reflections on getting older.
We'll end the first half of our program with Aretha Franklin singing at Carter's inaugural gala in 1977. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
He spent his post-presidency, however, on a series of philanthropic causes around the world, like building houses for the poor, combating guinea worm, a parasitic tropical disease. promoting human rights in places of repression, monitoring elections, and seeking to end violent conflicts.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. We're looking back on the life of Jimmy Carter and listening to excerpts of my interviews with him. After his presidency, Carter became one of the most sought-after mediators in the world. He negotiated with military rulers and tyrants. In 1995, I interviewed Carter about this work.
His work as a former president in many ways came to eclipse his time in the White House, eventually earning him the Nobel Peace Prize, unquote. Let's begin with the interview I recorded with Carter in 1993, after the publication of his memoir, Turning Point, about his first campaign when he won his seat in the Georgia State Senate. That was in 1962, the year he decided to enter politics.
He had recently brokered a ceasefire in the bloody Balkan War, which put him across the table from the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karatic, who was later convicted of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Let me ask a question that I'm sure a lot of people have wondered about. You have such a strong human rights record.
What is it like for you to sit opposite someone like Karatic, knowing the war crimes that he's guilty of? Do you have to enter negotiations with someone who is a tyrant in a fairly nonjudgmental way and be as cordial and open as you possibly can?
If you were able to turn back the clock and have the knowledge and the experience as an international mediator that you have now, Would you have handled the hostage negotiations with Iran any differently?
That was an excerpt of my 1995 interview with Jimmy Carter. The following year, I spoke with him about his memoir Living Faith. As a Southern Baptist, he was considered a progressive evangelical. I asked him about how he approached his faith in the years following his presidency.
That's an interesting way to look at it, though, that you took an oath before God to actually serve the country. And so you felt that you had it straight with your religion that you were in this office to serve the country. And it wasn't about your personal religious convictions when it came down to certain issues. It was about what you thought was best for the country or in the majority interest.
While you were in the White House and while you were campaigning for president, did you feel that a lot of Americans misunderstood or misinterpreted what it meant to you to be born again?
We're listening to my 1996 interview with Jimmy Carter. We'll hear more after a break. This is Fresh Air.
This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to the interview I recorded with Jimmy Carter in 1996 after the publication of his memoir, Living Faith. How did you approach your prayer life in the White House? You say in your book that other presidents have brought in Billy Graham to organize worship for them, but you didn't want to do that in the White House.
You thought it violated your sense of separation of church and state. So what did you do?
What was your sense of prayer when you were a child, and how has your sense of prayer changed as an adult?
Tell me if this is too personal, okay? What were the times in your life that you thought God betrayed you?
You say you found blatant voting abuse. What's the worst example of voting abuse that you faced during that first campaign of yours?
The interview with Jimmy Carter we just heard was recorded in 1996 after the publication of his memoir, Living Faith. After a break, we'll hear his reflections on aging recorded after the publication of his memoir, The Virtues of Aging. This is Fresh Air.
This is Fresh Air. Today we have been looking back on the life of Jimmy Carter through a series of Fresh Air interviews. The final excerpt we'll hear today is about his relationship with his wife, Rosalyn Carter. Jimmy Carter had been under hospice care for months when Rosalyn died at age 96. By all accounts, they had a strong, loving, and supportive relationship.
After he lost his re-election campaign and left the White House in 1981, when he was 56, he and Rosalind returned home to Plains, Georgia. Although they hardly retired, and Carter had one of the most productive post-presidencies in American history, they faced something many retired couples face—more time home together, perhaps too much time.
He and Rosalind learned they needed to give each other a lot of private space to keep separate except for time they'd scheduled to be together. I spoke with Jimmy Carter about this in 1998 after the publication of his book, The Virtues of Aging. I asked him how they first realized that too much time together was the source of tension.
Jimmy Carter, my guest, his new book is called The Virtues of Aging. You say one thing we must do nowadays is prepare for long, drawn-out illnesses near the end of life, now that there's the medical technology to sustain us through long, chronic illnesses.
I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about living wills or if any place you'd want to draw the line if you had a debilitating chronic illness.
you said that one of the most interesting and gratifying responsibilities at your age is to decide what to do with accumulated wealth and possessions. And you and Rosalind are planning to leave a substantial portion of your estate to the Carter Center. And I'm wondering how you've both decided what's the right thing to do, you know, by your country and by your children.
You know, how much to give to the Carter Center, how much to leave for your children. I think that's, you know, for people who are lucky enough to be in that position, it's a difficult question.
Well, I want to thank you very much for talking with us.
The interview we just heard with Jimmy Carter was recorded in 1998. He died yesterday at the age of 100. Rest in peace. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, we'll continue our end-of-the-year series collecting a few of the 2024 interviews we particularly enjoyed. We'll feature the interview with Mark Ruffalo.
This year, he was nominated for an Oscar for his hilarious performance in Poor Things as a foppish rake who seduces Emma Stone's character. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he's the Hulk. I hope you'll join us. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Today's edition was produced by Roberta Shorrock, who also directs the show.
Our technical director is Audrey Bentham, with engineering today from Adam Staniszewski. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Boldenato, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yukundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
Well, how did you win? How did you get your fair count?
An interesting cutoff point.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Today, we remember Jimmy Carter and listen back to excerpts of the interviews I recorded with him over the years. He died at the age of 100 and had been the oldest living former president in American history. In the New York Times, Peter Baker wrote this summary of Carter's public life, quote,
Jimmy Carter, before we go any further, I'm going to ask you for a little lesson in etiquette. Do I call you President Carter, Mr. President, our former President Jimmy Carter? What is the appropriate etiquette when you're talking to a former President of the United States?
Let me ask you, you've been devoting your post-presidential career to monitoring elections around the world, conflict negotiation around the world, human rights around the world. You also have a project in Atlanta to help empower the homeless and the poor. When you left office, what did you see ahead? What did you think you would do?
Was there a moment of revelation when it started to occur to you the role that you could take in this nation and in the world as a past president of the United States?
Jimmy Carter, recorded in 1993, one of several conversations we're featuring with him today. When we spoke in 93, Carter had just published his memoir, Turning Point. He was elected president in 1976. I asked him about the high points and the low points of his inauguration day.
then ousting the incumbent Republican president, Gerald Ford, in the fall. Over the course of four years in office, he sought to restore trust in government following the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, ushering in reforms that were meant to transform politics. He negotiated the landmark Camp David Accords, making peace between Israel and Egypt.
What was the most disorienting part of your first day and night in the White House?
What about during the hostage crisis? Was there ever a point where you wished that you weren't president, where you wished that you didn't have this terrible burden on your shoulders?
One of the things that you highlight in the SNL documentary is the role of SNL in the world of hip-hop. And tell the story of how Deborah Harry basically broke hip-hop on SNL.
My guest is Amir Questlove-Thompson. His film, Ladies and Gentlemen, 50 Years of SNL Music, premieres tonight on NBC and starts streaming on Peacock tomorrow. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
Hi, this is Molly C.V. Nusberg, digital producer at Fresh Air. And this is Terry Gross, host of the show. One of the things I do is write the weekly newsletter. And I'm a newsletter fan. I read it every Saturday after breakfast. The newsletter includes all the week's shows, staff recommendations, and Molly picks timely highlights from the archive. It's a fun read.
It's also the only place where we tell you what's coming up next week, an exclusive. So subscribe at whyy.org slash fresh air and look for an email from Molly every Saturday morning. Some of my favorite parts of the movie are the stories about things that have gone wrong, followed by clips of showing what went wrong and how it really shocked everybody behind the scenes.
And one of those stories is Elvis Costello. So, you know, he does one song during dress rehearsal that I guess he and Lorne Michaels had agreed on.
And then he stops it after a few bars. Let's hear what happens.
When he stopped, the hubbub in the studio was like, oh my God, oh my God, what's going to happen? You couldn't hear it.
That's such a great story. I love it. And I think you made a good choice. I love both songs, but I do think you made the right choice.
Describe what happened.
He, in fact, plays the song that we already heard as the first song.
Everyone in the audience knows this is wrong, and there's no way of covering that up.
Let's hear some of what happened behind the scenes.
And the rumors were after that, I think there were two rumors after that, if I remember correctly. One was that, oh, she really can't sing. So not because of a sore throat, but because she's not capable of singing live. And therefore, they had to have her lip sync. And the other rumor was, oh, there's probably lots of acts that are really lip syncing.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. As part of Saturday Night Live's 50th anniversary celebration this year, tonight NBC will premiere a documentary highlighting the music guests and music comedy sketches that the show has featured over the decades. It's called Ladies and Gentlemen, 50 Years of SNL Music.
So I assume that what they're lip syncing to is a live performance. That's not the record.
You're talking about in concert right now, right?
Well, you still have one mystery for me, which is how do singers manage to sing when they're doing this elaborate workout with their choreography when you're going to be out of breath?
My guest is Questlove. His film, Ladies and Gentlemen, 50 Years of SNL Music, premieres tonight on NBC and starts streaming on Peacock tomorrow. We'll be right back after a short break. This is Fresh Air.
So, you know, we were talking a little bit about how you ended up being the band leader of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Did Paul Schaeffer or any subsequent band leaders influence how you wanted to be, both as an individual and as a band, on The Tonight Show?
So several of the people who have been music guests on Saturday Night Live talk about how nervous they were the first time around or the only time around. And one of them is Dave Grohl, who talks about how his first appearance with Nirvana, he was so nervous. He played so hard.
He said, when I get nervous, I play really hard that he broke like a drumstick within 20 seconds and a little while later broke through the skin of one of his drums. But I wonder if that's something you have to deal with on The Tonight Show.
Do you ever have to calm down guest artists who either get nervous in front of an audience in general or just get nervous because they're not really used to national TV?
You can't say, don't worry about it. It's no big deal. It's just national TV.
Amir, it's been so great to talk with you. Thank you for being such a regular guest on our show. It's a joy. Thank you. Amira Questlove Thompson's new film, Ladies and Gentlemen, 50 Years of SNL Music, is part of SNL's 50th anniversary celebration. It premieres on NBC tonight and starts streaming on Peacock tomorrow.
There's a part two of that interview in which we talk about another new Questlove documentary about Sly Stone and his band Sly and the Family Stone. It's called Sly Lives, a.k.a. The Burden of Black Genius. It just premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and will start streaming on Hulu February 13th. We'll feature that interview sometime in the next few weeks.
After we take a short break, Ken Tucker will review Ringo Starr's new album. This is Fresh Air.
Ringo Starr has released a new album of country songs called Look Up. It's a collaboration with producer T-Bone Burnett, who wrote many of the songs, and it features appearances by Alison Krauss and a new young bluegrass star, Billy Strings. Ringo recently taped a country special that will air on CBS in the spring, and in February, he'll make his debut at Nashville's Grand Ole Opry.
Not bad for an 84-year-old ex-Beatle. Rock critic Ken Tucker has a review of Look Up.
Ken Tucker reviewed Ringo Starr's new country album called Look Up. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, our guest will be Harvard professor and MacArthur fellow Imani Perry. Her new book is called Black and Blues, How a Color Tells the Story of My People. Perry's last book, South to America, won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2022. I hope you'll join us. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
It was co-directed by my guest, Grammy-winning musician and Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Amir Questlove Thompson. He's the co-founder, leader, and drummer of the hip-hop band The Roots. It's the house band for another late-night show, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Before Questlove talks about the movie and how SNL has influenced him as a musician and
David Bianculli is Professor of Television Studies at Rowan University in New Jersey. The Morgan Neville documentary series SNL 50 is streaming on Peacock. The documentary, Ladies and Gentlemen, 50 Years of SNL Music, will be broadcast tonight on NBC and will start streaming on Peacock tomorrow. It was co-directed by my guest, Amir Questlove-Thompson.
He's the co-founder of the hip-hop band The Roots, which is the house band for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, who is a former SNL cast member. Questlove has become one of Fresh Air's most frequent guests because he does so many interesting books and movies in addition to his work with his band On and Beyond The Tonight Show. Questlove actually has two new documentary films.
The second is about Sly and the Family Stone. It's called Sly Lives, a.k.a. The Burden of Black Genius. It premiered over the weekend at the Sundance Film Festival and will start streaming on Hulu February 13th. We'll talk about that documentary in the next few weeks. His 2021 documentary, Summer of Soul, about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, won an Oscar for Best Documentary.
Amir, welcome back to Fresh Air. It's a pleasure to have you back on.
Were there roots ever on SNL?
and late-night band leader, our TV critic David Bianculli is going to review the film, along with a documentary series that's also part of the 50th anniversary celebration. That series is streaming on Peacock.
Good. So do you think that the Saturday Night Live band, particularly in the Paul Schaeffer era, though, I don't know what era you started watching. I assume it was Paul Schaeffer era.
One of the questions that you ask both cast members and people behind the scenes at SNL is, can you hum the SNL theme? So I want to play the attempts to hum the theme and then talk to you about it. Yes. Okay.
I can't hum the theme either.
I immediately went to the actual theme. And before we hear it, I want to challenge our listeners to just pause and think for a second if they can hum the theme. Now let's play the theme. You know what I realized listening back, which I hadn't ever really thought of before?
There isn't a melody. I mean, it's like you're coming in in the middle of an improvisation.
Now, you wrote the theme for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
And it's almost as if to avoid people saying, I can't hum the theme. You and the band actually kind of hum-scat the theme.
Okay, let's hear a little bit of your theme for The Tonight Show. So having gone through 50 years of musical guests, what's one of the performances that had a big impact on you when you were a kid and had to be in bed at 830, but you managed to watch Saturday Night Live?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Today, as we kick off the unofficial start of the summer, we'll listen back to my interview with Amir Questlove Thompson, recorded earlier this year, about the life and legacy of Sly Stone.
So that was Everyday People, which, as you pointed out, has a kind of nursery rhyme part to it.
Yeah. And that has, like I said, the message of inclusivity and togetherness. But as someone in your documentary points out, that alienated a lot of black listeners in the sense that, you know, police were beating up black people, which, of course, you could say today as well. But it was a very it was and also like black power was was becoming a thing.
It's so catchy, and I'd like you to point out what makes this song special in its moment, which was 1967 or 8?
We're listening to the interview I recorded earlier this year with Amir Questlove Thompson about his documentary Sly Lives, a.k.a. The Burden of Black Genius. It's streaming on Hulu. We'll hear more of the interview after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
Okay. So what makes this song so special in its moment?
Well, you know, on the same album as Everyday People, his message about inclusivity, he has the song Stand. That's a message to take a stand, stand up for your rights, you know, demand your rights. And that resonated a lot within the black community.
Yeah. So talk a little bit about that song and why you think that song is important musically and in terms of the message of the lyrics.
So let's play that transitional part. So we hear some of the main song and then we hear what it transitions to at the end.
So that was Stand, which is on the same 1969 album as Everyday People. And those two songs have a kind of contrast, like I said before, inclusivity and like stand up for your rights. And at this time, it's a catchy song, but it's also like a message song. And the Panthers, the Black Panthers, who are very active at this time, it's 1969, become really interested in Sly.
And there's this really interesting part of the movie that talks about how the Panthers said, you need to join our group or you need to donate $100,000 to our group, to which Sly responds, give me a reason.
Yeah, but isn't that because we all have pain and we like music that understands pain and puts our pain into something beautiful?
And for me, I hear you. Yeah.
My guest is Questlove. His new documentary about Sly Stone is called Sly Lives, a.k.a. The Burden of Black Genius. We'll talk more after a break. This is Fresh Air. So to illustrate the point that you were making about pain in music, let's listen to Family Affair, which is a song about, you know, kind of what you're saying, that one person does really well and other people in the family don't.
And there's a lot of pain within the family. So this is Family Affair, Sly and the Family Stones.
That was Sly and the Family Stone. My guest is Amir Questlove Thompson. His new documentary about the group and about Sly in particular is called Sly Lives, The Burden of Black Genius. So, you know, we talked about this a little bit. The subtitle of your film is The Burden of Black Genius.
And your theory is that for black artists in America, success can be more terrifying than failure for the reasons that you described. What do you think the burden included for Sly? What were the personal burdens in his life in addition to being singled out and how singled out can mean removed from your own people? What are some of the personal burdens that you think he also shouldered?
I want to pick up on that because I think that genius is often accompanied by or fueled by some kind of mental health issue, whether it's OCD or bipolar disorder that – There's something within you where you are wired to not necessarily be happy, but you are wired to do music or painting or writing. And you kind of have no choice.
And there's even been studies about this, that you can have some kind of mental health issue. And that is often self-medicated with drugs. And I'm not trying to deny any of the things you said about how black artists have a burden that white artists don't. So I'm just trying to add.
Put some Yiddish in that song.
You talk the last time you were on our show about the importance of vulnerability and how it's time to talk about vulnerability and express vulnerability.
My guest is Amir Questlove Thompson. His documentary about Sly and the Family Stone is called Sly Lives, a.k.a. The Burden of Black Genius. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. You talked to Sly, and I don't know how much he participated in the movie, but how would you describe him now? He's in his early 80s. He's clean.
He hasn't used drugs in I'm not sure how long, but he's off of them as far as I can tell.
It's been so great to talk with you. And I just like all these projects you're doing. It's really remarkable. I really look forward to the Earth, Wind and Fire movie now.
The Mary Questlove Thompson's documentary, Sly Lives, a.k.a. The Burden of Black Genius, is streaming on Hulu. Our conversation was recorded earlier this year when the film came out. Questlove is the drummer, co-founder, and leader of The Roots, the house band for The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon.
The annual Roots picnic will be held in Philadelphia next Saturday and Sunday, May 31st and June 1st. Featured performers this year include D'Angelo, Lenny Kravitz, Meek Mill, Glorilla, and Miguel. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, my guest will be writer James Patterson, who has sold more than 400 million copies of his books.
That includes the Alex Cross detective series, the Women's Murder Club, and Maximum Ride. He's collaborated on books with Bill Clinton and Dolly Parton and is starting a novel with Mr. Beast. I hope you'll join us.
Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Boldenado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yukindi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Sivinespa.
Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
Oh, really? Literally?
All right. Thank you for that. Let's hear a dance to the music.
Questlove's documentary called Sly Lives, a.k.a. The Burden of Black Genius, is about Sly Stone and his band Sly and the Family Stone and their impact on music and culture.
So that was Sly and the Family Stones, 1968 hit, Dance to the Music. And the drumming is so infectious. It's hard not to move when you hear that. And it's not fancy.
Sly got his start as a DJ and record producer in the early 1960s, formed a multiracial band with his brother, sister, and other musicians, and went on to record hits like Everyday People, Dance to the Music, Family Affair, and Stand. Their music influenced Prince, George Clinton and Funkadelic, the Ohio Players, Earth, Wind & Fire, and many hip-hop artists.
But there's a lot going on in that song, including like the kind of scatting part.
But then he also does a lot of things that become beats for hip-hop artists later.
The film also covers the problems that came along with fame and drugs that took Sly down. Questlove is the co-founder of the hip-hop band The Roots, which is the house band for The Tonight Show, starring Jimmy Fallon. He had another documentary that came out this year focused on Saturday Night Live's music guests and music sketches over the past 50 years.
So I want to play another Sly track and talk about it with you because I found the film so interesting in really pointing to specifically what makes Sly's music so interesting and catchy and why so many people kind of, as you put it, use his vocabulary. So I want to play everyday people because this has significance in a lot of ways.
I mean, Sly's band is made up of black and white musicians, male and female musicians, and everyday people speaks to inclusivity. So can you talk about that a little bit in terms of the types of music that are drawn on in Sly's music and the kind of inclusivity that he represented within the band and in some of his lyrics?
That one's called Ladies and Gentlemen, 50 Years of SNL Music. Questlove's 2021 film Summer of Soul, featuring performances from the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, won an Oscar for Best Documentary. So let's talk about your slide documentary. I really love this film. I want to start with a song, and it's their first big hit. It's Dance to the Music.
Well, let's hear everyday people. And this is from 1969.
Hi, it's Terry Gross. Before we start our show, I want to take a minute to remind you that it's Almost Giving Tuesday, which is so named because it's become a day of expressing gratitude by giving money or any kind of help to an individual or group or organization that matters to you. We've found a way to turn Giving Tuesday into Giving and Getting Tuesday. Thank you. It's a win-win.
So join us at plus.npr.org. That's plus.npr.org. Or you can always make a gift at donate.npr.org. Thank you, and thanks to everyone who's already supporting us. And now, on with the show.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Christmas has inspired some great songs in every genre, and some really bad ones. Today we'll hear some great ones. We'll start with John Batiste at the piano, playing, singing, and talking about some of his favorites. It's part two of the session we recently recorded with him.
That's wonderful. And so it started with Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, went to what I think is probably an original song that I'm not familiar with, and then into Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. Beautifully done, beautiful connections in there. What was the middle piece that I didn't recognize?
Thank you for being so generous and so interesting and illustrating so much music for us. I so appreciate it. And I also wish you a Merry Christmas.
John Batiste joined us at the piano from the studios of WNYC in New York. We thank them. This was the second part of my session with John Batiste. You can find the first part on our podcast or website. His latest album, Beethoven Blues, features his reimaginings of Beethoven music. After we take a short break, Questlove will play recordings from the Christmas playlist he put together for us.
I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. It's become a new Fresh Air holiday tradition to invite musicians we love to play some of their favorite Christmas songs. It started two years ago when Amir Questlove Thompson put together a Christmas playlist for us and talked about why he chose those songs. Last year, David Byrne played his favorite Christmas songs. We'll listen back to that tomorrow.
We continued that tradition earlier in the show with John Batiste at the piano. Now we're going to listen back to Questlove and his Christmas playlist. In addition to his many credits, Questlove is perhaps the most famous, popular, and in-demand DJ. Questlove co-founded the band The Roots, which among other things is the house band for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
He's also written several books related to music, including one published earlier this year called Hip Hop is History. He won an Oscar for his documentary Summer of Soul about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. His new documentary, Sly Lives, a.k.a. The Burden of Black Genius, about Sly Stone, will premiere next month at the Sundance Film Festival.
On January 27th, NBC will broadcast Questlove's new documentary called Ladies and Gentlemen, 50 Years of SNL Music. It will also stream on Peacock. Questlove, welcome back to Fresh Air. Thanks so much for doing this and choosing music for us. Why don't we start with a song that you selected? And this is a song by Dram and his mother. And it's Silver Bells.
And I have to tell you, there's so much really schlocky Christmas music there. That's why we're so excited to have you on the show doing this, because you're choosing really interesting stuff. Thank you. So the song Silver Bells is kind of high on my list of just, you know, schlocky and just annoying. It's one of the reasons I don't like a lot of Christmas songs. This is a great recording.
So tell us about the recording and why you chose it.
Let's hear it. Here we go. So this is Silver Bells, a good version of it.
When you were growing up and you were touring with your father's band, did you spend a lot of Christmases performing?
Well, let's get to another song on your playlist. And this is Disco Claws, which is by Bionic. And it sounds more like Funk Santa than Disco Claws.
Is there a hymn that you especially love that's kind of Christmas-oriented, and could you play and sing it?
Okay, let's hear it.
Little Drummer Boy is one of the Christmas songs, the original recording of it, that just really, really drove me crazy.
Yeah. They played it so much on the radio when I was growing up. Tell me you like it.
Oh, because you were the drummer.
Oh, boy. Well, let's hear a song that's lyrically the opposite of it's the most happiest time of the year. So this is James Brown's Santa Claus, Santa Claus from 1968.
Why is it hilarious to you?
Yeah. I love that.
Batiste was the bandleader and music director of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert from its premiere in 2015 until 2022. That same year, his album We Are received 11 Grammy nominations in seven different categories and won five Grammys, including Album of the Year. His new album, Beethoven Blues, features his reimaginings of Beethoven compositions.
Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. So the first time you heard a Christmas song and the first time you heard James Brown was this?
He's asking Santa and the Lord, why does he have to suffer so?
All right, let's hear it. This is James Brown from 1968.
But now I understand what it means to be a man. So there's one thing I'd like to know.
That was James Brown from 1968. I'm still processing that this is like your introduction to James Brown.
Let's take a short break here, and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is Questlove, and he'll play more Christmas recordings after we take a short break. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to my 2022 interview with Questlove, who played recordings from the Christmas playlist he put together for us.
He's co-founder of the hip-hop band The Roots, the house band for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. He won an Oscar for his documentary Summer of Soul. He's written several books about music, including his latest, Hip Hop is History. And he was a producer of the original cast recording of Hamilton and much more, some of which we'll talk about a little bit later.
But right now, let's get back to some Christmas music. This is another very unusual recording with a story behind it. It's called Santa Claus is a Black Man, and it's by Akeem and Teddy Van from 1974.
Yeah, Teddy Van, her father. And she was, what, five when she recorded this?
Oh, oh. Well, apparently, Teddy Van, Kim's father, wrote one of Luther Vandross's hits.
So I could see why. Okay. I could see why he was singing back up on this.
All right. So you loved about this song what?
Yeah, that he's dressed as Santa Claus. Okay, so let's hear it.
We're listening to my 2022 interview with Questlove. We'll hear more music from his Christmas playlist after a break. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to the interview I recorded in 2022 with Amir Questlove Thompson playing songs from the Christmas playlist he put together for us in 2022. So let's get to Stevie Wonder.
I know you love Stevie Wonder and he's in your film performing in Summer of Soul. And this is a promotional disc from Britain. It's a kind of Christmas greetings song. Christmas greetings message. It's not even a whole song. So tell us about the origin of this.
Okay, here's Stevie Wonder.
I wish I could hear more of that, but I guess there isn't more of that.
Do you think he did his promotional recordings because he wanted to or because the record company urged him to or because it would get him more airplay?
So I'd like to close with another song. And I'm thinking, like, do you have a favorite? And I guess I'll get a little churchy here. Do you have a favorite, like, real Christmas song that is, say, like a gospel song? Because I know you love Mahalia Jackson. She's in Summer of Soul and Mavis Staples. So is there a song, like, from that tradition that you'd like to end with?
Oh, thank you for choosing that. Questlove, it's always such a great treat when you're on our show. Thank you so much for choosing music for us. Thank you, Terrence. Yeah, it's just always such a pleasure to have you on our show.
Questlove is a founding member of the band The Roots and the band's drummer. They're the house band for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Next month, his documentary about Sly Stone called Sly Lives, a.k.a. The Burden of Black Genius, will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.
And his documentary about music from Saturday Night Live called Ladies and Gentlemen, 50 Years of SNL Music will be broadcast January 27th on NBC and then will stream on Peacock. You can find Questlove's complete Christmas playlist on our website, freshair.npr.org, or in the show notes on the podcast.
Tomorrow on Fresh Air, we'll listen back to the interview I recorded one year ago in which David Byrne, co-founder and frontman of the band Talking Heads, played us some of his favorite Christmas songs. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer today is Adam Staniszewski.
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Rebodenato, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
You know, it's funny, like, What Child Is This that you just played, and when you played God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, I never heard it as kind of minor key and dark as you played it.
What was church like for you when you were growing up? In a Catholic family, right?
He also wrote the score for this year's film, Saturday Night, about the first SNL broadcast, and he appears in the film as musician Billy Preston, the first musical guest. A documentary about Batiste called American Symphony is now nominated for a Grammy for Best Music Film, and Batiste is nominated for Best Song Written for Visual Media. Here's the interview.
My two favorite Christmas songs, one of them is secular, and one of them is more about Christmas and about Jesus. So the secular one is Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas from the film Meet Me in St. Louis. And you were talking about sounding like church bells before. The opening chords of this are so church bells.
And the more religious song is O Holy Night, which I think is just such a beautiful song. Could you play either or even both?
Yeah, and it's a part, the by next year part is a part that sounds like church bells, the chords there.
So as we speak, Christmas is coming up soon. And I don't know how you feel about Christmas music. In my opinion, like some of it is just like really fun. Some of it is kind of transcendent. And some of it is so irritating, causing like the worst earworms. And like, just like, please don't play that again. I never want to hear that again. So what's your take on Christmas songs?
Nicely done.
Yeah, that's more Beethoven. Yeah. That's one of the Beethoven things that you reimagine on your new Beethoven Blues album.
Oh, good. It is the night part, that descending line. I think that has so much drama in it.
Just like the musical line.
Since I've made so many suggestions on what to play, I'd like you to choose the last piece. And whether you want it to be a Christmas song or a Beethoven composition or anything else, whatever mood you feel like playing. Is that too wide open for you?
Hi, this is Molly Sivinesper, digital producer at Fresh Air. And this is Terry Gross, host of the show. One of the things I do is write the weekly newsletter. And I'm a newsletter fan. I read it every Saturday after breakfast. The newsletter includes all the week's shows, staff recommendations, and Molly picks timely highlights from the archive. It's a fun read.
It's also the only place where we tell you what's coming up next week, an exclusive. So subscribe at whyy.org slash fresh air and look for an email from Molly every Saturday morning.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. The Broadway comedy Oh Mary is nominated for five Tony Awards, including Best Play and Best Leading Actor in a Play. The comedy follows a very fictionalized, intentionally improbable version of First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln in the time leading to her husband's assassination. Our guest today, Cole Escola, wrote the play and stars as Mary.
Cole Escola spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Boldenado. Escola will play the role of Mary Todd Lincoln until June 21st. O'Mary continues its Broadway run through September. Coming up, our book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews a new novel from Ocean Vuong, which she calls Truly Great. This is Fresh Air. One of this year's most anticipated novels has just arrived.
The Emperor of Gladness is Ocean Vuong's second novel. It follows his celebrated 2019 debut, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. Our book critic, Maureen Corrigan, says, Vuong's admirers, of which she's one, will not be disappointed.
Maureen Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, I'll talk with CNN host Jake Tapper about his new book, Original Sin, President Biden's decline, its cover-up, and his disastrous choice to run again.
Thank you.
Fresh Air's executive producer is Ganny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Maribel Donato, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper.
Our new consulting video producer is Hope Wilson. Welcome, Hope. Roberta Shurock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
Escola uses they-them pronouns. They spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Boldenado.
How familiar were you with the show?
What I read about when Trevor Noah resigned is that you had just done a bit. And then without you knowing that Trevor Noah was resigning, he resigns on the air right after you're on. Were you on camera?
You were on camera.
Why did he do it that way?
Maybe he didn't want anybody to leak it.
Ah, that's a possibility, too.
What was the expression on your face like as you heard him resigning?
You might have also been thinking, uh-oh, what happens to The Daily Show? What happens to my job?
My guest is Ronnie Chang, a field correspondent on The Daily Show and one of the anchors. He co-stars on the new Hulu series, Interior Chinatown. His new comedy special, Love to Hate It, starts streaming on Netflix tomorrow, December 17th. We'll be back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
After Trevor Noah left, there was a roster of celebrity comics who anchored the show. And then there was a hiatus, I guess, over the summer.
No, exactly. And then the correspondents started rotating who anchored the show. And I wasn't sure, like, is this a temporary thing? Have they decided against having one host or one celebrity comic hosting? And it's turned out so far to be the real thing with the correspondents.
Hosting, you know, anchoring, are you at liberty to say why the decision was made to have alternating correspondence anchor as opposed to one person or one famous comic?
Jon Stewart, who's back on the show once a week.
You've been in films. You're now the co-star of the series Interior Chinatown. And it's a cliche that the Asian guy is the best friend. Yes. But in a film where the main character is Asian, and much of the story is set in Chinatown, you're the best friend of the other Asian guy.
It's kind of a theme of the series that the main character feels just kind of invisible. And he wants to be the star of his own life. So I want to play a clip from Interior Chinatown. And you and Jimmy O. Yang, the main character in the series, you're both working at a restaurant in Chinatown and don't really like the job. You're just doing it.
It's very meta.
So in this scene from the first episode, you're both in the alleyway where the dumpster is. Yeah. And you're both talking and the Jimmy O. Yang character is talking about how he's like a minor character in his own life and invisible in the world. And he wants to be the main character. He wants to be the star of something. He wants to solve a murder mystery like they do on TV.
So this is the conversation between Yim and Jimmy O. Yang. He speaks first.
Okay. That was my guest, Ronnie Chang, with Jimmy O. Yang in a scene from Interior Chinatown. In the film Crazy Rich Asians, you have a real standout scene. You're kind of a minor character in it.
But it's a great scene. Does it feel qualitatively different to be in a film with an Asian-themed story and largely Asian cast?
So correct me if I'm wrong, you're third generation Malaysian?
Chinese Malaysian. So what I read is that your parents moved to the U.S. when you were three. You stayed with family in Malaysia or Singapore, and then you moved a year later when you were four.
Oh, okay.
Did you recognize your parents?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest is comic, actor, and political satirist Ronnie Chang. He became a correspondent for the satirical new show The Daily Show in 2015 after Trevor Noah asked him to audition. Now Chang is one of the rotating correspondents who anchor the show. He also co-stars in the new Hulu series Interior Chinatown.
So what was it like when they decided to move back to Malaysia?
My guest is comic and actor Ronnie Chang. His new comedy special, Love to Hate It, starts streaming on Netflix tomorrow. We'll be back after a short break. This is Fresh Air.
Renu Cheng, welcome to Fresh Air. It's a pleasure to have you on the show.
What was it like for you getting started in comedy in the U.S., being an immigrant and being of Chinese-Malaysian descent?
What else did your father say to you when you found out you wanted to be a comedian?
So earlier you said that you didn't tell your parents when you were on The Daily Show. And they didn't know what The Daily Show was because they'd never seen it. It's not big in Malaysia. Did they start watching it after you felt like you were doing a decent job and they could watch it?
Wow. Did you think that that might be true?
Apparently your father was very funny and prided himself on that. Yes. What kind of sense of humor did he have? Did he tell jokes or stories?
You seem to have such an interesting perspective on the world and on comedy because you've lived and grown up in so many different countries. Sure. And traveled the world doing comedy, too. How helpful is that to you as a person and as a comic?
Ronny Chieng, thank you so much for coming on our show. It's been a pleasure.
Ronnie Chang's new Netflix comedy special, Love to Hate It, starts streaming tomorrow, December 17th. This is Fresh Air.
Rock critic Ken Tucker has been listening back to the pop music made in 2024 and sees a pattern of women hitmakers who prize both aggression and vulnerability in various proportions. In songs by Charlie XCX, Sabrina Carpenter, Chapel Roan, and others, Ken has found the soundtrack to the past year's tumultuous times.
It's a big achievement. That's not a small achievement. Sure.
Ken Tucker is Fresh Air's rock critic. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, my guests will be Billie Eilish and Phineas O'Connell, the internationally famous brother and sister songwriting and music-making duo. We'll talk about what it was like to be homeschooled, become famous in their teens, and how their lives and music have changed as adults. They have a new album. I hope you'll join us.
Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Boldenato, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberto Shorrock directs the show.
Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
You deprive them of bragging rights.
A line that really stands out to me in the bit that we just heard is, you know, why would you do that? Why would you become a comet? Why would you make jokes to people who don't care about your mental health? Yeah. Did your father say that or did you just come up with that? No, no.
My dad never grabbed... But why did that occur to you to write that? Like... To people who don't care about your mental health. I thought that was very funny. I've never heard anybody put it that way.
He had a memorable funny scene in Crazy Rich Asians as a wealthy investment banker in Singapore. Ronnie Chang has a new Netflix comedy special called Love to Hate It, which starts streaming tomorrow. He brings an international perspective to his comedy. He was born in Malaysia. where his grandparents emigrated from China.
So you grew up mostly in Malaysia, which is one bridge away from Singapore. You compared it to me to how New York is to New Jersey.
Or how Philadelphia is to New Jersey on the opposite side.
So were you exposed to much stand-up in Malaysia or Singapore?
You said you were introduced to Jewish people from Seinfeld.
Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld. So what did it make you think Jewish people were like?
Your new comedy special was filmed in Honolulu.
Where Doogie... Kamealoha. Yes, thank you. This is like a Doogie Howser adjacent series.
Yeah, a reboot that you were in. And you're very popular there. Or so you say. Yeah, sure. And you say you have a lot of MAGA friends there. And on The Daily Show, you spent a lot of time satirizing Trump.
So how do you get around arguing about politics with your mega friends?
From age three to seven, he lived in Manchester, New Hampshire, where his parents attended college. Then the family returned to Malaysia, which is basically across the bridge from Singapore, so he spent a lot of time there. He attended college in Australia, where he got his B.A. in finance and his law degree, while also doing stand-up comedy. Let's start with a clip from his new comedy special.
You say you love America. This is the country that puts showbiz above everything.
And then you get paid for saying F the president. And then money comes in and you say, if you did this in Malaysia, jail.
But now Trump has an enemies list. He's threatening retribution and he's trying to revoke TV network broadcast licenses.
So how do you feel about insulting Trump now?
Well, I hope you're right.
Let's hear a clip from The Daily Show. And this is from the day after Kamala Harris conceded. So it's two days after Election Day. And you say Trump's promised a peaceful transfer of power. And then you say, let's hear it for the bare minimum of democracy. And here's the rest of the clip.
This is from a section about how he and his wife aren't ready for children, but his wife had her eggs harvested for possible future use. He's imagining what his child, if he ever has one, might say to him.
That's not really true about the money, I'm sure.
Okay. So you got on The Daily Show after Trevor Noah became the anchor and you knew him from performing at the same comedy festival in Melbourne, Australia, which is where you went to college. How surprised were you to get the call?
So that was my guest Richard Kind singing Get Out of My Life from the original cast recording of the Stephen Sondheim musical Bounce. So you worked directly with Sondheim on this, right? I did, yeah. What kind of direction did he give you about how to do his songs?
He starred in a production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at the Stephen Sondheim Center for the Performing Arts. And in the musical Bounce, he originated the role of Addison Meisner and got to work with Sondheim. Kind was in the Michael J. Fox series Spin City. In Curb Your Enthusiasm, he was Larry David's cousin Andy.
What was it like? He was one of your heroes. You always wanted to be in one of his shows. And here he was directing you and kind of being very picky about every word and probably about every note as well. Sure. Did that make you self-conscious?
You quit smoking to sing Sondheim?
Let me reintroduce you again. If you're just joining us, my guest is Richard Kind. He's currently in the Netflix series Everybody's Live with John Mulaney as Mulaney's sidekick. And that airs live on Netflix Wednesday nights at 10 Eastern. And then it streams afterwards. We'll talk more after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
And I'm a newsletter fan. I read it every Saturday after breakfast. The newsletter includes all the week's shows, staff recommendations, and Molly picks timely highlights from the archive.
And I think he's still angry that a recent series he co-starred in, East New York, was canceled after one season. Angry because he thought it was really good. Let's start with a clip from the latest episode of Everybody's Live with John Mulaney. Mulaney explains that Kind got hit on the head with a Kiss album, which left him with a traumatic brain injury, and now he thinks he's Gene Simmons.
So subscribe at whyy.org slash fresh air and look for an email from Molly every Saturday morning. So we talked a little bit about working with Sondheim on one of his musicals. Earlier in your life, your music was being a singing waiter in a Manhattan restaurant. How did that work, and what was your restaurant repertoire?
I'm thinking, speaking of Sondheim, that you have to sing upbeat, ingratiating songs, and you can't sing a song from Sweeney Todd like, "'They All Deserve to Die.'"
Were tips based on your singing?
You had a teacher, an acting teacher, who said to you, you're not going to get the roles until you're in your 30s. Yeah, so how discouraging was that when your own acting teacher said to you, you're not going to get the roles until you're 30s? Did you see that as discouraging, like he's telling me I'm not going to get roles?
Or did you see it as encouraging with him saying, like, it's going to take some time, but you will get roles when you're in your 30s. You will do well. Which way did you interpret it?
He's dressed like Simmons, his hair is like Simmons, and he talks like Simmons, too. After he says something vulgar to Mulaney, Mulaney starts to apologize to the audience.
I got lucky. I really did. Your father owned a jewelry store in Princeton. And you sometimes work there. And apparently it was a famous store. And I would presume you sold a lot of jewelry to men buying gifts for girlfriends and fiancés and wives. and mistresses.
What was it like as a man selling to men who know nothing about women's jewelry but want to give something to the woman in their life who they love or they want to impress or they want to make up with?
Let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is Richard Kind. He's currently in the Netflix series Everybody's Live with John Mulaney as Mulaney's sidekick. We'll talk more after a break. This is Fresh Air.
So you had a significant role in a film I really love, A Serious Man, that was made by the Coen brothers. And Michael Stuhlbarg plays a man whose wife is leaving him. He might be losing his teaching job. A student is kind of blackmailing him. His whole life is falling apart. And he's also wrestling with the concept of God and with his Judaism. You play his brother. You're a gambler. You're broke.
You have a sebaceous cyst that's become a big problem. You're in misery. And it's a kind of modern day version of the book of Job. At least that's how I think of it. And I'm wondering if you thought of it that way and if you read or reread the book of Job to do the role and if people talked about it on the set. Not at all. I'm glad I asked. I had a teacher who said.
What was a Coen Brothers approach to directing you from your point of view as an actor? What was it like to work with them?
The movie A Serious Man is also about struggling with your faith. Yes. Because the Michael Stubar character has conversations with rabbis, and he's kind of losing his faith because everything's going wrong in his life.
I know you were on Finding Your Roots, and you found out that some of your ancestors were religious leaders in the Pale of Settlement.
And the Pale of Settlement was during the Russian Empire. It was a large area of what we now call Eastern Europe that was basically the ghetto for Jews. Like Jews had to live within this expanse of land. And so, so many American Jews there lived. their grandparents or ancestors lived in the Pale of Settlement. What did it do to your own faith or religious practice, if you had any?
Richard Kind, welcome to Fresh Air. I have to ask you, because this question is as much about me as it is about you. So when I interviewed Gene Simmons many years ago, he said to me, if you want to welcome me with open arms, you'll also have to welcome me with open legs.
I know you're born Jewish. I have no idea how observant you are. But what did it do to your level of observance to find out about people on your family tree being religious leaders?
Do you practice any—do you observe the holidays and the Sabbath and all that? Like, how far do you go?
What you're saying reminds me of something that you've told another interviewer, which is you said, I have a huge ego with no confidence. You want to explain?
I love that line so much.
Do you tell jokes? I mean, you obviously have a great sense of humor, but do you actually tell joke jokes?
Oh, great. Do you want to tell us one that you love?
Well, Richard Kind, thank you so much for talking with us.
I got a lot of mileage out of that, though.
Yeah, I got a lot of attention.
Yeah. Insulting me was actually doing me a favor.
Okay, okay. So, Everybody's Live, your new late-night talk show, is adapted from last year's Netflix series, Everybody's in L.A. How did Mulaney describe it to you when he asked you to be his sidekick?
You're an actor, and you've been in so many things, but you're not a big celebrity. Like, everybody's seen you in at least one thing. So many people know who you are, but you're not famous in the way that your good friend George Clooney is famous. That is correct. And you've said you like it that way.
That's my guest actor Richard Kind in his current role on the Netflix show Everybody's Live with John Mulaney as the announcer and Mulaney's sidekick. He does sketches too.
Oh, well, you got to be Zero Mostel. I did. You've been in his role in two shows. And a funny thing happened on the way to the Forum. I did.
But I want to get back to the fact that you're not a George Clooney-level celebrity.
But everybody seems to know you. You know a lot of celebrities. And you've seen things that you're grateful you don't have to go through. So what are some of the things that you've seen celebrity friends go through that you're grateful you don't have to deal with?
This is Matthew Perry from Friends.
The show conforms to the late night format in the sense that there's an opening monologue, but then it becomes a panel discussion on a specific subject like funerals, loaning people money, and getting fired with guests like Pete Davidson, Michael Keaton, Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Henry Winkler, John Waters, and Wanda Sykes.
I want to play a clip from the series Girls 5 Ever about a girl group that reunites.
Everybody's Live is live on Netflix Wednesday nights and streams after that. Richard Kind has been in hundreds of movies and TV shows. In the series Only Murders in the Building, he was the neighbor Vince Fish, a.k.a. Stink Eye Joe, with a highly contagious case of pink eye. In the animated film Inside Out, he was the voice of the imaginary friend Bing Bong.
That's a great scene. I love that scene. It's a great scene. Was that supposed to be a parody of you?
Is that how you feel, that you're a little bit of a fraud?
I want to talk with you about working with Stephen Sondheim and being, like, originating a role, originating a Stephen Sondheim role. Wow. Unfortunately, it was a show that never quite caught on and went through several iterations and even several titles. So you were in Bounce as Edison Meisner, one of two brothers who, was it Boca Raton that they helped build?
You originated a role, and before we talk about what it was like to work with Sondheim on a Sondheim musical, I want to play a song from it, and it's called Get Out of My Life. And I chose this because it's a good song, and you're really great in it. This song is part singing and part really acting. Thank you. Because you're angry with this. Mm-hmm. And it really shows you off.
There's a song by Stephen Sondheim from his musical Balance with my guest, Richard Kind.
In the Coen Brothers film A Serious Man, he was the deeply troubled brother. Earlier in his career, he co-starred in the series Mad About You and was a cast member of the Carol Burnett show Carol and Company. His youthful ambition was to be in a Stephen Sondheim musical. He's been in two.
Hi, this is Molly C.V. Nusberg, digital producer at Fresh Air. And this is Terry Gross, host of the show. One of the things I do is write the weekly newsletter. And I'm a newsletter fan. I read it every Saturday after breakfast. The newsletter includes all the week's shows, staff recommendations, and Molly picks timely highlights from the archive. It's a fun read.
It's also the only place where we tell you what's coming up next week in exclusive. So subscribe at whyy.org slash fresh air and look for an email from Molly every Saturday morning.
Yeah, the one you sent three years ago.
I think we're going to tone down the language, right?
Well, I don't want to get into an argument about this, so I'll just say— Well, what's funny is this is how I discuss things. I will just say that—what was the other thing that you just said? I just lost it for a second trying to—
But people were protecting him. You know, people were protecting the musicians, the. I'm not arguing that aspect of it.
Anyhow, let's move on.
No, I mean, I think cancel culture probably went too far. I think it's an issue by issue thing. We agree. And there's a real kind of herd mentality around some of it. I think that's really up for a nuanced discussion about what deserves cancellation and what's just like... Nuanced discussion is not one of my strong points. Yeah. Okay.
Anyhow, we've been talking about anger and also channeling that into your work as an actor and a comic. I watched a clip of you on The Moth. The Moth is a storytelling podcast that is also a public radio program. And you're so different in that. You're sitting on a stool, not kind of pacing back and forth on the stage. You hadn't shaved your head yet, so you have, you know, red hair.
You hadn't gone bald yet.
Yeah, that one was recorded about 20 years ago.
But you're sitting on a stool telling a story that has a few laughs in it.
If you're just joining us, my guest is comic and actor Bill Burr. He's got a new comedy special that's about to start streaming on Hulu. It's called Drop Dead Years. And he's one of the stars of the new Broadway revival of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
Hi, this is Molly C.V. Nusberg, digital producer at Fresh Air. And this is Terry Gross, host of the show. One of the things I do is write the weekly newsletter. And I'm a newsletter fan. I read it every Saturday after breakfast. The newsletter includes all the week's shows, staff recommendations, and Molly picks timely highlights from the archive. It's a fun read.
It's also the only place where we tell you what's coming up next week, an exclusive. So subscribe at whyy.org slash fresh air and look for an email from Molly every Saturday morning. Let's talk a little bit about your childhood.
Your father, apparently, you know, from what I've heard you say, had real rage problems, real anger problems.
I know. I love that. Yeah.
It's very funny when you say it and you're literally right.
Did your father go off on you?
I think probably yes.
Okay, that's Bill Burr from his new comedy special. He's also one of the stars of the new Broadway revival of the David Mamet play, Glengarry Glen Ross. The revival has an incredible cast, Burr, Kieran Culkin, Bob Odenkirk, and Michael McKean. Burr co-starred in the film King of Staten Island, which was loosely based on the life of the film's star, Pete Davidson.
I think you're really good at transforming your real anger and your history of real anger and your history of being the target of real anger into comedy. And an example of that I want to play is from the animated series that you starred in and co-wrote F is for Family.
And in the opening episode, the family's sitting around the dinner table and the phone rings and the father really goes off on it and you play the father. So let's hear that scene and then we'll talk. I'm not answering that. Frank, you should answer it. What if somebody got hurt?
What if it's important?
Bercow created, co-wrote, and starred in the animated series F is for Family. Although he's known for comedy that's often contrarian and angry, the new comedy special, Drop Dead Years, opens like this.
It must be great to see yourself through their eyes. They probably have a different picture of you than you think other people have. They don't have this vision of you as like the angry guy on stage.
If you're just joining us, my guest is Bill Burr, and he has a new comedy special. It begins streaming on Hulu March 14th. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. So you're a father of two and one of your series that I think you co-created, Old Dads, right?
Well, one of the things in Old Dads is that the older fathers, which includes you, don't relate to some of the younger parents and how they're parenting their kids. Did you find that with yourself, you know, being a father?
So, you know what I'd like to do?
You do a podcast where you talk like an hour straight. I know. Or more, often more. Your mind probably is always on overdrive.
Oh, really? Well, those are really interesting insights. And you got them from doing mushrooms?
I feel a responsibility to say here that it's recommended that if you do mushrooms, you do it in a therapeutic setting. So if things do go bad, you have somebody to guide you through it, because you really don't know what to expect. You might want help.
So let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is comic and actor Bill Burr. He's got a new comedy special that's about to start streaming on Hulu. It's called Drop Dead Years. We'll be right back after a short break. This is Fresh Air.
So I'm tempted to do something and I don't know whether I should do it or not. Do it. Okay. So here's what I'd like to do. There's a bit that you do and I found myself both laughing and stopping laughing and then figuring out like, I'm not sure which way to take this. And so what I'd like to do is- That's amazing.
Good, so let's play it, and then we can talk about it, if that's okay with you.
Okay, great. So this is a part, you've just talked about men and all of, like, a lot of men's flaws. Then you say, you know, you're going to talk about women.
Bill Burr, welcome to Fresh Air. It's a pleasure to have you on the show.
Okay. So that's my guest, Bill Burr. Here's what I want to talk with you about. I want to talk to you about perspective. Because when I listen to that, I think that is really funny if you're coming from the perspective of, of course, men have to be involved because the whole point of feminism is
I'm good. It seems unusual for you to start on a note of vulnerability like you do in this new special. Does this mark a change in your public or private self?
is becoming equal and getting men who perceive women as less than or as incompetent or stupid or any of the patronizing things or insulting things, misogynist things that men may think. Men have to change in order for feminism to succeed, in order for women to get The equality.
Because women were already subservient. Men already controlled everything. It's historically been that way. But why is that? Let me finish my point. So I think it's really funny if your perspective is like, this is funny because obviously men have to change in order for feminism to succeed. But it's not so funny to me if your perspective is what do they want from us men?
Why don't they just leave – this is their issue. Why don't they just leave us alone? And that to me isn't funny because that would mean like you don't get it. You don't get that men who still think that women are lesser than or secondary or not smart enough, not capable enough – not deserving of equality.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest Bill Burr was recently described by New York Times comedy columnist Jason Zinnemann as one of the greatest living stand-up comics. In Rolling Stone, Burr was described as the undisputed heavyweight champ of rage-fueled humor. Bill Burr has a new comedy special on Hulu called Drop Dead Years. It starts streaming Friday, March 14th. Here's an excerpt.
If you're coming from that perspective, it's not funny because it means you're clueless, that you don't get it. But if you do get it, it's really funny because you're coming from the perspective of getting it and mocking the people who don't. So your turn.
They weren't given the chance to do it before. That's not true. The doors were closed.
And women have gone through exactly the same thing if they're not beautiful or young enough. Exactly.
But that's the thing. When I was growing up, the only jobs for women were nurses, teachers, cashiers, secretaries. There was very little else you could do. Well, okay, sex worker, yeah. There's very little else you could do. The doors are basically shut.
Yeah, so just getting back to that joke one more time. It's the kind of open-ended joke that you can see from either perspective.
I knew you wouldn't like this. I'm enjoying the hell out of this.
Okay, so I think... Try to establish that you could see that joke from two different perspectives, one of which I found really funny and the other which I found clueless. Do you want to leave it ambiguous like that so that bros in the audience can see it one way?
Okay.
Thank you.
You said you love debating.
No, but it's interesting to me that you see yourself coming from both of those perspectives and that you have both of those perspectives.
I just want to say in case it's not clear, I think you're hilarious. There's some jokes where I stand back and I go, I'm not sure how to take that. But I think you're a great comment.
I love your voice. I love your delivery. I love your spontaneity.
No, no. However. However? No, no. The only however is sometimes I just don't know how to take the jokes and I can interpret it one of two ways.
Oh, I like that.
I really enjoyed it. Thank you.
Bill Burr's new comedy special, Drop Dead Years, starts streaming Friday on Hulu. He's one of the stars of the new Broadway revival of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross. It begins previews tonight and opens March 31st. We recorded our interview last Tuesday. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, our guest will be New York Times editor David Enrich. He'll talk about his new book, Murder the Truth.
It chronicles a campaign by billionaires, politicians, and corporations to silence journalists and undermine free speech protections. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.
Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman, and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
So who was the person who told you? Was it your wife, your therapist?
At the start of your new special, you said that you started doing stand-up because it was the easiest way of walking into a room and making people like you.
So what kind of hurt? Are you talking about insults or being ignored, bullied, mocked?
Have you been abused in all those ways?
He's talking about driving on the freeway in L.A., where he lives, when he's caught in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Meanwhile, there's hardly any cars in the HOV lane, the high-occupancy vehicle lane, which is reserved for vehicles with at least two people. He's tempted to get into that lane, even though there's no one else in his car. But he knows the HOV rules are strictly enforced.
Because it was mean? Um...
I want to back up a little because when you were describing your anger and trying to change, you said you realized you'd been abusive. Do you mean verbally or physically?
Good. I just wanted to clarify that.
Well, that's one of the things you've talked about is that you had real road rage sometimes.
And who is the they besides the people who eat almonds?
You can take him on.
I'm going to have you just blamed all of this on white women. Yes. Where are the men in what you're saying?
This is where you kind of lose me.
Well, no, because the Me Too movement for women is about sexual assault.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Today, Amir Questlove-Thompson is back to talk about the life and legacy of Sly Stone. Questlove's new documentary called Sly Lives, a.k.a. The Burden of Black Genius, is about the impact of Sly Stone and his band Sly and the Family Stone on music and culture. Sly got his start as a DJ and record producer in the early 1960s.
So let's talk about your slide documentary. I really love this film. I want to start with a song, and it's their first big hit. It's Dance to the Music. It's so catchy, and I'd like you to point out what makes this song special in its moment, which was 1967 or 8?
Yeah. And that has, like I said, the message of inclusivity and togetherness. But as someone in your documentary points out, that alienated a lot of black listeners in the sense that, you know, police were beating up black people, which, of course, you could say today as well. But it was a very it was and also like black power was was becoming a thing.
My guest is Amir Questlove Thompson. His film Sly Lives, a.k.a. The Burden of Black Genius, will start streaming on Hulu Thursday. We'll talk more after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
Okay. So what makes this song so special in its moment?
Hi, this is Molly C.V. Nusberg, digital producer at Fresh Air. And this is Terry Gross, host of the show. One of the things I do is write the weekly newsletter. And I'm a newsletter fan. I read it every Saturday after breakfast. The newsletter includes all the week's shows, staff recommendations, and Molly picks timely highlights from the archive. It's a fun read.
It's also the only place where we tell you what's coming up next week in exclusive. So subscribe at whyy.org slash fresh air and look for an email from Molly every Saturday morning. Well, you know, on the same album as Everyday People, his message about inclusivity, he has the song Stand. That's a message to take a stand, stand up for your rights, you know, demand your rights.
And that resonated a lot within the black community.
Yeah. So talk a little bit about that song and why you think that song is important musically and in terms of the message of the lyrics.
So let's play that transitional part. So we hear some of the main song and then we hear what it transitions to at the end.
So that was Stand, which is on the same 1969 album as Everyday People. And those two songs have a kind of contrast, like I said before, inclusivity and like stand up for your rights. And at this time, it's a catchy song, but it's also like a message song. And the Panthers, the Black Panthers, who are very active at this time, it's 1969, become really interested in Sly.
And there's this really interesting part of the movie that talks about how the Panthers said, you need to join our group or you need to donate $100,000 to our group, to which Sly responds, give me a reason.
Yeah, but isn't that because we all have pain and we like music that understands pain and puts our pain into something beautiful?
And for me, I hear you. Yeah.
My guest is Questlove. His new documentary about Sly Stone is called Sly Lives, a.k.a. The Burden of Black Genius. It'll start streaming on Hulu Thursday. We'll talk more after a break. This is Fresh Air.
So to illustrate the point that you were making about pain in music, let's listen to Family Affair, which is a song about, you know, kind of what you're saying, that one person does really well and other people in the family don't. And there's a lot of pain within the family. So this is Family Affair, Sly and the Family Stone.
That was Sly and the Family Stone. My guest is Amir Questlove Thompson. His new documentary about the group and about Sly in particular is called Sly Lives, The Burden of Black Genius. So, you know, we talked about this a little bit. The subtitle of your film is The Burden of Black Genius.
And your theory is that for black artists in America, success can be more terrifying than failure for the reasons that you described. What do you think the burden included for Sly? What were the personal burdens in his life in addition to being singled out and how singled out can mean removed from your own people? What are some of the personal burdens that you think he also shouldered?
I want to pick up on that because I think that genius is often accompanied by or fueled by some kind of mental health issue. Whether it's OCD or bipolar disorder that... There's something within you where you are wired to not necessarily be happy, but you are wired to do music or painting or writing. And you kind of have no choice.
And there's even been studies about this, that you can have some kind of mental health issue. And that is often self-medicated with drugs. And I'm not trying to deny any of the things you said about how black artists have a burden that white artists don't. So I'm just trying to add.
Put some Yiddish in that song.
You talk the last time you were on our show about the importance of vulnerability and how it's time to talk about vulnerability and express vulnerability.
My guest is Amir Questlove-Thompson. His new documentary, Sly Lives, a.k.a. The Burden of Black Genius, will start streaming on Hulu Thursday, February 13th. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. You talked to Sly, and I don't know how much he participated in the movie, but how would you describe him now? He's in his early 80s. He's clean. He hasn't used drugs.
I'm not sure how long, but he's off of them as far as I can tell.
It's been so great to talk with you. And I just like all these projects you're doing. It's really remarkable. I really look forward to the Earth, Wind and Fire movie now.
Amir Questlove Thompson's new film is called Sly Lives, a.k.a. The Burden of Black Genius. It will start streaming on Hulu Thursday. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, my guest will be Sebastian Stan. He's nominated for an Oscar for his performance as Donald Trump in the film The Apprentice, and he won a Golden Globe last month for his role in A Different Man.
We'll talk about his early childhood in communist Romania and his path to the U.S. and acting, including his performances in multiple Marvel movies. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.
Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Mabel Donato, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman, and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
Literally?
All right. Thank you for that. Let's hear a dance to the music.
formed a multiracial band with his brother, sister, and other musicians, and went on to record hits like Everyday People, Dance to the Music, Family Affair, and Stand. Their music influenced Prince, George Clinton and Funkadelic, The Ohio Players, Earth, Wind & Fire, and many hip-hop artists. The film also covers the problems that came along with fame and drugs that took Sly down.
So that was Sly and the Family Stones, 1968 hit, Dance to the Music. And the drumming is so infectious. It's hard not to move when you hear that. And it's not fancy.
But there's a lot going on in that song, including like the kind of scatting part.
But then he also does a lot of things that become beats for hip-hop artists later.
It premiered at Sundance last month and starts streaming on Hulu Thursday, February 13th. Questlove is the co-founder of the hip-hop band The Roots, which is the house band for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
So I want to play another Sly track and talk about it with you because I found the film so interesting in really pointing to specifically what makes Sly's music so interesting and catchy and why so many people kind of, as you put it, use his vocabulary. So I want to play everyday people because this has significance in a lot of ways.
I mean, Sly's band is made up of black and white musicians, male and female musicians, and everyday people speaks to inclusivity, right? So can you talk about that a little bit in terms of the types of music that are drawn on in Sly's music and the kind of inclusivity that he represented within the band and in some of his lyrics?
If you feel as if you just heard him on our show, you did when we talked about his other new documentary focused on Saturday Night Live's music guests and music sketches over the past 50 years. That one's called Ladies and Gentlemen, 50 Years of SNL Music. Questlove's 2021 documentary Summer of Soul, featuring performances from the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, won an Oscar for Best Documentary.
Well, let's hear everyday people. And this is from 1969. So that was Everyday People, which, as you pointed out, has a kind of nursery rhyme part to it.
And that was your diagnosis.
Charlie Parker.
Why did you go back after the year?
Joining us at the piano is John Batiste. After a break, he'll play more music for us and talk about two years ago, the year he won multiple Grammys, but at the same time, his wife had a recurrence of leukemia requiring a bone marrow transplant. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
The first and second occurrences required bone marrow transplants, which necessitates brutal doses of chemo. We'll talk about what that period was like for him a little later. The occasion for his appearance today is his new album, Beethoven Blues. It features his reimaginings of Beethoven compositions.
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And I'm a newsletter fan. I read it every Saturday after breakfast. The newsletter includes all the week's shows, staff recommendations, and Molly picks timely highlights from the archive.
You spent one year studying that one piece. Yes. And you kept, I assume, kept hearing new things in it. Can you play an example of how you originally heard it and how— You heard nuances that you didn't hear before and played it differently than you did before after working with your teacher.
Since we're fortunate to have him at the piano, he'll play some of the music from that album and more. John Batiste, welcome back to Fresh Air. I love your new album. The documentary about you and your wife's bone marrow transplant was really moving, so it's a pleasure to have you back on our show. And how is she?
You know, like sometimes you see at the piano somebody playing and their hands are rising and their hands are, you know, it's all very dramatic the way their hands are. And I'm never sure whether that's showmanship or if it makes a difference sonically or rhythmically. You know what I mean?
So that chord that you played for us in the Brahms, put that in context, like play the whole sentence, if you know what I mean?
We'll hear more with John Batiste after a short break. This is Fresh Air.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. It's always a joy when John Batiste joins us at the piano, and that's how I felt about the session we recorded last week with him at the piano. Batiste was the band leader and music director of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert from its premiere in 2015 until 2022.
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You were the music director and band leader at The Late Night with Stephen Colbert from its inception in 2015 until 2022. Toward the end of that period, which is also the period that you were nominated for a record number of Grammys in different categories, and you won five Grammys until... including Album of the Year, your now wife, Sulayka Jouad, she was very sick.
She had had a recurrence of leukemia that she'd had about 11 years before that, and she needed a bone marrow transplant, her second one, because she had one during the first occurrence. And those are just awful. I mean, basically, they give you this very, very heavy duty chemo that nearly kills you. It kills your immune system so that you don't fight the transplant.
But a lot of people come like within like an inch of death and then have to, you know, recover and your immune system shot so you can't be around anything or anybody. That might expose you to any kind of germ. What was it like for you to be living in two worlds at once? You're getting all these accolades. You're performing on the Grammys. You're still at late night with Stephen Colbert.
People are seeing you every night. You have a reputation of joy, of bringing joy to where you are. And meanwhile, your wife is really suffering. I'm sure you are suffering just watching her. What was it like to have two worlds at the same time?
She sounds that way from the documentary, and I'm very glad to hear that. So I want to start with some music and you are at the piano, so you will be playing it for us. And the lead track of your Beethoven blues album is for Elise. And I think anyone who's taken piano lessons with any amount of classical music has had to learn this. And you do some really fascinating things with it.
You mean leave her and go to work?
Can you play one of the lullabies that you sent her?
Why is that the lead track of the album?
That was beautiful, John.
You know, the beginning, getting back to Beethoven, the beginning of that reminded me of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.
Am I crazy for saying that, by the way?
So in what you just played, the right hand, it's beautiful. The left hand is stormy. It's dissonant. It's such a contrast to the right hand. And one of the things that attracts me to Beethoven is the storminess of a lot of his music, the darkness of it. Were you particularly thinking of Beethoven when your wife was sick?
Because it was both beautiful, but stormy, but, you know, dark and dissonant and a little, you know, there seems to be like a warning in some of that music.
Foreboding, that is the word. Thank you.
Are you going to be bringing more of the pain that you experienced during that period into your public persona and your performances? Because you're always equated with joy and love, and you gave this phenomenal performance at the Grammys. You were such a great dancer, and you were surrounded by great dancers. And it was just really, like I said, so joyful.
At the same time, there was so much suffering going on in the background of your life, or the foreground of your life, I should say, really. So will you be bringing more of that into your public persona and be more identified with the darker part of life as well as the joyful part?
Yeah, and you learned it as a kid?
My guest is John Batiste. He's joining us at the piano. His new solo album is called Beethoven Blues. We'll talk more after a break. This is Fresh Air.
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So at the same time that your wife was getting the bone marrow transplant, you were also writing, composing your American Symphony. And the theme of that is featured on your album Beethoven Blues.
This was a piece where you wanted to bring together influences of all different kinds of music and not just have classical music in one category and jazz in another, but bring together all forms of American music. So there's classical, there's influences of gospel and other black musics, indigenous music, folk music, classical music. And you had different types of musicians performing.
Can you play the theme, which is also featured on your album, Beethoven Blues?
And if you're just joining us, John Batiste is at the piano. piano plays softly It's really beautiful. What did you want to express with that?
So before you play it, I want to ask you, are you going to play it like you played it on the album? Because my understanding is you did a lot of improvising in real time for that recording. Or are you going to do different things with it now?
The night of the premiere at Carnegie Hall, the power went out during the performance. Did you see that as like an omen or a sign of something?
When The Power came back and the performance continued, were you in a different musical state of mind than you'd been in before?
Thank you. It's just been absolutely a pleasure and an honor for me. So be well, and I wish you all good things.
Okay, let's hear it. You're at the piano. Can you play it?
Thank you so much. John Batiste's new solo piano album is called Beethoven Blues. He joined us from public radio station WNYC in New York, where he was recorded by George Wellington. Special thanks to Aaron Cohn and WNYC. There's a part two of that interview with John Batiste at the piano, in which he talks about and plays and sings some of his favorite Christmas songs, and a couple of mine.
We'll play that Christmas week on Monday, December 23rd. I think you'd really enjoy it. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, our guest will be Danielle Deadweiler. She stars in the new Netflix film adaptation of August Wilson's play The Piano Lesson.
She'll talk about her craft, her choices to portray historical figures like Emmett Till's mother, and what it was like to work with Denzel Washington and his family to bring The Piano Lesson to the screen. I hope you join us. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Rebo Donato, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producers are Molly C.V. Nesper and Sabrina Siewert. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Tariq Rose.
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That same year, his album called We Are received 11 Grammy nominations in seven different categories including and won five Grammys, including Album of the Year. He wrote the score for this year's film Saturday Night about the first SNL broadcast. He also appears in the film as musician Billy Preston, the first musical guest.
That was great. That's John Batiste at the piano at the studio of WNYC. And it's also the lead Beethoven piece. tune on his new album, Beethoven Blues. And John, that sounded great. You mentioned in, I think, your official statement about the album that you think Beethoven is really kind of connected to the blues, even though he's centuries before the blues.
Can you just illustrate what you mean by that? Like play some passage of Beethoven that makes you think of the blues? Sure.
Tell me what you mean.
Don't you find it interesting that there are certain like harmonies, chords, rhythms that it took centuries or millennia to get to? You know, like jazz chords, gospel chords, like they weren't, quote, invented yet in Beethoven's time.
Batiste is a jazz musician who also studied classical music at Juilliard, where he got his BA and MA and is now on the board. But his music is more expansive than jazz and classical, as you can tell just by the varied Grammy categories in which he's been nominated for or won awards.
So there's another Beethoven symphony excerpt that I'd like you to play for us, if you will. And it's from a symphony number five, which, again, is something like everybody knows. It's da-da-da-dum, that one.
So what do you hear in this that made you want to reimagine it, improvise on it?
Jazz performance, American roots song, contemporary classical composition, jazz instrumental, R&B album, improvised jazz solo, pop duo or group performance, and original score for the animated film Soul. He currently has two Grammy nominations, Best Music Film and Best Song Written for Visual Media, for the documentary American Symphony.
Yeah, love it. You went to Juilliard. So in addition to studying classical music in New Orleans when you were young, you went to Juilliard, I think you were 17. And you didn't know how to sight read when you got there. At a certain point, maybe junior year, was it that you were told to take a year off or get kicked out?
So what was their problem with you? Was it that you were doing all this stuff to the classics? Did you demonstrate the problem just now?
You brought your melodica with you.
So you said that you were told to stop playing melodica. And that's what got you sent to a psychiatrist. I wasn't sure what that meant, whether they told you you needed to go to a psychiatrist or you decided to go to a psychiatrist. And what was the reason for that?
The film is about composing his American Symphony and performing the premiere in Carnegie Hall. The film also developed into something totally unexpected, a document of the period his wife, Sulayka Jawad, was diagnosed with a recurrence of leukemia, which had been in remission for over 10 years.
Hi, this is Molly Sivinesper, digital producer at Fresh Air. And this is Terry Gross, host of the show. One of the things I do is write the weekly newsletter. And I'm a newsletter fan. I read it every Saturday after breakfast. The newsletter includes all the week's shows, staff recommendations, and Molly picks timely highlights from the archive. It's a fun read.
It's also the only place where we tell you what's coming up next week in exclusive. So subscribe at whyy.org slash fresh air and look for an email from Molly every Saturday morning.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Today's guest, David Tennant, is best known as an actor, but he also has an interview podcast, which is now in its third season. Some of this year's guests include Stanley Tucci, Ben Schwartz, and Rosamund Pike. Tennant spoke with Fresh Air's Sam Brigger. Here's Sam.
Nusberg, digital producer at Fresh Air. And this is Terry Gross, host of the show. One of the things I do is write the weekly newsletter. And I'm a newsletter fan. I read it every Saturday after breakfast. The newsletter includes all the week's shows, staff recommendations, and Molly picks timely highlights from the archive. It's a fun read.
It's also the only place where we tell you what's coming up next week, an exclusive. So subscribe at whyy.org slash fresh air and look for an email from Molly every Saturday morning.
Nusberg, digital producer at Fresh Air. And this is Terry Gross, host of the show. One of the things I do is write the weekly newsletter. And I'm a newsletter fan. I read it every Saturday after breakfast. The newsletter includes all the week's shows, staff recommendations, and Molly picks timely highlights from the archive. It's a fun read.
It's also the only place where we tell you what's coming up next week in exclusive. So subscribe at whyy.org slash fresh air and look for an email from Molly every Saturday morning.
Sarah Snook spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Boldenaro. Last week, Snook received a Tony nomination for her leading role in the stage adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray. The show's run has been extended until June 29th. Coming up, our rock critic Ken Tucker remembers David Thomas, the lead singer for the band Per Ubu. He died last month at age 71. This is Fresh Air.
David Thomas, lead singer and principal songwriter for the band Per Ubu, died on April 23rd at age 71. Thomas and Per Ubu emerged from the Cleveland punk rock scene in the late 1970s and were immediately recognized as unique artists.
Our rock critic Ken Tucker reviewed the band's 1978 debut album, The Modern Dance, for Rolling Stone, describing the music back then as harsh, ugly, vivid, and exhilarating. Here's Ken's appreciation of David Thomas' work.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Our guest today is Sarah Snook. She's best known for playing Shiv Roy on the show Succession. Now she's on Broadway in a one-person show, an adaptation of the Oscar Wilde story The Picture of Dorian Gray. Last week, she received a Tony nomination for Best Leading Actress in a Play. She spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Baldonado.
Ken Tucker is Fresh Air's rock critic. David Thomas died April 23rd. He was 71. Tomorrow, our guest will be Emmy winner and Oscar nominee Michelle Williams in the new limited TV series Dying for Sex. She plays a woman who finds out she's dying of cancer and decides to leave her unhappy marriage and her life behind to seek pleasure and sexual satisfaction.
She'll tell us about portraying characters experiencing grief, loss, and resilience. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger.
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Boldenato, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavey-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest today is Al Pacino.
I want to get to a lot of your life. I want to start by talking about The Godfather. So I want to start with a scene from the first Godfather film. You've begun your transformation into the killer Michael, into the crime family Michael. You know, you start coming home from the military. You don't want any part of the crime family. But then you're kind of pulled in after your father is shot.
How old was she when she died? Did she get to see you be successful?
Your parents divorced before you were two. When you were around eight months old, you were taken away from your mother. No.
Stayed with your grandparents.
And you say at least you were placed with family and not a foster home. Why were you taken away from your mother?
After finding out about that? Trauma.
Trauma you didn't even know you had. That's interesting.
But that doesn't mean it didn't affect you.
Well, I'm going to ask Pacino about his business, by which I mean his art.
So we need to take a short break here. So let me reintroduce you. My guest is Al Pacino, and he's written a new memoir called Sunny Boy. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Al Pacino. He has a new memoir called Sunny Boy.
When we left off, we were talking about growing up in the South Bronx with his grandparents and single mother. There was a point where your mother was crying and kissing you all over. And you were very young and you weren't understanding what's up. Why is this happening? And then you return home and you see there's an ambulance in front of the building. And it's your mother who they're there for.
Was that, did she attempt to die by suicide?
How old were you?
Did it register on you what had happened? Did you comprehend it?
So here's a scene from Godfather 1. You've begun your transformation into the hardened Michael. Your father's still alive, but Michael is preparing to take over from him. And you have become so hardened, like you hardly blink in some scenes, including this one. So you're with Mo Green, a Vegas casino owner, kind of modeled on Bugsy Siegel. And the Corleone family has helped back him.
Yeah. She must have loved movies because she took you to the movies when you were... Oh, she loved everything.
She took you to see, when you were five, she took you to see The Lost Weekend starring Ray Moland as this raging alcoholic. It's a great film, but he gets very self-destructive. And I don't know, you were five and then you started acting out those scenes at home? Yeah, I started acting out the scenes. Because you were so into it?
Do you understand now?
It's kind of funny to see a five-year-old playing an adult in crisis.
Who's totally disillusioned.
You became an actor.
Yeah, and you fell in with avant-garde theater, which I didn't know until reading the book. But even before that, you'd fallen in love with Strindberg and Chekhov and Shakespeare. Oh, God, yes. I'm curious, like, as a teenager, before you were really deeply involved with theater, although you did go to the high school in performing arts. Yes.
So can you recite a few lines that really stuck with you and meant something important to you when you were in your teens? From one of those three, Strindberg, Chekhov, Shakespeare.
You're going to be graded.
Also in the scene is Michael's older brother, but not very bright brother, Fredo, played by John Cazale, and the family lawyer, Tom, played by Robert Duvall. Mo Green is played by Alex Rocco. You speak first.
What was that from?
Oh, okay. So you sang a few bars of Whistle a Happy Tune.
I was surprised to read that you were in musicals. I've never heard you sing until this very moment.
Oh, I thought you were going to say Anthony Quinn.
Well, let's take a break here, and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is Al Pacino. He has a new memoir, and it's called Sunny Boy. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to my interview with Al Pacino. He's written a new memoir. It's called Sunny Boy. You were going to turn down the role in Godfather II.
But for Godfather II, I mean, Godfather I was already a success.
Mario Puzo comes up to you with the script that he'd written, and he said, this is crap.
Wait, so was the script rewritten? No.
It did, I know. It's you slamming the table.
This is a great script. Oh. I know, it was a great script. Coppola rewrote the script?
It was hard because of your personal life?
You're too young. Valium?
I remember those days. Do you remember Valium? Of course. I didn't take it, but I certainly knew all about it. I mean, it was everywhere. There were jokes about it and dramas about it. It was like one of the first really popular anti-anxiety medications.
How did you manage to get through the film? You're so good at it. I mean, you're so good in the film. How did you manage?
He's had to emotionally shut down to do what he felt he needed to do.
And become a monster.
Did that have an impact on you? It had to.
Well, let's take a break here and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is Al Pacino. He has a new memoir and it's called Sunny Boy. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to my interview with Al Pacino. He's written a new memoir. It's called Sunny Boy. So you had to have surgery on your carotid artery. I guess it was clogged?
Both of them? Okay.
I want to ask you about another medical event that, you know, almost killed you. This is like during the COVID thing. Oh, the COVID thing. You almost died. You flatlined. Well, that's what I thought I did.
Or protective gear to prevent COVID from spreading to them. Yes.
Do you live alone now?
How do you like it?
What you do say in the book is that you thought you had experienced death.
But what you experienced was like nothingness. I'm sorry to say that. Yeah, you didn't see like a bright light. You didn't feel like you were looking down at yourself from the sky or the ceiling. It was just like the absence of anything.
Whether you nearly died or just briefly unconscious.
For some people, the answer is, oh, now I believe in God. For other people, it is.
Did it make you any more or less afraid of death?
Has it affected how you want to spend whatever time you have left?
I didn't mean like, oh, this is like the end, but I mean like sometimes you rethink like, what do I want out of life at this stage of my life? Do I want to work more? Do I want to work less?
Thank you so much for talking with us. Oh, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for all your great films, all your great performances, and for the book. Thank you very much.
Al Pacino's new memoir is called Sunny Boy. Let's close with a famous scene from his film Dog Day Afternoon. Pacino's character is robbing a bank to pay for his lover's gender affirmation surgery, but everything's gone wrong, and he's holding everyone at the bank hostage. In this scene, he's stepped outside where he's surrounded by police.
Police snipers are on the surrounding rooftops, and a police detective, played by Charles Durning, is trying to get him to release the hostages. Al Pacino's new memoir is called Sunny Boy. a crowd of people has gathered outside the bank watching the whole spectacle.
Tomorrow on Fresh Air, we'll remember Quincy Jones and listen back to my 2001 interview with him. He died Sunday. He was an arranger, composer, and producer for music that spans from the big bands through bebop, pop, movie soundtracks, TV themes, and hip-hop.
He arranged or produced recordings for Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, and Aretha Franklin, and produced Michael Jackson's albums Off the Wall, Bad, and Thriller. I hope you'll join us. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer is Adam Staniszewski.
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Boldenato, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producers are Molly C.V. Nesper and Sabrina Siewert. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
So I'm going to talk to Pacino about his remarkable performance in the Godfather films and other films. We'll also talk about his life. He's written a new memoir called Sunny Boy, which is the name his mother used to call him. It spans his life from the days he grew up in the South Bronx, raised by a single mother with little money.
I just love that scene so much.
It works. Just hearing it and not seeing it. Does it work, though?
That's a great idea.
You know, I interviewed Michael Caine years ago, the great actor Michael Caine, and he was saying when you're playing a powerful person, you don't wave your hands around. Because when you have the power, people are looking at your every subtle gesture. They're trying to read you. They're trying to stay in your good graces and stay safe. And so weak people move their hands around.
Powerful people don't. When we started talking, you were moving around a lot. So I'm thinking, was it hard for you to be as still as Michael is when he is exerting his power? Because he knows how to not be still when he needs to, but he can be very still and very opaque and very threatening at the same time.
Yeah, I was wondering. Yeah.
You literally, like, don't blink in that scene. I think you blink once. How do you do that?
You were nearly fired from the movie after the opening scene. And you write in the book that the opening scene was such a stupid scene for the audition because Michael is not a part of the family. He doesn't really know who he is yet. His future is uncharted. And he's naive.
He's just describing to his girlfriend, Kay, who later becomes his wife, like who's here and who his family is and who they've helped kill. I know. All these wonderful people auditioned.
to falling in love with the language of the great playwrights Strindberg, Chekhov, and Shakespeare, getting his start in avant-garde theater in Greenwich Village, surprising himself by becoming a movie star, nearly dying from COVID, and all the ups and downs along the way. Thank you very much.
Francis Ford Coppola, yeah.
You thought he was kidding and it was maybe a phony phone call.
So you start with Robert De Niro in Godfather II, but you're not in any scenes together because he's of a different generation from before you were born. And however, you do have scenes together in Heat and also in The Irishman. And I want to play a great scene from The Irishman.
Okay. So here's a scene with you and De Niro toward the end of the film. And you've just gotten out of prison. He plays Frank Sheeran. And Frank Sheeran is somebody who got very connected to the mob. And then he became – you played Jimmy Hoffa, the head of the Teamsters Union. He became your bodyguard. So in this scene, you've only recently gotten out of prison. Right.
There was a big kind of ceremony in your honor. And then De Niro, as Frank Sheeran, comes up to you and explains that basically that your time's up, that the mob wants you out of the Teamsters, out of the leadership position that you want to return to. But you're both talking between the lines. Yeah. You're not coming right out and saying anything. You're talking between the lines.
It's a great scene. You ping pong back and forth. So let's hear it. It starts with De Niro.
You don't get that. De Niro's telling you they're going to kill you unless you do it. And they do.
So you and De Niro are both such intense actors. You're of the same generation. So when you're working together, do you have a similar style of either preparing or like does one of you want like a thousand takes and another one of you only want one? You know, like what are your commonalities in your classes when you're working together?
He won an Emmy for his performance in the HBO adaptation of the play Angels in America, playing Roy Cohn. He starred in the film adaptation of David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Glengarry Glen Ross, and later starred in a Broadway revival of the show, but in a different role. Al Pacino, welcome to Fresh Air. So exciting to have you here.
So you grew up in the South Bronx. You hung out with a pretty tough crowd. Yeah. And you used to, like, jump from rooftop to rooftop. Oh, yeah. We were wild. You threw trash down. You'd be on the rooftop and throw trash down on Saturday nights to young men with their dates.
Where was the fun in doing that?
At least three of your closest friends died of drug-related deaths. Were they heroin overdoses?
How did you manage to avoid that yourself?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. I first became aware of Hanef Qureshi when the 1985 film My Beautiful Laundrette was released. He was nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay about a side of contemporary England that had rarely been explored on screen, Pakistani immigrants and their children. The film was a lively romantic comedy about gay love, family, racism, and punk rock.
So you're no longer sexual because of your paralysis. Like sex was a very central part of your life until the accident. And it was part of your writing as well. So you seem to have changed in terms of your attitude towards sex. At first, I think you really, really missed it. And then you got so used to not having it that you became kind of uninterested in it.
You wrote, just because you're severely injured doesn't mean you don't think about sex. But you also write that you lost interest in sex once you couldn't have it. Can you describe that transition?
Let's take another break here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Hanif Qureshi, and his new memoir is called Shattered, and it's about the year he spent in hospitals after the fall that injured his spinal cord, leaving him unable to move his arms and legs. We'll be right back after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
Your father was an immigrant, and I want to get into that a little bit later. But I just want to talk about the contrast between the racial ethnic aspects of the hospital in Italy where you had your accident and in London, the hospitals you eventually moved to because you're from London, your partner's from Italy. So in Italy, just about everybody who worked in the hospital was white.
When you went to hospitals in London, all the therapists and nurses, they were all people of color, often immigrants. And you were the only person here who speaks standard Middle English was you.
That's the National Health Service.
And in America as well, in the U.S., so many health care workers, including caregivers and aides, are recent immigrants or immigrants who've been here for a longer time. Oh, and so many people who take care of children are also immigrants. And yet there's this strong anti-immigrant feeling in America, as I'm sure you know, and I think in England as well, right?
Your father emigrated to Britain in the late 1940s from Pakistan. Was he from a Muslim family? My understanding is he was relatively secular.
Now, I thought he came from Pakistan.
And physio is physical therapy.
Yeah, and partition happened in, was it 1947, when India basically divided into two with Pakistan becoming a new Muslim state.
And when you were growing up, one of the insulting words that you were called was Paki, short for like, yeah, go ahead.
So was your father part of the first generation of a wave of immigrants to England from South Asia?
I see. So what was it like for him and then for you as being his son to be part of a new wave of immigrants? I think, is it fair to say England was largely white at the time?
When you were growing up, you were bullied by skinheads and other kids who were racist. How did you respond to that?
Let's take another break here. If you're just joining us, my guest is screenwriter, novelist, and playwright Hanif Qureshi. His new memoir is called Shattered, and it's about the year he spent in hospitals after the fall that injured his spinal cord, leaving him unable to move his arms and legs. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. You're a father. You have three sons. Two of them are twins.
And your arm is strong enough to maneuver the controls of your motorized wheelchair.
And, you know, you try to write as honestly as possible. And one of the things you write in your new memoir, Shattered, is, there has barely been a minute of the last 10 years when I haven't enjoyed being with my three sons. But I admit that the early days were difficult, if not nasty, even hair-raising on occasions.
I often felt that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people. What was it about fatherhood early on when your kids were young that made you feel like you weren't living the life you were supposed to be living?
The passage that I just read, did you dictate that to one of your sons? Because your sons helped you in writing the memoir because they transcribed what you were saying.
Well, because you said you didn't enjoy being a father and you were dictating this to a son. So I could see how he might interpret that as disappointing.
That's my cat's job.
And you also write you hated taking your children to karate and football and swimming. Oh, yeah.
You're good friends with Salman Rushdie. And he wrote a really wonderful, like so well-written memoir about the incident where he was stabbed while on stage at the Chautauqua Festival. where he was making an appearance. And you write in your book that you've had many conversations with him subsequent to your injury and his attack, the attack on him. Did you read his memoir?
So I'm trying to figure out what happened. You were dizzy and then you woke up in a pool of blood.
I'm wondering if maybe you wanted to stay away from it knowing that you'd be writing your own thoughts.
Which happened first, your fall or his attack? I'm losing the chronology.
What did he mean to you as another writer from South Asia, living in England? And he started writing—Midnight's Children was published before your screenplays and novels—
Let's take another break here. If you're just joining us, my guest is screenwriter, novelist, and playwright Hanif Qureshi. His new memoir is called Shattered, and it's about the year he spent in hospitals after the fall that injured his spinal cord, leaving him unable to move his arms and legs. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air.
I don't know if you're a planner or not and if you look ahead into the future a lot or not. But has the accident changed your approach to planning, to looking at the future, to thinking what's next? Or are you living more like day to day and not thinking ahead very much?
Isabella's your partner, now wife?
You mentioned you're doing a dance thing. What is that?
That's really interesting.
Well, it's nice that they asked. I mean, what an interesting and unusual opportunity.
Well, even your memoir is a collaboration because you dictated it to members of your family. And I'm sure they commented on it at some point as you were.
Okay. Well, I want to thank you so much for talking with us and for sharing so much of your life. Thank you, Terry.
It was directed by Stephen Frears and co-starred Daniel Day-Lewis as a young man in a relationship with the son of a Pakistani immigrant. Qureshi has since written other screenplays and novels, including The Buddha of Suburbia. His new memoir, called Shattered... begins in 2020 after a fall that injured his spinal cord, leaving him unable to move his arms or legs.
Thank you. And I wish you, among other things, comfort and freedom from pain. And that reminds me, are you in pain? People think that, well, if you're paralyzed, therefore you don't feel anything and you're spared from pain. But that's actually not true.
Well, you spoke about the fragility of life, and you've been narrating what that's like.
It sounds like there'll be plenty of things to talk about in the future.
Hanif Qureshi's new memoir is called Shattered. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Aired. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, for Mardi Gras Day, we'll be joined by a Mardi Gras attraction, clarinetist and vocalist Doreen Ketchins. Known as Lady Louie, she's a fixture of the French Quarter in New Orleans.
We'll talk with her about her decades-long career as a street performer, and she'll play some music. I hope you'll join us. ¦
Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Thanks to Fatima Al-Kassab for her help in recording today's interview. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger.
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman, and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
You write about how it initially felt to feel disconnected from your body, to see your hand and not feel connected to your hand. You write, I had become divorced from myself. Would it be okay to ask you to describe what that felt like, that sense of disconnection from your own body?
You started writing your memoir just days after the accident by dictating it. Was writing especially important to you? I know you're a writer. I know you're very dedicated to writing. Your life has centered around writing and family. But was it helpful to distance yourself from kind of removing yourself from what was happening so you could look at what was happening, examine it, and describe it?
We've all experienced staying awake hours in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, and worrying about so many different things. Sometimes you obsess on one thing, sometimes on many things. For you, that was especially difficult. It's not like you could get up and get a snack or watch TV for a little while, read a book.
He describes being unrecognizable to himself, disconnected from his body, totally dependent on others, feeling helpless and humiliated, dealing with rage, envying other people who could do even basic things like scratch and itch. While spending too much time on his back staring at the ceiling, he reflected on earlier periods of his life. He shares those reflections in his book.
Your partner, Isabella, spent every day during visiting hours in the hospital with you. And you were hospitalized for about a year. And one time when she was brushing your teeth and you felt like a helpless baby and a tyrant, two really conflicting, maybe not so conflicting. Can you describe both of those feelings?
Yeah, I was thinking that as I said it, yeah.
You have paid caregivers too, right?
He spent a year in hospitals before he was able to return home with round-the-clock caregivers. He started writing the memoir just days after the accident by dictating to one of his sons. The book's narrative is occasionally interrupted by asides like, excuse me for a moment, I must have an enema now.
So they're paid to do this. That's their job. That's what they're trained to do. Do you feel guilty or embarrassed or humiliated when they're helping you?
You once accused Isabella of going all Betty Davis on you, making it seem like she was the one being the tyrant. That's harsh. What brought that on?
Isabella asked you that if the tables were turned and she was lying in bed, unable to move, would you do for her as much as she'd been doing for you? And you write that you weren't sure. You weren't sure if you would. What made you doubt that?
Qureshi is the son of a British mother and a father who emigrated from Pakistan in the late 1940s. Hanif Qureshi, welcome back to Fresh Air. We first spoke in 1990 on Fresh Air, and you've been on two times since then, so welcome back. How are you now? How much movement do you have?
So in recalibrating your relationship, what are some of the changes that you made so that even though you were no longer physically equals and you were dependent and she was a caregiver, what were you able to change to restore things or to keep on track things that were special between you?
You know, with hope and with optimism, it's sometimes hard to tell when hope and optimism are really more like denial and not helpful. And it seems to me that's one of the things you were grappling with.
She is no stranger to writing about death and the importance of memory, whether it's the Let's start with a video that Wildman posted on Instagram when Orly was 12 in sixth grade, and Sarah interviewed her about what she was experiencing. It was 16 months after the initial diagnosis. She was in the middle of a second round of chemo and, as a result, was bald.
If you're just joining us, my guest is Sarah Wildman. She's a writer and editor in the opinion section of the New York Times, where she wrote a series of articles about being the mother of her daughter Orly, who had terminal cancer. We'll talk more after this short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
Thank you. and the differences between how hospitals, hospice, and Judaism deal with the illness and death of a child compared to an adult. She described the expert medical care Orly received and the reluctance of some doctors and nurses to speak openly and realistically about what Orly was facing.
She also wrote about the impact of Orly's ordeal and death on her younger daughter, Hana, who was nine when Orly died.
When it was time for tough conversations about turning points in Orly's health care, including it's time for hospice because there's probably no cure, are those things you wanted to tell Orly yourself, or did you want the professionals, the doctors, the nurses, the hospice care people to tell her? Which did you think would be easier for her to digest?
When you were wondering how much to try to talk with your daughter about the inevitability of death, Did you try to feel her out and see what is she ready to hear and what is she not ready to hear? Did you wait for her to bring it up instead of you bringing it up?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Parents want to protect their children, but how can you possibly protect your adolescent child from a terminal illness and inevitable death? My guest, Sarah Wildman, realized the inevitability after her older daughter, Orly, was enrolled in hospice. That was after three years of treatment for a rare form of liver cancer that had metastasized.
Well, let me reintroduce you here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Sarah Wildman. She's a writer and editor in the opinion section of the New York Times, where she wrote a series of articles about being the mother of an adolescent with terminal cancer and what it was like at the end, three and a half years after the diagnosis. Her daughter, Orly, died in 2023 at the age of 14.
We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air.
I've read so much about how family members grow closer when they know a member of the family is dying. You make every minute count. You love each other more. But unless it's a sudden death or a few weeks before death, there's still plenty of time to get on each other's nerves and to argue. And you wrote that you still fought with Orly sometimes. What would you fight about?
And I wonder how it would make you feel when you did fight about something.
So, you know, Orly had her reasons to be angry at God. You had to, like, redefine for her and for you the meaning of God. What about your younger daughter, Hana, who was only nine when Orly died? And that was like three and a half years after her diagnosis. What did Hana make of this? And how did she interpret God? Or was she angry at God?
You write about grieving and how the Jewish tradition is different when grieving for a parent than when grieving for a child. What is the difference?
Let's take a short break here, and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is Sarah Wildman. She's a writer and editor at the Opinion section of the New York Times, where she wrote a series of articles about being the mother of an adolescent with terminal cancer and what it was like at the end, three and a half years after the diagnosis. We'll be right back.
This is Fresh Air. You continued to do your job at the New York Times writing and editing for the opinion section. Did you feel this sense of guilt and inadequacy in both places at home, feeling like you're not doing a job at work and at work, feeling like you're not home with Orly in the hours that she's not in school and in the days when she couldn't go to school?
How did you handle that combination of having, you know, a stressful job and a stressful life at home that were both really time consuming?
At the New York Times now, as an opinion editor, are you focusing on editing people who have endured trauma or who are currently suffering or who are in the middle of a war? I mean, for example, you worked with Rachel Goldberg, the mother of Hirsch Pollen Goldberg, who was abducted by Hamas on October 7th, and in the attack, one of his arms was blown off.
He was used by Hamas in a hostage video, and he died in captivity. Was Orly why you wanted to work with Rachel? Did you initiate that?
I have one last question for you, and that is, where are you now in the process of mourning your daughter who died in March of 2023?
Sarah Wildman, I'm really grateful that you spoke to us. Thank you for sharing everything that you did.
Sarah Wildman is a staff writer and editor for the New York Times Opinion section, where you can find her personal essays. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, our guest will be Grammy-winning pop star and actress Ariana Grande. She's nominated for an Oscar for her role as Galinda in Wicked. She started acting on Broadway and TV when she was in her teens. I hope you'll join us.
To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, Follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Boldenato, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
So that was Sarah Wildman interviewing her late daughter, Orly, when Orly was 12 and in sixth grade, going through her second round of chemo. Sarah Wildman, welcome to Fresh Air. You write so beautifully about your daughter and your family. Thank you for coming to our show. Why did you want to do that interview with your daughter?
Were you able to ask her questions because this was an interview that you wouldn't otherwise have asked her? Because it's a more formal situation that kind of begs for a serious conversation that reveals things. So I'm wondering if the interview format gave you a kind of safe space to ask things that would be uncomfortable to just bring up at dinner.
Early was 14 when she died in 2023. She endured several rounds of chemo, a liver transplant, two brain surgeries, and a tumor that pinched her spine, leaving her unable to walk. Wildman is a staff writer and editor for the opinion section of the New York Times, where she wrote several pieces during Early's illness and after her death.
reflecting on what it was like to be a parent of a child facing mortality and the differences between how hospitals, hospice, and Judaism deal with illness and death of a child compared to an adult. She described the expert medical care Orly received and the reluctance of some doctors and nurses to speak openly and realistically about what Orly was facing.
Yeah, you describe in one of your pieces how sometimes when friends or neighbors would see you, they would just kind of break down into tears. How did that make you feel when friends saw you and just started to cry?
You write about how doctors and nurses tend to treat children who have terminal illness or are at the end stage differently than they would treat an adult. What are some of the differences you observed?
She also wrote about the impact on her younger daughter, Hana, who was nine when Orly passed away. Several years before Orly's diagnosis, Wildman wrote the book Paper Love about her grandfather, who fled Austria after the Nazi invasion, and his girlfriend, who he left behind. No one in the family knew what happened to her, but the book describes how Wildman spent years tracking down the story.
You know how you were saying that terminal is the kind of thing you have to hear over and over before you're capable of absorbing it because it's so catastrophic? I mean, you write that conversations about death were discouraged in and out of the doctor's office.
Maybe that's why, because they have to give you a small dose at a time before you're ready to hear and comprehend the full reality of it.
One of the things I like about this scene is the difference between the fantasy you imagine and the reality that you get. But Lucille Ball, I think, was very pregnant at the time because she's wearing what really looks like maternity clothes. Do you know how pregnant she was, how expectant she was when they shot that scene?
And this is set at a nightclub where he's the band leader. And he gets a note saying there's a couple here who is going to have a baby. And he asked, like, well, who is it? And nobody raises their hand or stands up. So he goes from table to table basically saying, is it you? Is it you? And then he realizes Lucy is there. And he realizes they're going to have a baby. And then he sings this song.
The new book, Desi Arnaz, The Man Who Invented Television, by my guest Todd Purdom, is about Arnaz, I Love Lucy, the early days of TV, the seminal role he played in shaping it, his marriage to Lucille Ball, and the excesses that did him in. Purdom spent 23 years at the New York Times, where he covered the White House, was diplomatic correspondent, and L.A. bureau chief.
So that's an example, too, of how they worked the fact that Ricky Ricardo was a band leader in a nightclub into the story.
Did they send out press releases explaining that both happened on the same day?
And that's really important because they were so afraid to have a pregnant character on TV, even though the actress was pregnant, too. And it turned out to be a real boom for the show.
Let's take another break and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is Todd Purdom. He's the author of the new book, Desi Arnaz, The Man Who Invented Television. We'll be right back. I'm Terry Gross and this is Fresh Air. What was Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's relationship like on and off the set? It seemed pretty tumultuous both on and off the set.
Can I stop you there? I mean, he learned that from his father and grandfather in Cuba who both had mistresses. And he was introduced to what was then called a prostitute and is now called a sex worker when he was 15 to initiate him.
So they fought a lot on every level. In their marriage, they fought a lot. On set, they fought a lot over the direction of I Love Lucy. And as characters, as Ricky Ricardo and Lucy Ricardo, they fought too. What were the fights like on the set?
He's the author of the previous books, Something Wonderful, Rogers and Hammerstein's Broadway Revolution, and An Idea Whose Time Has Come, Two Presidents, Two Parties, and The Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I Love Lucy is still part of current pop culture. It continues to play in reruns on TV.
The show was supposed to bring them together because he was working as a band leader, touring, and she was in movies. And they didn't get to see each other very much because they just weren't in the same place very much. And so the show was supposed to bring them together and have them work on the same project. But in the long run, the show drove them apart as well as well as his dalliances.
In terms of like the scripts, did either of them have much input?
Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem starred as Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in the 2021 film Being the Ricardos. In 2022, Amy Poehler directed the documentary Lucy and Desi. Todd Purdom, welcome back to Fresh Air. I really enjoyed the book. It has so much interesting TV history in it. Networks and sponsors were not enthusiastic about the idea of a Latino man starring in a sitcom.
I Love Lucy became a Desilu production, the production company started by Desi Arnaz. Was Lucy active in Desilu Productions?
Oh, wow. Let me reintroduce you again. If you're just joining us, my guest is Todd Purdom. He's the author of the new book, Desi Arnaz, The Man Who Invented Television. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. Mounting pressures from Desilu's constant expansion and Desi Arnaz's inability to control his urges, whether it was drinking or going to sex workers, he was just having a lot of problems.
He wasn't functioning well at some point. The stress was really overwhelming. What were his final days like?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross.
And Lucille Ball died two years later.
I want to talk about Desi Arnaz's background because it's very interesting. I knew nothing about his background before reading your book. He actually was from a very privileged background until the Cuban Revolution of 1933. And that's not the Castro Revolution. This is an earlier revolution. So tell us a little bit about his father and his grandfather.
What were their problems?
Why did the family have to flee after the revolution? How attached was Desi Arnaz's father to the regime?
There's a really chilling story that I think very much traumatized Desi Arnaz. And the family had moved from the city where they were and moved to another city. I forget what the locations were. But one day in front of their neighbor's house, there was a head on a spear and the body was a couple of doors down. Like that must have been incredibly upsetting.
How had he been typed in his earlier years in the movies?
When he and his father were living in Florida, it took a while for his father to have enough money to send for Desi, and then it took longer to send for his mother. So the father and son were living in a warehouse that was filled with rats.
Yeah. The young Desi Arnaz had experienced incredible privilege and then incredible poverty.
That's a phrase Desi Arnaz was known for in the sitcom I Love Lucy.
And he was always insistent when people called him an immigrant that he wasn't an immigrant, he was a refugee. Why was that distinction so important to him?
What has the show I Love Lucy meant to you over the years? And the other part of the question is, why did you want to write a book about Desi Arnaz? To be honest with you, when I saw you wrote a book about Desi Arnaz, I love having you on as a guest, but I thought like, I don't know I'm that interested in Desi Arnaz. And then I looked at your book and I thought, wow, this is really interesting.
So why did you want to write about him? And what was the significance of I Love Lucy for you?
Yeah, and I just want to say by not focusing on Lucille Ball is not to take away credit from her, but just to move the camera.
He'd been a successful band leader.
Todd Purdom, it's been a pleasure to have you back on the show.
Todd Purdom is the author of the new book, Desi Arnaz, The Man Who Invented Television. Coming up, David Bianculli reviews the new documentary, One to One, John and Yoko. This is Fresh Air. In 1971, the year after the Beatles broke up, John Lennon and Yoko Ono moved from London to New York.
They spent the next 18 months living in a small Greenwich Village apartment before moving uptown to the Dakota, a more lavish and secluded building. During that time, they held a benefit concert for the children of Willowbrook, a state-run Staten Island facility housing disabled children in horrifying conditions.
It was the only full-length concert Lennon gave after The Beatles, and a new film by Kevin MacDonald documents both the concert and that period in Lennon's life. It's called One to One, John and Yoko, and it's now streaming on demand. Our TV critic David Bianculli has this review.
David Bianculli is a professor of television studies at Rowan University. He reviewed One to One, John and Yoko, which is now streaming on demand. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, our guest will be Mark Hamill. He played one of the most iconic heroes in movie history, Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. But he's also played one of the most notorious comic book villains.
He wasn't a great singer either, I'll add that. And a lot of his songs were novelty songs.
doing the voice of the Joker in Batman the Animated Series. He's in the new movie The Life of Chuck, which is an adaptation of a Stephen King story. I hope you'll join us. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
Meanwhile, Lucille Ball wasn't getting the traction that she wanted in movies either.
So at the point that I Love Lucy is about to begin, she was starring in a radio sitcom called My Favorite Husband. And now that TV was beginning to catch on, the network thought we should transfer it to TV and make it a TV sitcom. And that's not what she really wanted to do. She wanted herself and Desi on. who was her husband by then, to have their own sitcom.
That was one of his signature songs. The conga was the rhythm he helped popularize in the U.S., beating out on his conga drum as people danced to the beat of 1-2-3-Kick. Arneza's movie career didn't go far, but playing Ricky Ricardo, husband of Lucille Ball's character Lucy Ricardo, made him a star.
So talk about how they made the deal to co-star in a new TV series.
And Philip Morris, of course, was a very big cigarette manufacturer. And the sponsors were so influential at that time. Their name was even in the title of some shows. What I love is, and I didn't know this until reading your book, that the opening credits in the original broadcast, not the reruns, not in syndication, but in the original broadcast, why don't you describe what the opening was like?
It wasn't the Hart logo with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, I Love Lucy. It was completely different.
So at the time, TV shows were mostly live or on kinescopes. Why don't you explain what a kinescope is?
Just getting a major TV role was quite a feat because networks and sponsors were skeptical that a Cuban refugee with an accent would be accepted by American viewers. I Love Lucy premiered in 1951, when TV was young, and ended its run of new shows in 1957. It became the first show in TV history to reach 10 million people. For years, it was the most popular show on TV.
So what was Desi Arnaz's solution to getting around the fact that you couldn't really broadcast from coast to coast and kinescopes looked really terrible? Yeah.
So when Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz shot the pilot, which was basically an audition for them, she was pregnant and wore baggy clothes to cover it up because she couldn't look pregnant on TV. And then later in the series, she was actually pregnant again with their son. And the writers...
And Lucille Bollandese-Arnaz wanted to write that into the story of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, but the network was against it. Why was showing a pregnant woman so taboo? Like a pregnant actress playing a pregnant character, why was that so taboo?
A lot of that is credited to Ball's comedic talent and to the work Arnaz did in front of the camera and behind the scenes... creating what became standard procedures for producing, shooting, lighting, and broadcasting TV sitcoms, and led to the possibility of reruns and syndication.
It's so ridiculous.
And also, sitcom families, I mean, the idea was they're typically supposed to have children and be like an average, quote, normal nuclear family, a husband and wife and kids. And so, like, you can't have kids without being pregnant. It's just so absurd. Anyhow.
You couldn't say pregnant?
I want to skip ahead to an episode of I Love Lucy in which she's just found out she's pregnant because she's really wanted to have a baby. She is just glowing, and Ricky is about to come home. So she's always imagined what it was going to be like to tell her husband, we're going to have a baby. She's going to make him a nice meal, put her arms around him and deliver the news.
It's going to be romantic and perfect. So she makes him a great lunch, puts it on the table in the living room. He comes in. He's had a terrible day. He's in a really foul mood, and he's very, very hungry, and all he wants to do is eat. So I want to play that scene.
He also founded Desilu Productions, which kept expanding and for a while was the largest creator of TV content in the world. Our Miss Brooks, December Bride, The Andy Griffith Show, The Untouchables, and The Dick Van Dyke Show were among the programs produced by Desilu and or filmed in its studios.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Today we're going to hear from a musician whose music is vibrant, exciting, and new, even if it sounds like it could have been performed in the 1920s. His name is Jerron Paxton, and he has a new album called Things Done Changed. He brought some of his instruments to the studio when he spoke with Fresh Air's Sam Brigger. Here's Sam with more.
Jaron Paxton spoke with Fresh Air's Sam Brigger. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, our guest will be visual artist Mickalene Thomas. Her art was described in the New York Times as bold and bedazzled paintings and photographs in which she centers images of her mother, herself, her friends and lovers in sumptuous or art historical tableaus as a celebration of black femininity and agency. Hope you'll join us.
Our technical director is Audrey Bentham. Welcome back, Audrey. We're so happy to see you. Our thanks to Adam Staniszewski for his splendid job filling in as our engineer these past couple of months during Audrey's absence. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross. ¶¶
OK, so you're in a little bit of pain and then the director says, let's do another take. How do you feel when that happens, working as a stuntman? Yeah.
So that's 10 takes that were not necessary. Yeah.
I'm a fan, so...
You were part of a new generation of stunt performers when you started working. And one of the things that you're credited for bringing more reality to fight sequences, particularly martial arts fight sequences. And you studied martial arts when you were like college age or just after. Yeah.
So what were some of the most unreal things that you didn't want to include in the fight scenes that you were part of? And what did you want to include?
There are jokes in the film about how the stunt double isn't allowed to show their face because you're not supposed to be thinking, oh, that's a stunt double. You're supposed to be thinking it's the film's leading man or whoever the actor is that the stunt double is doubling for.
And the audience needs to keep thinking it's the character, not somebody else stepping in to play that character, you know.
So there's jokes about you're not allowed to show your face. Your face has to be down. What was that like for you as a stuntman, making sure that your face wasn't going to be seen? You're going to be in awkward physical positions as it is. There's so much to focus on to keep yourself safe and to keep the stunt going in the way the stunt is supposed to go. And to add to that, don't show your face.
As a former stuntman and current director, do you worry at all that all the computer special effects and CGI are going to make audiences or have already made audiences kind of numbed to all the risks that stunt performers actually take? Because you can now assume that it's all done in post-production or most of it's done in post-production with a green screen.
So you're not so worried as you might have been in the past about the risks and the technique and the art of stunt performers.
I would like you to give us a list of injuries that you sustained over the years as a stunt performer.
Have you seen a lot of like the early westerns, like movie and TV westerns where stunts included just like jumping from a rocky formation onto a guy riding by on a horse or jumping onto a moving stagecoach or, you know, just tumbling down a hill, falling off a horse? Sword fights in a lot of, you know, MGM kind of movies. Yeah. And I'm wondering what you think about that.
With the state of the art now, when you look back on those Westerns or on the sword fight scenes, what do you think about?
When you were just getting started, and you weren't even getting started yet, you were hoping to get started. You had graduated college. I think you taught elementary school for a year, then went to L.A. And with some friends who were also aspiring stuntmen, you lived together in a house that was nicknamed Stunt House.
And it became kind of famous in the world of stuntmen and some directors around. Because you had your backyard outfitted to practice stunts on. What did you have in the backyard?
When you moved from the house, did the landlord notice that there was a big ditch for the trampoline?
The first stunt that Ryan Gosling does on the film is jumping from a ledge 12 stories high, and we see him wearing a harness, as stuntmen do in scenes like that, and the harness will eventually be erased in post-production. When you do a stunt like that, and I'm sure you've done lots of those high falls, do you say a prayer or meditate in the moments right before you jump?
Oh, that's so great. If you hadn't become a director, could you still be doing stunts? I don't know how old you are now, but at some point, like, your body really can take that.
Yeah. So my last question to you, what is the first action film that you remember seeing? And do you have a favorite?
So Kung Fu Theater was a TV series that showed a different Kung Fu movie.
Well, I want to thank you so much for talking with us. It's really been fun and very informative. Thank you.
What goes through your mind, and how do you center yourself and prepare yourself?
Which made you more nervous, doing stunts like that yourself or feeling responsible for Ryan Gosling's safety when he did the stunts?
Apparently Ryan Gosling is afraid of heights. So there's a scene where he does the 12-story high jump. But also there's a scene with a helicopter falling from the helicopter. So how – it's kind of cruel to put somebody with fear of heights in stunts like that. Like how did you both work that out?
So you didn't know that?
One stunt, I think, made it into the Guinness Book of Records. It was a car roll where the car overturned and rolled eight and a half times. And I think Logan Halliday was the stuntman. So did you know that he would go for eight and a half rolls? Was that the plan? Or were you shocked when that happened?
Can you explain in layman's language how you roll over a car, make it flip and keep rolling over?
So the car doesn't survive, but the driver has to. How does the driver stay alive?
You mentioned you've been in unintentional car crashes while doing stunts. Can you tell us about one of them?
Really? So how did you keep working with Brad Pitt after that disastrous?
There's a line in your film in which Ryan Gosling says, it all hurts. Getting thrown out of a window, getting set on fire, it all hurts. So what is like the typical kind of pain that a stuntman experiences when they're not like injured exactly, but it's just like the standard pain of doing that stunt?
David Leitch, welcome to Fresh Air. I really enjoyed the new film. And your working career is pretty amazing. Do stunt doubles have a code, kind of like magicians do, not to reveal certain trade secrets? And did that limit what you could reveal in the film?
Hi, it's Terry Gross. Before we start our show, I want to take a minute to remind you that it's Almost Giving Tuesday, which is so named because it's become a day of expressing gratitude by giving money or any kind of help to an individual or group or organization that matters to you. We've found a way to turn Giving Tuesday into Giving and Getting Tuesday. Thank you. It's a win-win.
So join us at plus.npr.org. That's plus.npr.org. Or you can always make a gift at donate.npr.org. Thank you, and thanks to everyone who's already supporting us. And now, on with the show. This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley.
And then there's the question, like, if you're not supposed to talk about sexually related subjects in class, when you're teaching a writing workshop, which is what you do, and you're encouraging people to write openly, and sex is a part of life, and sexual thinking is a huge part of young people's lives, Do you make that subject off-topic? Do you make that subject taboo for writing in class?
How do you talk about it if it's not taboo for writing in class? Have you thought about that a lot?
Sigrid Nunes, welcome to Fresh Air. I want to start with a reading from your novel, and this is from very early on when the main character has recently learned that her friend has committed suicide and is reflecting on, like, why.
The story in The Friend, the narrator is a woman whose mentor from college who was close to her age became a dear friend and he has just committed suicide. She's left grieving and wondering why. And she also inherits his dog. And it's not just like any dog. It's 180-pound Great Dane. And she lives in a small rent-controlled apartment in New York.
And it's illegal – it's against the regulations to have a dog in that apartment. So she – She kind of violates the regulations, takes the dog kind of reluctantly. And they become very close. And they're both grieving. The dog is grieving too. But as you've said, you can't describe death to a dog. You can't explain death to a dog.
She walks the street with the dog. You know, she takes the dog on walks. Of course, you have to. Because the dog is so big, she feels like she's a spectacle when she's on the street with the dog. And everybody's like stopping and wanting to do a selfie or asking how much he eats or how much he defecates.
And she's kind of, you know, I think she feels like partly her privacy is being invaded, but partly just like amused by the whole thing.
But it connects to something larger that her friend who took his life used to say, which is that, you know, he used to like love to walk and felt like he did his best writing while he was walking and just kind of losing himself in his thoughts and in his surroundings. But he always thought that that would be harder for a woman to do because a woman always has to be on guard.
Is this guy following me? Is this guy going to grope me? Is this guy going to attack me? What about that cat call? So I'm wondering if you thought about that from both directions, about the difficulties of sometimes losing yourself as a woman who has to be on guard when walking the streets and the difference when you have this huge dog who everybody wants to stop and admire when you're walking.
I'm guilty of being one of the people who say, how much does the dog eat? I could probably ride the dog because I literally could probably ride the dog. I mean, I'm so short. I could really probably do it. Yeah. I know people who won't get a pet after their beloved pet has died because they feel like they can't go through that grieving process again.
And it reminds me of people who won't remarry because they can't bear the thought of losing a second spouse.
Do you have pets now?
How did the cat die?
Yeah. You never really know, do you, what the cat or dog is thinking about whether it's time to end their life.
I spoke with you in 1996. Yes. And one of the things you said is, I've never been married and I'm not going to marry. And I said, how can you be so certain? And you said, well, there isn't anything I could have from a marriage that I don't really have. Do you still feel that way?
Because?
I think it was in your first book that you wrote, time and time again, I discover that I have not completely let go of the notion that salvation will come in the form of a man. That's true, too. Do you still feel that way?
Okay. Have you thought about the difference of being single in the latter part of your 60s where you are now compared to being single when you're younger?
Okay, then the thought comes up, what about when you get older, if you're single then, and your health fails or something?
Did people used to warn you, if you don't have children, you'll regret it when you're older?
So is that a tradeoff you feel like you willingly made or do you have any regrets about the choice that you made?
Thank you.
That was Sigrid Nunes reading from her novel, The Friend. So this novel has a lot to do with suicide and trying to understand why somebody did it. Have you lost someone to suicide?
How did that person take their life?
And what did it make you think about thinking of the way that person chose to end it?
It must hurt for you to think about that.
When a friend of yours talks about the temptation of suicide, what do you say? Do you try to talk them out of it? Do you try to just listen?
Another issue that your novel deals with is relationships between professors and students, specifically between male professors and female students and the attraction that can form between them. The main character is a woman, and the character who kills himself, her very dear friend, had been her college professor years ago.
And they even had a brief affair after he told her they should try sleeping together because he said, we should find that out about each other. And she says, I don't think it ever occurred to either of us that I might refuse. And then he tells her that, well, it's not really going to work out. And she's kind of devastated, but they remain good friends. He marries three times.
They remain good friends throughout all those marriages. She's never quite sure what the wives feel about their relationship. And he tells her to be a teacher is to be a seducer. And there are times when he must also be a heartbreaker. Have you heard men say that about teaching, that to be a teacher is to be a seducer?
I have certainly heard that. It strikes me as such a male thing. I don't think women teachers, women professors see themselves that way, unless you're talking about seducing people into learning. But I don't think women teachers see themselves as... Wanting to flirt and maybe go to bed with their students.
I'm not saying all men do either, but I think it's over the years been a more common thing for men than for women.
It was a huge part of her personality. Seductive in the literal sense of like I'm going to try to convince you to sleep with me or just seductive at a distance. Yeah.
I was going to say, just to put that in context, when you were in your 20s, I think, you were a couple with David Reif, Susan Sontag's son. She, at the time, was diagnosed with cancer. You were both living with Susan Sontag. She became a friend and mentor to you, and you got to see her at her best and her worst. Yes. Okay. Have you ever felt like a seducer as a teacher yourself?
Because you've taught in different settings. I mean, you've taught literature and writing in colleges. You've taught English as a second language. And you've taught over the years. So you've seen issues about power in the classroom change over the years.
What do you think would have been different?
As you said, you've seen the rules of conduct in the classroom change. It's against the guidelines in most places now to have a relationship with a student, you know, a sexual relationship with a student. And you've also said you know everything. In the past, marriages that have worked out really well between a professor and the student.
And the one I think of immediately is poet Donald Hall and poet Jane Kenyon. And she was first his student, and then they had a long marriage.
But probably the more common thing is closer to inappropriate. Do you know what I mean? Like there have been some great marriages and relationships that have come out of that and some also like real damage and inappropriate things. How have you seen the rules change? Like your character has to attend sexual misconduct events. classes and learn what the new rules were.
So how have you seen the new rules change and how have you reacted to it as a woman?
You made the film while Biden was president in between Trump's two terms. What's it like watching his second term after having played him?
Playing him, I'm sure you had to be him and see things from his point of view, which requires you, the actor, to have empathy for Trump, the character that you're portraying.
Jeremy Strong, welcome to Fresh Air. I love the film. And that scene has so much energy to it. You have such swagger in it.
Oh, it is totally my pleasure. You know, a biopic is different from a film based on an original story. So you had a character who was a known person who you had to portray. What did you do to know, to watch, to listen to him before playing him?
Did you ever fact check any of it? Like, do you feel a responsibility to not only be have acting truth, but have, you know, like fact truth?
And I should mention here that the film was written by Gabriel Sherman, who is a journalist who wrote a book about Murdoch and Fox News.
Yeah, I should have said Ailes, right?
Right. Well, that's that's the thing. Like, I feel like your recent career is so connected to Trump.
What I want to know is, do you feel very adjacent to Trump like that? You know, Trump, because your characters have been so, you know, related to Trump in one way or another and very directly related in The Apprentice.
Because I was going to ask you if you notate your scripts as if they were music. Because like in the scene that we just heard, there's real music in your voice. You've got a rhythm.
Well, why don't we listen to the real Roy Cohn's voice? This is from an interview with Tom Snyder on his late night show Tomorrow.
As broadcast in 1977. So here we go.
So what was it like playing somebody who you find is despicable, too strong a word?
Sebastian Stan, welcome to Fresh Air. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. I think you're great.
So after choosing that clip, first of all, I should say some listeners were probably thinking he doesn't sound like Trump. What would you say to that?
After choosing that clip, I read that you improvised some of that scene.
You were on Death Row?
How were you lucky enough to get out?
Back in the days when you were in prison, was music a big part of your life then? Were you singing, playing, writing songs?
Did your musical ability have anything to do with people noticing you in prison and thinking that you could make it when you got out? I mean, did that help you at all in the war?
Tell us a story how you got your first guitar.
Yeah. Or how you started to play guitar, as ever as it was. Well...
I imagine when you first got the guitar, you were playing songs that you heard on the radio. How did you start writing songs yourself?
When you started writing songs, did you realize that you could write autobiographical songs from your own life, or did you think you had a copy of other people's songs?
Do you remember the first one that you felt, this is worth keeping?
Could you sing a couple of bars of it?
Now, during all the years that you were in and out of prisons and reform schools, did you ever think, I can make a living with music?
So what made you think, well, I can make a living out of this?
Was it hard for you to adjust to success and stardom, having come from poverty and, you know, having lived in prison off and on for so many years? I think it's hard for a lot of people to adjust to that.
Did you hop freights when you were young?
Where would you go?
Another bad date last night? She put off by your desperation like the last one.
That's what you get for having had a successful marriage. I don't have that problem.
You'll never replace Becca.
Which you provocatively said was a lot like mine.
Was it hard to learn how to hop a freight?
What's the worst or the most surprising experience that you had on a freight train?
Gee, that sounds awful. Did you have frostbite?
Were there ever traveling musicians on the trains, and did you feel you learned anything about a musician's life?
Merle Haggard is a song autobiographical.
Your father died when you were nine, is that right? Nine. So your mother had to raise you alone after that.
I think you were 14 when your mother put you in a juvenile home.
How would you escape from reform school and youth institutions?
Was there an outlaw mystique that you wanted to have?
So what was your most ingenious escape?
Was that a real sobering experience for you?
What did you say to your mother when you changed your life around?
Brooks kept his own name off the credits as producer for fear that audiences might expect a comedy. But The Elephant Man, as a drama, was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including one for Lynch as Best Director. He didn't win, but soon went on to make two visually remarkable movies starring a young actor named Kyle MacLachlan.
David Lynch speaking with Terry Gross in 1994. He died last week at the age of 78. Coming up, more of Terry's interview with him. And we also hear from Isabella Rossellini, who starred in his film Blue Velvet, and from Nicolas Cage, who co-starred opposite Laura Dern in Lynch's Wild at Heart. I'm David Bianculli, and this is Fresh Air.
The science fiction epic Dune and his moody, otherworldly Blue Velvet. McLaughlin also starred in Twin Peaks, the 1990 ABC series co-created by Lynch and Mark Frost. And McLaughlin starred as well in that show's unexpected, incomprehensible sequel, presented by Showtime in 2017. For the big screen, after Blue Velvet, Lynch kept making movies that seemed to be pulled directly from his subconscious.
We're remembering the influential filmmaker David Lynch, who died last week at the age of 78. His first film, Eraserhead, became a cult classic. He also directed the film version of The Elephant Man and the films Dune, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Mulholland Drive, and the TV series Twin Peaks. Terry spoke with him in 1994.
Wild at Heart, Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire, and, of course, Twin Peaks' Fire Walk With Me. In addition to making films and TV shows, David Lynch loved music and photography and art and old movies and classic television.
He pursued his many passions all his life, from composing and recording albums of music and practicing transcendental meditation to woodworking and making and posting eccentric short videos on YouTube. For two years, he made daily one-minute videos called Today's Number Is, appearing on camera to reach his hand into a big glass jar of numbered ping-pong balls.
David Lynch, recorded in 1994. In his 1986 film, Blue Velvet, Isabella Rossellini played a nightclub singer who was in a very abusive relationship with Frank, a frightening character played by Dennis Hopper. Rossellini is the daughter of movie star Ingrid Bergman and Italian director Roberto Rossellini. Terry Gross spoke to her in 1994.
Please note, their conversation includes a discussion of rape and physical abuse as depicted in the film.
The dialogue was the same every day, but the settings varied, as did the results.
Isabella Rossellini spoke to Terry Gross in 1994. Coming up, we hear from Nicolas Cage, who starred opposite Laura Dern in David Lynch's film Wild at Heart. This is Fresh Air.
In the 1990 David Lynch film Wild at Heart, Nicolas Cage plays Sailor, an ex-con obsessively in love with Lula, a free spirit played by Laura Dern. They travel through the South to get away from her crazy mother, who's forbidden their relationship. Terry Gross spoke with Nicolas Cage in 1990, when Wild at Heart was released.
Whenever Lynch made art, he made plenty of room for accidents. In 2023, he invited into his studio the veteran folk singer Donovan. He asked him to sit on a stool with his guitar and begin improvising and singing just to see what happened. What happened, with Lynch filming in black and white, was a music video released under the title, I Am the Shaman.
Nicholas Cage, speaking to Terry Gross in 1990. That concludes our tribute to the influential filmmaker David Lynch, who died last week. He was 78 years old. Coming up, film critic Justin Chang reviews Presence, a new supernatural thriller from director Steven Soderberg. This is Fresh Air.
David Lynch also spent some time in front of the camera, rarely but always entertainingly. On both incarnations of Twin Peaks, he played a hard-of-hearing, fairly goofy assistant FBI director named Gordon Cole. In the original, visiting the local diner and served by Shelley the waitress, played by Machen Amick, Gordon was as strange as anyone else in Twin Peaks, which is saying something.
Our film critic, Justin Chang, says the new supernatural thriller Presence puts an ingenious new spin on the Haunted House movie. It's the latest picture directed by Steven Soderbergh and stars Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan as a married couple who move into the house in question along with their two teenage children. The movie opens in theaters this week. Here is Justin's review.
Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker. He reviewed Steven Soderbergh's new film, Presence. On Monday's show, as part of Saturday Night Live's 50th anniversary celebration, Amir Questlove-Thompson has co-directed a new documentary about the show's musical guests and musical sketches.
He'll share behind-the-scenes stories and tell us how the SNL band influenced him as leader of The Roots, the Tonight Show's house band. I hope you can join us. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David Bianculli.
And in one of David Lynch's final on-camera roles, in Steven Spielberg's 2022 film The Fablemans, Lynch played another larger-than-life movie director, the great John Ford. In the movie's final scene, based on a real encounter during Spielberg's first visit to Hollywood, the young wannabe filmmaker, played by Gabriel Lebel, is ushered into the office of John Ford for a very brief conversation.
Lynch, as Ford, gives his young visitor an instant, impatient, profanity-laced lesson in visual artistry.
David Lynch was fabulous as John Ford, but nothing was as fabulous as his small-screen masterpiece, Twin Peaks. Sure, the original series ended by running out of breath, and the revival series was even more challenging, surreal, and flat-out strange. But especially in the episodes directed by Lynch himself, Twin Peaks was, and still is, unique and unsurpassed.
In the original, McLaughlin played FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper, who came to a remote logging town in the Pacific Northwest to investigate the murder of a high school prom queen named Laura Palmer. Her body had been discovered by Pete Martell, a Twin Peaks resident played by Jack Nance, the star of David Lynch's first film, Eraserhead.
This is Fresh Air. David Lynch, the artist and filmmaker who broke boundaries with such unsettling films as Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, died last week at the age of 78. Today, we'll listen back to our archive conversation with David Lynch, as well as old interviews with some actors who worked with him.
Pete called the local sheriff, Harry S. Truman, to report the unsettling news.
The murder of Laura Palmer obsessed the nation that spring and summer, even though it got very weird very quickly. A few episodes in, Dale Cooper had a dream in which an older version of himself was introduced to a woman who looked like Laura Palmer in a velvet-lined red room presided over by a strange little man who seemed to talk sort of backwards and walk and dance sort of backwards, too.
But the next morning, when Kyle McLaughlin's Dale Cooper met the local sheriff and his assistant for breakfast at the diner, he was as excited about the dream as he was about the food.
Everything in Twin Peaks worked on multiple levels. The murder mystery, the supernatural elements, the broad comedy, the playful performances. And the sound and music and the images were as crucial as the dialogue. Angelo Badalamenti's music was a character of its own. And all those elements and actors and writers and other directors combined to make Twin Peaks a standout, a freakout, and a legend.
As it turns out, the spirit of Twin Peaks, a series often described as Lynchian, has been duplicated over the decades by only one man. The original article, David Lynch. And now, let's hear Terry's 1994 interview with David Lynch. Later, we feature interviews with people associated with Lynch's films.
When he spoke with Terry, he had a book of photographs called Images, which included stills from his films, as well as other photographs that cataloged his visual obsessions. One chapter was called Organic Phenomena. It included a photo he took in a basement hospital of a cabinet with drawers marked amputated foot, gangrene, kidney, and larynx carcinoma.
There's also a photograph from his early cult film Eraserhead of a decapitated head.
But first, I'd like to start with a tribute to the writer and director whose vision was largely responsible for one of the most influential and singular series in television history, Twin Peaks. David Lynch's career began with a 1977 cult hit Eraserhead, which so impressed Mel Brooks that he hired Lynch to direct the ultra-serious, very moody movie The Elephant Man.
So, but it helped you, it helped you... find out that that's what you should be doing is writing pop tunes.
I want to close with the story behind one of your most famous songs, and this is the song from Annie, Tomorrow. Tell us about writing this song, what you intended when you wrote it, and this song has really taken on a life of its own. This song seems to alternate between major and minor keys, no?
So this is a trunk song that every lyricist you work with rejected and it finally went on to be a big success.
Right. Well, let's hear it. And let me say it's been a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you very much for joining us.
Listen Charles Strauss, welcome back to Fresh Air. Is there a story behind writing night songs?
Wish you could be where?
Oh. So you were yearning while writing this song about yearning?
How were you first brought in to do the music for Golden Boy?
Let's play a song from the original cast production with Sammy Davis singing. This is a song called I Want to Be With You. Sammy Davis Jr., as the boxer, falls in love with a white woman in the 1964 version of Golden Boy. I'd like you to describe the context that the song is performed in in the musical.
Well, let's hear the first part of this song. And this is Sammy Davis Jr. from the original cast recording of Golden Boy.
Sammy Davis Jr. from the original cast recording of Golden Boy with music composed by my guest Charles Strauss, lyrics by Lee Adams.
Did you get a sense of what it was like for Sammy Davis to be the subject of controversy in real life because he was married to My Brit, a white woman, and to at the same time be the subject of controversy because he was portraying on stage a black man in love with a white woman? Because it was going on in both his stage life and his real life.
I'd like to hear what it was like when you had to follow Sammy Davis Jr. around Vegas, playing him demos of your new song so he could give them his approval.
So when you first met Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin and all those guys naked in a steam room, were you also expected to demo your songs for Sammy Davis?
Let's talk about another one of your tracks. I want to play Hard Knock Life, which really surprised me when I first heard it because you sample the song Hard Knock Life from the Broadway show Annie, which I thought was a real surprising choice for you.
Yes, to say the least. So how did you decide to use that?
So let's hear the song and then we'll talk a little more about it. So this is Hard Knock Life, Ghetto Anthem by Jay-Z.
That's Hard Knock Life, ghetto anthem by my guest Jay-Z. So you tell a great story in the book about how you got the rights to use that song, to use the song from Annie, Hard Knock Life. Would you tell the story?
How did you find out that Hard Knock Life was going to be sampled for a rap record?
When you wrote the songs for Annie and now for Annie Warbucks, did you have to write in a range that you were confident a kid could sing?
Let me move to the first show that you did that was a real hit, one of the Broadway classics, and that's Bye Bye Birdie. I had to tell you, I was listening to the album again last night, and I hadn't heard the score in a long time. And I was just shocked to realize that I remembered words to songs... When I'd completely forgotten the song existed, like Normal American Boy.
I mean, I haven't thought about that song in years, and I realized, God, I know all the words to this. And I bet so many people have that reaction when they hear songs from Bye Bye Birdie.
Let me ask you about writing the telephone hour from Bye Bye Birdie. And this is a series of phone conversations that the teenagers are having with each other. And it's not a straightforward song. I mean, you're basically setting a series of conversations to music with little interruptions and phones ringing. So what were some of your considerations when you were writing the music for that?
Well, here's the telephone hour from Bye Bye Birdie music by my guest, Charles Strauss.
You studied with Nadia Boulanger. Did she give you any advice about pop music versus classical music?
May I make a request?
Could you sing one of the songs that you played for her? LAUGHTER
Tell us a little bit about Hedda Hopper and her relationship with Chaplin. Like, you know, Barry went to the right person because if she wanted to smear Chaplin, Hedda Hopper was the person to do it.
I wanna talk with you about when Charlie Chaplin was banned from returning home to the US. I mean, he was born in England and spent his childhood there, but he spent majority of his life in the US. He'd gone to England in 1952 to promote his latest film, Limelight. And right before he left, Hedda Hopper wrote an item in her gossip column saying that he was planning this trip.
And then she writes to Richard Nixon, who at the time was a senator from California. What does she write to him?
So she went to government action against Chaplin?
Okay. So does Nixon take action on her letter or just file it with the other letters that she's written him?
But meanwhile, the attorney general gets the Immigration and Nationalization Service to open an investigation that leads to Chaplin being banned from returning to the U.S. after his trip to England. What reasons do they give for banning him?
Why didn't he ever become an American citizen?
You said had he fought the ban on his returning to the U.S., he would have been allowed in because they didn't really have anything on him. But he didn't fight it. Why didn't he?
And he felt he had been smeared for so many years.
And Roosevelt had brought up Chaplin's... Jack Warner is in the Warner Brothers Company.
Soon after he was banned from returning to the U.S., there was a campaign to ban his films from theaters. The American Legion passed a resolution urging American movie theaters to boycott his latest film, Limelight, and every movie in which he appeared.
And in their magazine, they published a story about Chaplin saying his films were a sustained assault on democratic ideals and that Chaplin had long used film as a propaganda medium. And they said Modern Times is one of the few non-Soviet films constantly shown in exhibition in the Soviet orbit. That was totally false, right?
So how successful was the campaign to ban Chaplin movies from theaters?
So by the time Chaplin is banned from returning to the United States, few theaters can actually even show his movies.
So after Chaplin decides not to challenge the ban against him returning to the U.S., he moves to Switzerland. He has a really good home life with his wife Una and their many children. But you say it ruined him as an artist. How?
Chaplin grew up very poor. His father was an alcoholic. His mother had mental health problems and was institutionalized. He lived in a rooming house with his father and his father's mistress. And then his father died young. And Chaplin was sent to a workhouse as an indigent child. Just briefly describe what a workhouse was.
After the Immigration and Nationalization Service banned Charlie Chaplin from returning to the U.S., and he refused to fight it because he felt he'd been so mistreated in the U.S. and so smeared, he never returned to the U.S., right? That was it.
What did Charlie Chaplin say in his acceptance speech?
Scott Iman, thank you so much for talking with us.
One of the reasons I think that his studio didn't want him to make the film is that they wanted all their films to play in Germany. And Germany was definitely not going to play an anti-Hitler film. And also the Germans for a while thought that Chaplin was Jewish. Why did they think he was Jewish?
So what was the impact of the great dictator on Charlie Chaplin's life?
So America enters World War II about a year after the great dictator is released. And once we enter the war, Chaplin starts talking about opening a second front on the Russian border. What would that have meant just on a technical level?
So what kind of trouble did this get Chaplin and the idea of opening up a second front?
Yeah, we'll get into that. So there was a 1,900-page FBI file on Chaplin. It's a lot of pages.
What were some of the different chapters in it? What were some of the things they investigated about him over the years?
Did he know this was happening?
Did you get access or try to get access through the Freedom of Information Act to the FBI files on Charlie Chaplin?
Oh, I didn't realize that. So you read them.
It sounds like he was a man who didn't like to belong to things. I mean, he liked to make his own films and to lead everybody, but he didn't like to belong to groups or parties or anything like that.
Scott Iman, welcome to Fresh Air. I found this book really interesting. I didn't realize how controversial Chaplin was and how many different agencies had investigated him. The FBI, the CIA, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Post Office, the House Un-American Activities Committee. So his most controversial film was the 1940 film The Great Dictator. This was a satire of Hitler.
Okay, so despite the fact that he was never a member of the Communist Party, he did have friends who were members. And you call him the most prominent victim of the Red Scare. In 1950, he becomes a target of Senator Joe McCarthy, the senator most responsible for creating hysteria surrounding people alleged to have communist ties.
And you write that this turned McCarthy from a backbencher with a drinking problem into a political star. What were the allegations he made against Chaplin?
Right. And the FBI found nothing, too, in spite of those 1900 pages. Did people know that? Because smears tend to stick with you. It's hard to wash them off. So did the charges, did the allegations stay with him even though nobody ever found anything?
So let's start with the sexual allegations that surrounded Charlie Chaplin. One of the things he got into trouble with was his affairs with young women. And you trace this interest in people much younger to when he was 18 and he was infatuated with a 12-year-old. And when he was like 52 or 53, he had an affair with Joan Barry when she was 22.
And she is somebody who had an affair with J. Paul Getty, who was very, very wealthy. This is the kind of age gap, 53 or 52 versus 22, that still makes many people very uncomfortable today. And I'm wondering if you want to compare the reaction then to the kind of reaction you think it would get now.
It was made a year before the U.S. entered World War II. What was controversial about ridiculing Hitler?
I want to ask you about the paternity suit filed against him. And this was filed by Joan Berry, the woman who was 22 when he was about 52. And she was asking for a lot of money in this paternity suit. The blood test showed he wasn't the father. But before the blood test, Berry went to gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, who already didn't like Chaplin.
At least you were covered by a corset and garters.
And I would bet that the Queen Mother did not go to Hair or Rocky Horror.
So did you ever meet Princess Diana? No.
You know, like so many other of your fans, I first saw you in the Rocky Horror Picture Show in the 70s. And when you see somebody in a movie for the first time, it's sometimes hard to tell how good they are. You don't know, is this all they can do? Do they do other things too? Is this what they're really like? Right. How much are they acting?
And so I saw you, I guess it was probably like the late 80s, in Wiseguy, the TV series.
And you played a kind of Phil Spector-ish, brilliant but crazy record producer.
And a great, really terrific performance. And I think that's when I really got the picture. Wow, he's really good at doing all kinds of things. Yeah.
That was your first movie? Yeah. How did you get the part?
Did you like the kind of cheap horror films that it in part parodied?
That's funny. You'd be wearing it for like this transgressive playwright, Jeanne, and then this parody of everything Rocky Horror.
Well, there's probably nothing that can get you into character quickly like black bikini briefs, fishnet stockings, the garter belt, the corset, the whole thing.
You didn't when you accepted the part?
So how did the whole thing... It was a bit of a shock, actually. ...how did it all evolve then?
I think the thing I found most amazing about the whole phenomenon of Rocky Horror was watching, like, the 12-year-olds outside the theater parading around in their transvestite clothes. Because they were all, it was just like all these 12-year-olds outside the theater imitating you in your getup. And you had to just kind of ask yourself, what is going on here? What do the 12-year-olds make of it?
I mean, are they going through some kind of gender thing? Or do they just love the movie? Like, what is this about?
Did you ever go to one of the midnight screenings back in the 70s and watch the movie with the people who were reciting along? And when they would make a toast on screen, people would throw toast at the screen. The whole bit. It became an incredibly participatory experience for the people who came to see it time and time again. Yeah.
Your father was a chaplain in the British Navy.
What did your parents think of your role in Rocky Horror?
And I love the fact that he questions his faith, but constantly stays with it. And that it's okay to question it. Like, if your belief is deep enough, it's okay to challenge it and question it and remain committed. Yeah.
Did any priests give you feedback on your role in Fleabag?
I want to ask you about your recent film, All of Us Strangers, in which you play a screenwriter in London living in a new high-rise building, and there's only one other unit that seems to have anyone living in it. So it's this shiny and eerily empty new building. The other resident, played by Paul Meskel, turns out to be gay, like your character, and you develop an intimate relationship.
At the same time, you return to the town where you were raised and the people who you meet there... are your parents, but we, the audience, don't know that immediately because they're the same age you are. Once we realize, wait, that's his parents, I was thinking, this is terrible casting. The parents are the same age as the son. What went wrong here?
But then you realize the parents were in a car accident when your character was 11 years old, and you've gone back either in your mind or physically to talking with them and trying to bridge the gap of the man you've become, the screenwriter, the man who is gay with the child who they knew and all the things you couldn't tell them and couldn't talk about then and are just dying to tell them now.
Having the conversations you always wished you'd had had they been alive. Are your parents still alive?
Oh no, I'm so sorry.
Oh, I'm so sorry. I was going to ask you, and I'm not sure if this is anything you'd care to talk about knowing now what I know. If you, as you were playing that, wanted to have conversations with your parents that you never had, and now I'm hoping that you had the conversations.
Is your father still alive?
And is he okay?
All right. One of the things about playing this role, it's one of the films in which you show your ability to be silent and still convey a lot. I timed it. There's about 14 minutes where the camera is mostly on you and on your face or you're walking and you don't say a word for like 14 minutes.
That's a really good point, yeah.
One of my favorite lines in the movie is actually said by Paul Maskell, who says, I was a fat kid. And when you're fat, people don't ask why you don't have a girlfriend. And I thought like, oh, that gets you so much.
I think you first became known in the U.S. in Sherlock, the BBC series that played in the U.S. as well, with Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and you as his nemesis, Moriarty. So I want to play a scene from season one. And this is the first scene where Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty meet face to face.
And Moriarty has lured Sherlock to rescue his friend Watson, who's been outfitted with an explosive vest. So Sherlock is pointing a gun at you during this entire exchange. And your character, Moriarty, speaks first.
No, you won't. So you play Moriarty, big and smirky, sinister and funny. What was your audition like?
Were you able to tap into a place in yourself that you thought could scare people?
Yeah, yeah. I want to move on to Hamlet. You got an Olivier Award, I think, right, for your portrayal?
You might have, okay.
How am I supposed to know if you don't know?
Well, anyways, you were acclaimed. Yeah. People liked it. So you've spoken about how you wanted to make the language understandable so often, especially for Americans who sometimes have to work hard just to grasp a British accent when spoken quickly or spoken with a regional British accent. And of course, so much of the language in Shakespeare is language that we no longer use. It's archaic.
But you really wanted to make every word understandable. So I went on YouTube to see if I could find anything. And I found you doing part of the to be or not to be soliloquy, which is, of course, the most famous part. And it was so interesting because, you know, Hamlet is really like thinking through like, should I live or should I end my life? I don't know.
And what's the worst that can happen if I die? What would that be like? And, of course, he's using very elevated poetic language to say all of that. But you say it like really slowly. There are so many like long pauses in between, for instance, to be, long pause, or not to be. And on the one hand, I felt like, wow, that's a lot of pauses.
And on the other hand, I felt like, well, every word is ringing out. And I'm kind of hearing things I hadn't heard before. So can you describe your thoughts about those pauses and why you took them and where you took them?
Andrew Scott, I want to thank you so much for talking with us. And, you know, your face changes from role to role. Can you pass unrecognized on the street?
Right, sometimes. Do you use any kind of disguise?
Yeah, we'll see how long that lasts.
Well, congratulations on Ripley, and thank you so much for being with us.
It's not that. Andrew Scott, welcome to Fresh Air. You are so terrific. It's a pleasure to have you on the show again.
What did you need to know about the mind of Tom Ripley to play him? I mean, is he desperate for money? Is he a sociopath? Do you have to think about what his motivation is?
You mean from the previous film adaptation or from the book?
Your eyes are so interesting in this series because sometimes they're, you know, a little comical or but sometimes they are and sometimes they're kind of threatening and other times they're just blank. Like there's nothing going on. Yeah. Like they're dead and there's nothing going on behind them. And it strikes me that that must be hard to achieve since you're not dead inside. Yes.
You have a conscience. Can you talk a little bit about going into that dead inside blank state?
So you're playing Tom Ripley, somebody who's hiding his real identity and assuming the identity of others. So he's always hiding who he is. You must identify with that and why as an actor because you're always playing somebody else. But also Patricia Highsmith, who wrote the novel that Ripley is adapted from.
She was a lesbian and had to hide that because when she was writing, like, you couldn't be out. There's no way. And you grew up in Dublin. And I think you were alive when homosexuality was against the law. So, like, she knew stuff about hiding. You knew stuff about hiding, you know, your identity. Or you knew people who probably had to hide their identity somewhere.
So do you feel that sense of hiddenness in the portrayal?
Yeah, definitely. It seems like he's definitely secretive to himself.
The film is shot in black and white and it's really exquisite. Like every shot could be a beautiful still photograph if you just stopped it and look at the frame. And I'm wondering what it was like to shoot that way because just setting up the lighting and the composition, it's so carefully and artfully done. So did that mean a lot of time waiting for you? It absolutely did.
And did you have to be aware of exactly how the lighting was so the shadows would fall exactly right?
So you may be tired of talking about your role in Fleabag as a priest. No, not at all. As a priest torn between your commitment to the priesthood and your love for the main character, the woman nicknamed Fleabag, torn between your commitment to celibacy and your own sexual desire. And, you know, it stars Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who also created and wrote it.
And she plays a single woman who really loves sex and has had a lot of partners, but isn't really in love until she meets you. And you're a priest who performs the ceremony for Fleabag's father's second marriage. She falls in love with you. You're drawn to her. But you're a priest. You become good friends. And she started to hope that you'll leave the priesthood and be with her.
And I want to play a scene in which she's visiting you at the parish in the evening. And the scene starts inside and then moves outside. So we just did a bit of editing to edit together those two parts of the scene. So let's hear that. Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Fleabag speaks first.
That's Phoebe Waller-Bridge and my guest, Andrew Scott. That's such a great role and such a great performance. Did you ever know a young priest as attractive as you were?
Well, wait, let's not avoid the question here. We'll take out the comparison to you so you don't have to worry about being humble here. But did you ever know a young, very attractive priest?
Right. You were raised Catholic in Dublin. What was the role of the church in your life?
Were you really angry with the church for having so many hypocrites in positions of religious power? You talk about the priests who were accused of sexual abuse and infidelity and entering other people's marriages. And, you know, you're gay. I don't know how old you are when you realize that, maybe all your life.
But like I said, in the Republic of Ireland, being gay was against the law until I think 1993. I think that's when it was repealed. And the church condemned it. And yet you have these priests, you know, abusing boys and having affairs with women and men probably. So how did you fit all these complicated feelings into your character of the priest in Fleabag?
And it's a comedic role, too, as we could hear from the scene, the scene that we played. And he's wrestling with the natural sexual desire that people have and love. Yeah, physical expressions of love too.
Bonnie Raitt is my guest, and we've asked her to bring with her some of her favorite recordings from the past, recordings that have really influenced her over the years. And, Bonnie Raitt, the next album, the next recording that you brought with you is B.B. King, and this one goes back to 1958. Rock Me Baby, tell me why you chose this one.
Bonnie Raitt, welcome to Fresh Air. Hi, Terry. It's a pleasure to be here. You've brought with you some of your favorite recordings, some of the recordings that have really influenced you over the years. So I'd like to start with a recording that you brought by Mississippi Fred McDowell. Write me a few lines. Tell me why you've chosen this. This was recorded in 1964.
Let's hear it. Rock Me Baby, B.B. King, recorded in 1958 and reissued on the B.B. King box set.
Bonnie Wright, do you think that there's a specific influence B.B. King has had on your singing or guitar playing?
I'm interested if it took you a long time in your career to feel comfortable recording something like this, recording outside of the genre that you're known for.
That's Bonnie Raitt and her father, John Raitt. Well, I want to end with something from your Road Tested album. And this is I Can't Make You Love Me. It's a really beautiful ballad, very moving. Is this a favorite of yours, too?
That's Mississippi Fred McDowell, one of the records that Bunny Raitt has brought with her today for us to listen to. Now, what was it like when you were actually traveling with him and opening for him? I mean, was that one of the first times that you met one of the blues musicians who you liked so much from record?
But you won. How did you win?
So did he do the movie for free?
So you played this kind of little trick and he did improv on, or whatever, on film for you. What did he bring to that audition that he didn't realize was an audition?
Support for this podcast comes from the Neubauer Family Foundation, supporting WHYY's Fresh Air and its commitment to sharing ideas and encouraging meaningful conversation.
I worked at it pretty hard there in the early days. Were you overwhelmed when you were 20 by the incredible differences between, you know, in age, race, gender, class, between you and the older blues musicians who you were understudying?
Now, on your latest album, your live album, you do a tribute to Fred McDowell. You play part of Write Me a Few of Your Lines, which we just heard. This is your Kokomo medley. Did you learn things from Fred McDowell on your guitar playing or your approach to song that you're still using today that you could describe for us?
Well, let's hear your tribute to Fred McDowell, the Kokomo medley from your latest album, Road Tested.
That's Bonnie Raitt. Bonnie Raitt is my guest. Now, did he show you that opening riff?
Now, I know when you were starting out, you were listening to folk music as well as to blues. Now, women's voices in folk music at the time were kind of like clear, bell-like soprano voices. I'm thinking of Joan Baez, Judy Collins. And in blues, of course, it's a much kind of rougher genre.
uh voice that that uh blues singers use and i was wondering if you you have a beautiful clear voice i was wondering if you try to also develop a gruffer voice for the oh yeah i mean i thought if i just drank jim beam and hung out with those guys and stayed up too late and i i couldn't stand the way i sounded when i was
You know, when you started on the road and you were opening for a lot of older blues performers, you said that you had to kind of care for the alcohol for them, make sure they drank enough to get on stage, but not too much.
No, I was just going to ask you about that period and what it was like to realize that with some of the musicians they needed to drink, but you had to make sure they didn't drink too much.
Bonnie Raitt, the next record you've brought with you is by Sippy Wallace, and your fans all know that you've recorded a couple of her songs, You Gotta Know How, Women Be Wise. Tell us about the record you've brought with you and why you've chosen it.
Well, why don't we hear that 1966 recording that you brought with you? And this is re-released on Alligator Records, Sippy Wallace.
It just makes me smile so much to hear this again. Did Sippy Wallace give you any interesting advice about life or music?
Let's talk about how Medgar and Murley first met. They both went to the historically black college Alcorn A&M, which later became Alcorn State University. He was 25 because he had already come back from the war, and she was 17. So that, at the time, seemed like a very big age difference. They were in different places in terms of fighting for equality. Describe her background.
When she and Medgar Evers started seeing each other, he said, you're going to be the mother of my children. I'm going to shape you into the woman I want you to be. That made me very uncomfortable. I don't like it when men decide they want to be involved with women who they can mentor because that ends up being a very unequal relationship.
You don't want to be your boyfriend or your husband's student. You want to be their equal. So what was your reaction when you heard that?
And she said, we argued like crazy. They fought over his work. What were her objections?
One of the fights Medgar and Merle had was over dinner guests because he was always bringing home people from the NAACP and sometimes celebrities like Lena Horne. And she was expected to cook an extra dinner for them. And she said, we do not have the money for this. We're struggling.
And he accused her of not knowing how to manage the money well, which just infuriated her because she was very, very careful with money. And is this the time that they actually came to blows?
Joy Reid, welcome to Fresh Air. Oh, thank you, Terry.
One day or night, I forget which it was, when Medgar was working, Merle was at home with the children, and the house was firebombed. A Molotov cocktail was thrown through the window. She was pregnant at the time. How did she respond when she realized what was happening and the house started to catch on fire?
It's a pleasure to have you here. You think, and rightfully so, I think, that Medgar Evers hasn't really gotten the recognition he deserves as an important figure in the civil rights movement. I think he's more famous for getting assassinated than for the work he actually did.
When President Kennedy gave a speech asking Congress to enact what basically became the Civil Rights Act of 1964 after Kennedy's assassination.
So when Kennedy gave this speech asking Congress to enact legislation giving all Americans the right to be served in facilities that were open to the public and to seek greater protection for the right to vote and more fully enforce the Supreme Court's ruling to desegregate the schools. That just like flared up racist attacks in the South.
And so it was a win for Medgar Evers and the movement, but it also increased the threats, right? Absolutely.
The assassination happened one night while Murley and the children were home. They were in bed. She was expecting her husband. She hears this loud gunshot. She recognizes this is trouble, runs to the door and finds her husband's body at the threshold of the door. And he's bleeding, and it looks like he's bleeding out, which he was. Tell us more about what you know about that night.
There was a really large funeral procession after he died, and there was nearly a police riot because there were so many people Would you describe that?
You have a whole chapter called The Rules for a Civil Rights Widow. What were the quote rules she had to learn or play by or create? Because she was like the first famous civil rights widow.
She both became famous, you know, very quickly because of the assassination and also very depressed. It's a difficult combination to deal with, depression and fame at the same time. And she's, of course, in mourning.
Thank you.
Give us an overview of the work that he did.
And then there's James Meredith. And Medgar Evers had applied to Ole Miss, the University of Mississippi. And of course, he was denied admission because he was black. They were not accepting black students. So when James Meredith applied, testing desegregation, it was Medgar Evers who went right to his support. What did he do to help Meredith get in?
Medgar Evers was the Mississippi field secretary for the NAACP, but his approach often diverged from the organizations. The NAACP, under Roy Wilkins, defined its work as being work through the courts. But Evers didn't always want to work through the courts. I mean, he appreciated that the work was being done in the courts, but he thought more was needed.
What were the kind of protests that he helped organize?
So a lot of people in Mississippi were too afraid to register for the NAACP or to, you know, call out racism. But the people who were willing to do that were the high school students and the college students. And so Medgar Evers wanted to work with them. What did the NAACP say to that?
I think it's interesting the way you get to some divisions within the civil rights movement at the time, not only between Evers and the NAACP, but Evers and groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and CORE, the Congress on Racial Equality, groups that were coming down to Mississippi,
He was concerned about the Freedom Riders coming down to Mississippi because he thought it would jeopardize the work that Mississippi civil rights workers and activists were already doing. What was he worried about?
On the other hand, the Freedom Rise brought so much national attention to what was happening in the South.
Medgar Evers fought in World War II. He was actually on Omaha Beach on D-Day. After he returned home, how did he see the U.S., and in particular Mississippi, differently than he'd seen it before?
I want to get to an early part of his life story when he's exposed to a lynching of his father's friend. I think this is a real significant story. Tell us what happened.
Were you thinking of Dionne Warwick when you sang this yourself?
The look of love is in your eyes The look your heart can disguise The look Saying so much more than just words could ever say And what my heart has heard when it takes my breath away I can hardly wait to hold you Feel my arms around you How long I have waited, waited just to love you Now that I have found you
You've got the look of love is on your face A look that time can't erase You're mine tonight Could this be just the start of so many nights like this? Let's make a low fist fall and then seal it with a kiss. I come hard away to hold you and feel my arms around you. How long I have waited. I love you so.
The very last hit that the Zombies had, Time of the Season, was from an album called Odyssey and Oracle. It's an album that didn't sell well at all in the United States. And the hit single, Time of the Season, I think was released long after the album had already kind of bombed. What is the story behind why this record came out in the way that it did?
Please don't bother trying to find her. She's not there.
Well, let's hear it. This is The Zombies' Time of the Season.
It's the time of the season. When love runs high in this time, give it to me easy. And let me try with pleasured hands to take you in the sun.
Who's your daddy? Is he rich like me? Has he taken any time to show you what you need to live? Tell it to me slowly.
So what was the condition of the band by the time this record became a big hit?
When Time of the Season came out, did everybody in the band think, well, maybe we should actually stick together after all?
Colin Blundstone, it's really just been a pleasure to talk with you. I thank you very much for being with us.
You got to record this song after the Zombies won a contest in, I guess, St. Albans, where you were from. And you won first prize, and the first prize was an audition with Decca Records. Tell me about the contest.
The language, as we all heard, is not exactly naturalistic. It's a really kind of stylized, like hyper-realist form of colloquial language. When you're reading the script and figuring out what you want to get out of it as the director, how does a Mamet script read different from what you're used to seeing as a script?
Did you want people to read the lines naturalistically or were you looking for something else?
The casting is terrific in the film, but it seems to me you've brought together actors with really different kinds of acting styles. You have Jack Lemmon, who's a kind of naturalistic actor. And Al Pacino's Al Pacino.
Ed Harris is kind of chameleon-like in a way. He can really blend into a role. Lemons have a different generation than a lot of actors in. They're both in terms of his age, but also in terms of his style.
I was wondering if you consciously picked people with different acting styles and what it was like to work with people who, it seems to me, probably take really different approaches to their characters.
So you needed to speak a different language to each of the actors?
Okay, so what would you tell Jack Lemmon as opposed to Al Pacino, as opposed to Ed Harris?
What did you sing in the final competition?
You know, in the movie, all the actors have to sell really crummy real estate. They have really bad leads. The real estate isn't good, and the people who they're supposed to be selling it to don't have the money and they don't have the interest.
I wonder if, like, getting assigned to or volunteering to make a movie that you don't really believe in would be the equivalent of what these guys are up against, selling stuff that isn't good.
Absolutely. I like that song a lot.
When you're directing a movie in which all the actors in it are playing the part of somebody who's very aggressive and in selling, are they that way when you're trying to direct them? Was it intimidating at all because they're all playing these really manipulative people who have their raps and they have their ways?
Why was the group named The Zombies?
Was the crew member in on the fact that this was a fake fit?
So what were you throwing the fit about?
Did it get what you wanted?
So what did it get you doing it?
Listen, it's been wonderful to have you here and it's been wonderful to get the kind of insights that you could give us into this film and into filmmaking in general. So thank you very, very much for being here. Thank you.
What do you think defined the Zombies sound?
What were the qualities of your voice that you think they wrote for?
Yeah, a lot of the songs you sang had more to do with vulnerability than showing how strong you were.
Let's hear another one of the zombies' big hits. And this is Tell Her No. Tell us something about the song or the session.
Where is the mumble in the song?
Okay, why don't we play it, you listen in, and then you tell us which the line was. Okay.
And if she should tell you, come closer. And if she tempts you with a charm. Okay, that's all right.
Tell her no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't hurry now for her love belongs to you. And if she should tell you I love you. And if she tempts you with a charm. This part's good. Here it is.
Yeah, so it's the part I was... Yeah, go ahead.
I always loved your chorus of, you know, the tell her no's with your whoa, whoa, whoa's in it and all that. Did you sing it the same way for each take or did it always come out different?
What was it like to be in the United States and build as a British invasion band? What did that mean to you?
Do your best to be honest with me about this. What's it like when you're 19, you're a young man, you're just getting started, you know, as a man in the world and sexually and all that. And here there's like, you go from city.
You go from city to city and women are screaming and screaming over you. I mean, this must really give you a sense of being something else, you know.
Well, I mean, how much did it go to your head? Sometimes that type of stuff really informs people's personalities.
When you started performing, particularly when you came over to the States and started performing, did you get a lot of advice or guidance on what to wear, what kind of haircuts you should have, what kind of eyeglasses the guys in the band should wear, all that image type of stuff?
Well, no one told me about her The way she lied Well, no one told me about her How many people cried
In one article that I think was written in an American newspaper or magazine, an article that's quoted in the liner notes to the new Zombies box set, the band was described as clean-cut, quiet, well-mannered, intelligent, they behave like gentlemen. Was that considered good or a liability at the time? Well, it's funny. To be so clean-cut in your image, yeah.
Let's pause here and play something from the new Zombies box set. And this is a previously unissued recording that you made, I think, at the BBC. And it's a cover of Burt Bacharach's The Look of Love. You had mentioned before that the band had toured with Dionne Warwick.
Can you describe the creation of the Roseanne, Roseanna Dana character?
What's your system of pushing for something when you're arguing with a censor or with a producer about your material? Do you make a strong case about why it's really not in bad taste? Explain what the joke is?
But let me just ask you, when a sketch of yours is killed, either before it airs or in this case it was killed. That was very unusual. It was killed for the rerun.
What do you do? I mean, do you just accept it or do you go in and make a big argument about it?
It's taken it to the top.
You started on Saturday Night Live, the first season it was on, and you've been in and out of the show several times, right?
First show this season that I saw you on Saturday Night Live, you had revived the Al Franken decade.
How did you first come up with that?
How did you come up with the kind of whiny voice that you use for the character?
I think that's one of the things I really love about the character is that you do kind of have it both ways. You know, it's like really funny and you're really mocking the character. And at the same time, you could tell you have a real kind of affection and caring for him too.
How do you deal with some of the language of the recovery movement, which you mock a lot, but also probably have some respect for, too? Like Stuart's always saying, you know... Well, this isn't my best show, but that's okay. So there's all this affirmation in the language.
What are some of your other favorites?
Yes, I like that a lot.
Now tell me your reaction to this aspect of the recovery movement, the people who say humor is a good recovery tool.
There are some people in the recovery movement who really do believe that humor is good therapy. So although they are humorless themselves, they have taught themselves like little jokes and little ways to be humorous. And they're very proud of it. And it's kind of like prescription for their health. Do you come across people like that? And I wonder how you react to them and how they react to you.
What were the first records you bought, can you remember?
One of my favorite sketches of the ones that you've done on Saturday Night Live was Harry Haneke.
Did you write that?
Were there any jokers in your family? Did you have a father who'd sit around the dinner table and tell jokes?
So he really had a twin brother, Howard?
I see. Okay.
So what was in your parents' record collection and what did they listen to? And how did that affect what you liked or didn't like?
Now, I read about you that you had a pretty strict Catholic upbringing, that you went to Catholic school. Seminary. Seminary. Wow, okay. So you're growing up in Canada. You're going to a seminary and listening to blues and rock and roll and rhythm and blues.
Okay, that's where I'm heading. Long before you became part of the Blues Brothers and you developed this kind of alter ego for yourself, did you have a pose when you were in high school? Did you want to be black? Did you want to be a blues musician? Did you want to be somebody who you weren't and kind of take on that pose in real life? Sure.
Did you sing then? I know you played drums.
How did you and Belushi start the whole Blues Brothers routine?
Wow. So you were doing the real thing before you did the parodies.
Let me ask about one of the parody commercials you did, and this is a terrific video compilation of some of your best sketches from Saturday Night Live. And this is the one for the bass-o-matic. It's like a blender that turns fish into a delicious shake.
Tell me how you came up with this and if it relates to a real ad that you ever did.
Well, let's hear Dan Aykroyd advertising the Basimetic on Saturday Night Live.
Mm-hmm. So you co-created the Emily Littella character with her?
And were you comfortable singing in an operatic style or did it not matter which style you sang in as long as you did the singing?
And were you comfortable singing in an operatic style or did it not matter which style you sang in as long as you did the singing?
Can you give us an example of how you learned to open up your voice?
Can you give us an example of how you learned to open up your voice?
Now, what about that opened your voice?
Now, what about that opened your voice?
Your mother who raised you came from Nigeria. What were her dreams?
Your mother who raised you came from Nigeria. What were her dreams?
Was it reassuring to you to have a mother who knew what to do if something went wrong?
Was it reassuring to you to have a mother who knew what to do if something went wrong?
Your parents separated, I think, when you were pretty young. And by the time you were 16, your father told you and your sister that he was done. Well, yeah, he told me.
Your parents separated, I think, when you were pretty young. And by the time you were 16, your father told you and your sister that he was done. Well, yeah, he told me.
And did you think that there was something about you that made him leave? Or did you think like he's being mean and thoughtless and doing this and that's on him, not on me?
And did you think that there was something about you that made him leave? Or did you think like he's being mean and thoughtless and doing this and that's on him, not on me?
I want to play another song from your new album, and this is called The Good. Do you want to say something about what you were thinking about when you wrote it?
I want to play another song from your new album, and this is called The Good. The Good. Do you want to say something about what you were thinking about when you wrote it?
Well, let's hear the song. This is The Good from Cynthia Erivo's new album, Chapter 1, Verse 1.
Well, let's hear the song. This is The Good from Cynthia Erivo's new album, Chapter 1, Verse 1.
That's Cynthia Erivo from her new album, Chapter One, Verse One. So this is kind of a personal question in terms of that it has personal meaning for me. So you're five foot one. Harriet Tubman, who you portrayed, was even shorter. And I'm not quite five feet. So as a short person, I'm wondering if you think it's had much of an impact on your life or your career to be short.
That's Cynthia Erivo from her new album, Chapter One, Verse One. So this is kind of a personal question in terms of that it has personal meaning for me. So you're five foot one. Harriet Tubman, who you portrayed, was even shorter. And I'm not quite five feet. So as a short person, I'm wondering if you think it's had much of an impact on your life or your career to be short.
What about chairs? Do you find it's hard to find a chair that fits? Yes, like chairs that are high enough to get to tables and stuff. Well, you know, chairs are like too deep and often too high.
What about chairs? Do you find it's hard to find a chair that fits? Yes, like chairs that are high enough to get to tables and stuff. Well, you know, chairs are like too deep and often too high.
If the stool's too high, you have to kind of shimmy onto it. Shimmy onto it, yeah. Because you can't reach that high. Your behind doesn't reach that high. It's like making little jumps to get there. And then slide down. Oh, my goodness. Cynthia Erivo, it's been so delightful to talk with you. Thank you so much for doing this. And just thank you for your work.
And if the stool's too high, you have to kind of shimmy onto it. Shimmy onto it, yeah. Because you can't reach that high. Your behind doesn't reach that high. It's like making little jumps to get there. And then slide down.
Oh, my goodness. Cynthia Erivo, it's been so delightful to talk with you. Thank you so much for doing this. And just thank you for your work. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much.
That's Cynthia Erivo from the miniseries Genius Aretha. Cynthia Erivo, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you. It is such a pleasure to have you on the show. How did you start listening to Aretha Franklin?
That's Cynthia Erivo from the miniseries Genius Aretha. Cynthia Erivo, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you. It is such a pleasure to have you on the show. How did you start listening to Aretha Franklin?
Coming up, we hear some new Christmas songs. This is Fresh Air.
I know you've said that when you were listening to Aretha before playing her, that one of the things you were listening for is where did she breathe?
I know you've said that when you were listening to Aretha before playing her, that one of the things you were listening for is where did she breathe?
You get the impression that it's more far away. Exactly. The way you sang it. Exactly. But I'll tell you, it was beautiful both ways.
You get the impression that it's more far away. Exactly. The way you sang it. Exactly. But I'll tell you, it was beautiful both ways.
You met her twice, backstage at the Color Purple and at the Kennedy Center. Did you feel like you were able to have a meaningful conversation with her? I think sometimes, like when you meet somebody who's so important to you, you just don't know what to say.
You met her twice, backstage at the Color Purple and at the Kennedy Center. Did you feel like you were able to have a meaningful conversation with her? I think sometimes, like when you meet somebody who's so important to you, you just don't know what to say.
She was brought up in the church and she was brought up singing gospel in the church on tours through the South and in her father's church. And so when she started singing R&B, it was so church influenced. And I'm wondering about if you grew up church at all in England and if so, what the music was like.
She was brought up in the church and she was brought up singing gospel in the church on tours through the South and in her father's church. And so when she started singing R&B, it was so church influenced. And I'm wondering about if you grew up church at all in England and if so, what the music was like.
Was the objection to the gospel music the lyrics of the song or the style of singing? I think it's the style of singing.
Was the objection to the gospel music the lyrics of the song or the style of singing?
Was this a predominantly white congregation?
Was this a predominantly white congregation?
Yeah. You went to RADA, which is the Rural Academy of Dramatic Arts in England. Very famous school. You didn't know it existed when you were invited to apply for it. I did not. Was it revelatory once you got there to study acting in such a formal and probably traditional way?
Yeah. You went to RADA, which is the Rural Academy of Dramatic Arts in England. Very famous school. You didn't know it existed when you were invited to apply for it. I did not. Was it revelatory once you got there to study acting in such a formal and probably traditional way?
You know, when you were talking about Aretha, you talked about the importance of where you breathe and how it can even change the meaning of a phrase. So when you were learning Sondheim songs, And I think breath is really especially important in those songs in terms of the meaning, but in some of the songs in terms of having an opportunity to breathe.
You know, when you were talking about Aretha, you talked about the importance of where you breathe and how it can even change the meaning of a phrase. So when you were learning Sondheim songs, And I think breath is really especially important in those songs in terms of the meaning, but in some of the songs in terms of having an opportunity to breathe.
Because some of the songs, there isn't a lot of opportunity. And those songs are really rangy, you know, so your breath support would be really important. Is there a song you especially loved when you started singing Sondheim?
Because some of the songs, there isn't a lot of opportunity. And those songs are really rangy, you know, so your breath support would be really important. Is there a song you especially loved when you started singing Sondheim?
I have. I've seen you sing it on YouTube, so if anybody wants to see it, it's there.
I have. I've seen you sing it on YouTube, so if anybody wants to see it, it's there.
Yeah, thank you. How did you figure out where to breathe? Did you get advice on that? Did it seem natural? I got advice.
Yeah, thank you. How did you figure out where to breathe? Did you get advice on that? Did it seem natural? I got advice.
Oh, you're so good in that. What do you think about when you hear that back?
Did it say in the script, get louder every time you say, put your brother on, or was that something you just figured out you should do?
You were so good in that scene, they brought you back for another season. That was the second season that you won an Emmy for that role. So you grew up in Seattle, right, where Frasier was set. How did you get interested in acting?
When you were getting started, what were some of your day jobs?
Mm-hmm.
You were able to make a living acting right from the start?
Did you go through any fallow periods where you thought, I'm never going to get a role again?
Okay, that scene was set at a fraternity party on the campus. Hannah Einbinder, welcome to Fresh Air. How did you get the part on Hacks with no previous acting experience? You've done sketch comedy. You did a great set on the Stephen Colbert show right before the pandemic lockdown. So how did you pull that off? Well...
You punched up the script you were given?
What was the scene that you were given to audition, and did they keep the jokes that you wrote in the actual TV series?
It's the son of the person who was originally Jean Smart's agent. Yes. The older agent died. His son represents your character and Smart's character. And he kind of finagles things to get you to go to Gene Smart's house to audition. But he never tells Gene Smart that. So things could get off to a terrible start. Yes.
And I think I— Because you're talking about the effort you went to to get here, and now she's just rejecting you without even talking to you yet. Yeah.
Did you learn a lot about acting by working with Jean Smart?
Was it mostly by example or did she give you actual tips?
So, you know, your mother is Lorraine Newman, one of the original cast members of Saturday Night Live. When you were growing up, was being funny something that was really prized or rewarded by your parents?
Do you feel like you learned how to take something really awful that happened to you and tell a funny story about it? Like turn like bad things into comedy? Yeah.
Jean Smart, welcome to Fresh Air. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. You're terrific in this as you've been. Thank you. Yeah, for so long. So, you know, you've done a lot of comedy, but this is the first time you've played a comic. Do you have any favorite jokes of the bad jokes that your character tells? Because they're both funny and bad at the same time.
Are there things you're related to about the generational conflict in this? Because the young comic who starts writing for your character thinks of herself as so cutting edge and a little transgressive. And she really has kind of contempt for your character because it represents everything that the younger comic doesn't want to be.
You've played like brassy, cynical, sarcastic women in comedies and in dramas. In Entertainment Weekly, you were described as the reigning Meryl Streep of tough broad types. So I want to play an example of that. And this is from your role in Fargo when you played the matriarch of a crime family that controls Fargo. And you've taken over from your husband after he had a debilitating stroke.
Meanwhile, the Kansas City Mafia made an offer to take over your operation. And in this scene, you meet the gangster representing the Kansas City family. And you make a counteroffer, an offer for a partnership between their family and your crime family. So in this scene, you're laying out the terms of your deal and then warn him not to underestimate you.
And the mobster from Kansas City is played by Brad Garrett. You speak first.
You must have loved that speech when you read it.
So I read that initially when you got the part and the wardrobe came out and the hairdresser came out that you looked at yourself in the mirror and you actually burst into tears. What was the problem? What were you seeing in the mirror?
Kate Winslet plays Mayor Sheehan, who's a police detective trying to solve a murder. But there's a lot going on in her personal life. Her son died by suicide. leaving behind his young son, who Mare is raising because the boy's mother has been in rehab. You're Mare's mother, and you've moved in with Mare to help her raise the grandson, your great-grandson.
But you and Mare are afraid that you're about to lose custody because the boy's mother is getting out of rehab. You've been trying to prepare him for the likelihood he'll be returning to his mother. And that's made Mare very angry with you because she wants to keep custody. And let's hear a clip in which she's showing how angry she is that you're trying to prepare him to go back to his mother.
Wow, you're really good in this. How did you get the part?
So Mayor of Easttown is set in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia. And Delaware County has some pretty wealthy neighborhoods and some working class suburbs. You probably saw this or at least heard about it, that Saturday Night Live did a parody of the accents. Did you see it of the accents on Mayor of Easttown? Kate said it to me. Yeah.
And she's the one who got the brunt of the satire in this. And the premise of the show is that instead of saying murder and daughter because of the perhaps overly exaggerated Philadelphia accents, it's like murder and daughter. Yeah, you do it. You do it. Yeah.
So did you have like an accent coach?
So I'm going to squeeze in one more clip. This is from Frasier. This is the role that you won two Emmys for. And you're hilarious in this. So for people who don't know, this had come Frasier. Frasier is a psychiatrist who has a radio advice call-in show. And you played Lana Lindley, who was one of the most popular and pretty girls in high school. And Frasier had a crush on you.
And now years later, you run into each other at a cafe and you're a fan of his radio show. You hit it off and you end up spending the night together. And this is like Frazier's high school dream come true. And in the morning, you wake up in his bed. You still have a glass of wine on the night table next to you, which you use in the scene I'm about to play to swallow some pills later in the scene.
You'll hear a reference to that, but you won't be able to see it. And so you wake up in the morning together. Things are still dreamy between the two of you until, okay, here is the scene. You speak first.
Is the song Boots of Spanish Leather written about your leaving for Italy?
And the experience he was going through was the experience of missing you?
So the fiction is that you weren't in Spain, you were in Italy, and did he ever ask for boots of Spanish leather? No.
Well, here's the song we've been talking about, Boots of Spanish Leather.
Suze Rodolo, welcome to Fresh Air and thanks for being here. Thank you. You met Dylan at a marathon folk concert at the Riverside Church in New York in 1961. He wasn't well known yet. He'd only recently arrived in Greenwich Village. You'd already been living there. What attracted you to him then? What did you know of him when you first started seeing him?
After about eight months in Perugia, you came back to Greenwich Village, and you write that during your absence, he suffered in public. You didn't get a friendly reception when you returned.
A lot of people you say thought that you'd been cold and indifferent to someone who loved you, and that some people, some of the folk singers deliberately sang songs that Dylan had written about his heartache, as well as any ballad that pointed a finger at a cruel lover when you were around. Yeah.
And you say it was as if every letter Bob had written to me and every phone call he had made had been performed in a theater in front of an audience. What do you mean by that?
Well, you moved back to Greenwich Village and you got together, but then you eventually moved out of the apartment that you shared with Dylan. What was the breaking point for you?
Did you feel like you were always competing for his attention with other women who wanted it?
Men could, you know. This might be too personal, so if it is, you just let me know. When Dylan started seeing Joan Baez, and there was such a public interest in their relationship because they were both famous singers, what was that like for you?
Do people still recognize you from the Freewheeling album? I look exactly the same, Terry. Yeah. Don't we all?
But, you know, it doesn't mean you're not recognizable.
Well, I want to thank you so much for talking with us. Good luck with your memoir. Thank you. It's been a pleasure to speak to you.
When did you start moving your repertoire toward more contemporary and political songs?
You've, during your career, sung a lot of songs by Bob Dylan, who was your good friend and for a short time your lover. How did you meet?
Well, you were more established than he was at the time, and you took him on an American tour that you were doing and used to introduce him. Yes.
Well, that really helped him get known. And then shortly thereafter, he went on an English tour and took you with him, except he didn't share the spotlight with you the way you had shared it with him.
In Dylan's biographical book, Chronicles Volume 1, he writes about you in the end of the book. And I want to read some of the things he says about you. He says,
Let's talk about this effect on you when you were touring England with him and weren't getting called onto stage and weren't sharing the spotlight with him. How did it affect you emotionally?
You know, one thing that strikes me about your early career is that it was a combination of selflessness and ego. I guess you seemed on stage like a very selfless person who was pouring out her heart for the larger good, And yet you get so fed by audiences that you become very ego-involved with that attention.
cupid's arrow had whistled by my ears before but this time it hit me in the heart and the weight of it dragged me overboard susie was seventeen years old from the east coast had grown up in queens raised in a left-wing family her father had worked in a factory and had recently died
Well, in the 1960s, you met Bob Dylan through Dylan's record producer of the time, Tom Wilson. And this was in what year about? 1965. 1965. And Tom Wilson had just cut Dylan's first electric single, Subterranean Homesick Blues. And he invited you to watch Dylan at a session. And you were determined, you say, to do more than watch. You wanted to actually play on it.
The session turned out to be the session for Highway 61 Revisited in which Like a Rolling Stone was recorded. And you played Hammond B3 on Like a Rolling Stone. How did you get to play on it?
She was involved in the New York art scene, painted and made drawings for various publications, worked in graphic design and in off-Broadway theatrical productions, also worked on civil rights committees. She could do a lot of things. Meeting her was like stepping into the tales of a thousand and one Arabian nights.
When you had told Tom Wilson that you had a part worked out in your head, did you really laugh?
Okay, so then what happened? They start performing the song.
And then he compares you to a Rodin sculpture come to life and says, she reminded me of a libertine heroine. She was just my type. How does that description sound to you? Do you hear yourself in that description?
My guest Al Cooper featured on Oregon. Al Cooper, were you surprised at the impact that Oregon Line had on pop music?
Now, the record that you first made with Dylan, you started in a longer relationship with him, playing with him. And you played with him at the Newport Festival, his first electric concert. And it's a concert that's famous because Dylan got booed. And in your memoir, you kind of have a different interpretation of why he was getting booed. The standard interpretation is because he had electric.
the audience was really angry and thought that he'd sold out, etc., and they were booing him. What's your explanation?
Weren't they booing during the performance, too, though?
Everyone knows now that Bob Dylan was born Robert Zimmerman and he grew up in Minnesota. What did he tell you about his past when you met him?
There are other things he told you about his past, that he was abandoned at a young age in New Mexico and went to live with a traveling circus.
So how did you find out that his last name was actually Zimmerman?
Now, you said that, you know, just as he didn't want to be too forthcoming about his upbringing and his family, you felt the same way, too. But you were from Queens, New York, and your parents were both communists. And you had to grow up with some secrecy because you grew up during the McCarthy era.
Couldn't very well go around talking about your communist parents. No, I couldn't until 1989.
You write about how Dylan had to develop and present an image to the outside world. And you write, much time was spent in front of the mirror trying on one wrinkled article of clothing after another until it all came together to look as if Bob had just gotten up and thrown something on. Image was all.
I found it so amusing to read that, to think that, you know, Dylan was trying on all these clothes trying to look, you know, authentically like he didn't care. Yeah.
While we're talking about image, let's talk about the cover. The now famous cover from the Freewheeling Bob Dylan, the cover that you're on with him walking down a partially snow-covered street. He has his hands in his pockets and his shoulders up because it's cold. And you have your arms wrapped around one of his arms. You're wearing like a green trench coat that's tied around the waist.
So tell us how that cover came to be.
Well, he was freezing, you say, in part because he wore this light suede jacket because it looked good. Image, image. Even though he knew he was going to be really cold. Yeah. And who can blame him? It did look really good. It looked good. He had impeccable taste. I mean, I don't want to sound harsh about this clothes thing because who wouldn't want to look right on an album cover?
It's really important. I think who wouldn't want to choose the right article of clothing and risk being cold?
I think one of the problems for young women who fall in love with men older, even if they're just slightly older, particularly if that man becomes very famous, is that you risk this kind of mentor-mentee relationship where...
you know the the woman is expected to be the learner looking up to the man and he teaches her everything he knows and it could really be a kind of uncomfortable relationship as opposed to like a relationship of equals but when you and Dylan met you had so much to learn from each other I mean you really admired his music and had so much to learn from that he was really interested in learning about your world you were working in the civil rights movement and
You were working in avant-garde theater. He learned about the music of viola and Brecht through the fact that you were working on a Brecht production. And he writes in his memoir about how it really changed him to be exposed to that music. You exposed him to art that he was unaware of because you were an artist yourself. I was glad to see that, to see how much you had to learn from each other.
Oh, good, good.
You decided to leave for Perugia, Italy. You were supposed to go there after high school. You'd had a trip planned, but because of a car accident, you never made it. And then you moved to Greenwich Village and then you met Dylan and so on. But the opportunity was offered to you again by your mother. So you decided to leave for Perugia. It was a very difficult decision for you.
What was his reaction when you told him you were going?
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Well, in your new book, you describe yourself as sexually in a state of arrested development. You say, all my natural compulsions are perverted and twisted.
Now, when you were young, you went for a while to Catholic school. For a while, you went regularly to church. You say you went through a period of being fervent and devout. Religious, yeah. What happened to all those fantasies that you had during this period when these fantasies would have just been horrifying to you?
Did you pray to get rid of these thoughts?
Now, you quote one woman in your book as accusing you of ruining underground comics by encouraging all the younger boy artists to be bad and do comics about their own horrible sex fantasies.
Do you feel like your comics inspired a lot of other comics of, yeah, of kind of, you know, bad sexual... Yeah, I did. Misogynist. Yeah.
Before you started doing underground comics, you worked for American Greetings.
Were you doing greeting cards? Yes.
Gosh, I'd like to see those. Have they been exhibited yet?
So what are some of the things that you drew for the greeting cards? This is what, birthday cards, get well soon cards, stuff like that?
And they were funny or funny in quotes?
Now, we've talked a little bit about how influenced you feel you were by early comics. And musically, so much of the music you love is from the 20s and 30s. How were you first exposed to graphics of that period and music of that period?
Arkrum, welcome to Fresh Air. Do you think your early comics, some of the ones that anthologized in your new book, do you think they look different out of the time period than they did to you in their time?
And how did you start playing banjo?
Robert, when you met Aileen, did you think that she looked like one of your comic characters?
She's probably easy, you know. Robert, when did you first see her work and what did you think of it?
You know, and as we talked about, Robert, the last time you were on Fresh Air, you know, when you were doing your comics in the 60s, they were kind of very controversial among women. I mean, some women thought they were great, but a lot of women thought that they were really, you know, kind of sexist.
Yeah, tell us what that was like. What kind of comments did you get about that? And what did you think of the way he drew women? Were you ever offended by his emphasis on large breasts and behinds and the kind of sexual obsessions that were described in the comics?
In your new book, The Arkham Handbook, you describe how you started some aspects of your style after a bad LSD trip. What were the images that you saw when you were tripping that made their way into your cartoons?
Well, Aileen, you write about how when you met Robert, he was like really famous.
Well, that eventually maybe. Eventually he became famous. But you say he didn't handle it well and you saw what fame did to him. What did it do?
aww that's so cute Aileen is that a revert because Aileen like you have all these like kind of like demons and crazinesses of your own but it sounds like in the relationship you have to like be the sane one
Well, I want to thank you both so much for talking with us.
How do you think your drawing style was actually changed by this hallucinogenic imagery?
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So what are some of the characters that you started drawing in this period after taking the LSD?
Okay, Mr. Natural is this kind of guru kind of figure with a really long beard. Was he based on anybody who you knew or a type that you knew?
And Angel Food McSpade, I mean, this is an African-American woman who is drawn, like some of the black people in your early comics look like the African cannibals in the Betty Boop cartoon where they have her in a big pot.
Why did you draw them that way?
Did you worry that people would misconstrue it? Because certainly a lot of people didn't see it that way. They just saw it as a crude stereotype.
And it was swept away in your sexual imagery, too.
Everybody knows what your sexual fetishes are and everything.
Was there ever a part of you that wanted to censor that part of your mind or at least keep it private and hidden, which is what most people do with those?
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What was it like for you to go from, like, loner, eccentric weirdo to, like, in-demand popular person who everybody wants to publish and buy and know?
Well, you were also like suddenly you were an important part of like the hippie counterculture. Did you identify with that culture? Did you feel like a part of it?
You write that puppet and marionette kid shows made a deep impression on you. You say the adult assumption was that these puppets were cute and lovable, but they were actually grotesque. And the shows tried to tell kids that life could be fun and exciting, but the unconscious message was that the adult world is strange, twisted, perverse, threatening, sinister.
What was it about Howdy Doody or the other, Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, that you found grotesque and sinister?
Did the frozen smile on Howdy Doody's face strike you as deranged?
Okay, the things that you say about these puppet shows, that they show that the adult world is strange, twisted, perverse, threatening, sinister, that's a kind of description of what your cartoons became like. Strange, twisted, perverse, threatening, sinister. It's like, that's what you set out to do.
We've talked a little bit about how your visual imagery was changed by LSD. What about your sexual fantasies? I mean, so much of the comics that you've done have had to do with sexual fantasy.
Were those fantasies as dark before LSD as they were after?
I wanted to ask you about that. Did you want your more sexually oriented comic to function as turn-ons, to be like pornography in the lives of its readers? No, I didn't.
Did a lot of people early on assume that you were gay because of the way you dressed in performance?
The band was originally so used to performing in Manhattan, in the village, where people knew the band, the people who came were a part of the same arts subculture that the band was a part of.
But when you went on the road in America, did you start playing in places where people weren't kindred spirits in the same way and they didn't necessarily get what you were doing and didn't know how to react to it?
How do people respond to you in prison?
What were the charges?
What did you think when you saw the Sex Pistols, the Ramones? Your band, the Dolls, preceded punk, but it was certainly influential in a lot of punk bands and had the same sensibility in a lot of ways. So when you saw that sensibility just really become so popular, what did you think?
I want to skip ahead to the 80s and 90s when you performed a lot as Buster Poindexter. And, you know, the New York Dolls were so into a kind of pre-punk sensibility and were very high energy and very raw. And, you know, Buster Poindexter is much more of a kind of lounge, more Vegas-oriented kind of persona. Instead of in drag on the cover, the Buster Poindexter character is in a tuxedo.
That's the thing. No, no, but that's exactly the thing.
Exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
So have you always felt like you were standing back and knowing that any kind of drag that you were putting on, any kind of outfit or whatever you were putting on for a performance was always that, that you always knew it was some kind of drag or another thing?
Right, right, right. Well, that image was encouraged, like on the cover of the Buster Poindexter album, you're drinking a martini.
In a tuxedo with your pinky raised. And then I was back.
Right. I want to play something from the Buster Poindexter era.
No, no, I wasn't going to. I was going to play. Thank God. Were you really tired of it?
Oh. I was going to play Bad Boy.
Tell me why you recorded this. This is a cover.
Yeah, okay. Well, let's hear it. This is from the Buster Poindexter album.
So when you were on stage with the Reunited and the new version of the Dolls, and you were doing the old Dolls songs, did you have any flashbacks to things that you had totally forgotten about? Did memories surface of things that were really interesting that you had completely forgotten about until you were back in that setting again?
That's Bad Boy from David Johansson's album Buster Poindexter. David Johansson is my guest, and his first band, the New York Dolls, has a reunion concert that was just released on CD and DVD. It seems to me that you've had so many different characters you've inhabited as a performer. And I'm wondering how much you think your career as an actor has come into play in your career as a musician.
Because before you were even in the New York Dolls, you were with the Ridiculous Theater Company in New York. And over the years, you've been in a lot of movies as well.
You once said, back in the Buster Poindexter era, Buster can have this great life in the public eye and take the rap for everything, and then David can go home.
You have a show on Sirius, which is one of the satellite radio stations.
Who are you as a DJ?
Well, David Johansson, great to talk with you. Thank you so much.
Any historian would want to know all about that.
Oh, you had to relearn your own songs?
In spite of the fact that you don't remember a whole lot about parts of the early days of the Dolls, do you remember writing the song Personality Crisis?
And let's just describe what Charles Ludlam's theater was. He used to dress and drag a lot as the leading lady in these Greta Garbo kind of roles.
Well, why don't we hear Personality Crisis as performed by the New York Dolls at the Meltdown Festival over the summer. So this is from The Return of the New York Dolls.
In the liner notes for the DVD and the CD, you write about Arthur Kane. This was his last performance. He was the bass player of the band. And it was Arthur Kane who knocked on your door and recruited you to be in the Dolls when the band was being formed. He died just a few weeks after the concert. Did you even know he was sick?
Let's talk about how he did recruit you for the band. He knocked on your door in your apartment in Manhattan. You were, what, around 19 or something? What did he tell you about this new band?
What were some of the things that you knew you didn't want to be about, the kind of music that you thought had dead-ended?
Now, on the album cover of the album The New York Dolls, you're all dressed in this kind of trashy drag with a lot of eye makeup and lipstick. You're wearing a bouffant wig. I assume it's a wig.
It wasn't a wig?
It teased your hair for it?
Somebody teased it, right. And you're wearing what looks like capri pants and high-heeled clogs and open cardigan revealing your bare chest. And you're staring at yourself in the mirror of a makeup compact.
And the band's name is written in lipstick. Right. For those of us who didn't get to see you on stage, how did that compare with how you actually looked on stage?
What inspired your interest in or willingness to be in a kind of drag for performances? I mean, you mentioned you had been with Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theater, and drag was often a part of their performances in theater. So where did you see it fitting into your music?
And Paul Trueblood is at the piano, and he sounds great with you.
Well, let's go for the drama and hear Pirate Jenny. And this is from Marian Faithfull's album 20th Century Blues with Paul Trueblood at the piano.
So is that like the first music you heard?
Was your mother a singer?
My mother was a dancer. Oh.
When you were growing up, did she have clothes from her costumes from when she danced in the closet?
But I think they separated when you were six or something, right? Yes. And then you lived with your mother.
Well, a song here that strikes me as a really interesting choice, kind of out of character, is I'm Into Something Good, which was... Oh, that was just fun. Yeah, well, I mean, that was a Herman's Hermits hit in 1964. I love doing that.
The year that that was a hit, Into Something Good 1964, was I think the year. It was the year of Tears Go By. Yeah, the year. And I think it was about that time that you started on tour and you went on a tour, not with Herman's Hermits. Not with Herman's Hermits. But with Freddie and the Dreamers. And the Hollies.
Jerry and the Pacemakers. Where did you see yourself fitting in?
Oh, because you were still in school.
Did the guys on the tour try to be protective or try to take advantage of you?
Well, I'm going to play I'm Into Something Good from your previous album, Kiss and Time.
That's why the new CD is called that.
Okay, so this is Marion Faithfull from her previous CD, Kissin' Time.
That's Marianne Faithfull from her previous CD, Kissin' Time, the 1964 hit, I'm Into Something Good. And she has a new CD called Before the Poison.
At what point did you start getting to know the, and I assume that you did at some point, the Andy Warhol factory crew? I didn't. You never knew them?
From the joint?
So, you know, I'm wondering what you thought, because you must have been aware of this, whether you knew the Velvet Underground personally or not.
What did you make of it when The Velvet Underground recorded Venus in Furs?
Did you feel, I mean, you've lived in a very unconventional world your whole adult life.
That's what I was wondering.
Tell us a little bit about the delightful bohemian manner that you were brought up in.
You're kidding.
How did it affect the writing of your 1994 autobiography?
Well, that's always interesting to me because I read so many autobiographies and I always think, who has the memory to really remember what somebody said and what you said back?
How far away does the really hard time seem to you when you were homeless?
Have you asked yourself why you think you survived?
You occupy a kind of unique spot in pop music now because, you know, you were a teenage pop star, but what you're doing now is somewhere between... A pop princess, yes. What you're doing now is a kind of... What you're doing now is a kind of hybrid of cabaret and theater music and pop and rock and... I don't really do cabaret.
And if you don't mind my mentioning your age, is that... I don't mind.
And, you know, back when you were starting in the 60s, there still was the sense of what do rock and rollers do when they get older?
Before the interview started, you mentioned to me that you stopped smoking about three weeks ago. Three weeks now, yeah.
What led to that feeling that you didn't know what your personal story was?
What is the action that you typically take that seems most incomplete without a cigarette?
Do you feel like your speaking or singing voice is changing at all? Or that you're breathing better when you sing? Well, not yet, no. But I think that will come.
So tell us the story of how you met Mick Jagger.
And he was the producer of your first record and of the Rolling Stones.
Now, what did he discover in you? Was it your look or did he know that you sang?
In your memoir, you reprint a press release that was written for when As Tears Go By was released. And it says, Marianne Faithfull is the little 17-year-old blonde who still attends a convent in Reading, daughter of the Baroness Ariso. She is lice-some and lovely with long blonde hair.
A shy smile and a liking for people who are long-haired and socially conscious. Marianne digs Marlon Brando woodbine cigarettes, poetry, going to the ballet, and wearing long evening dresses. She is shy, wistful, waif-like. Now, what did you think of that image of yourself?
Now, you ended up doing a lot of drugs, doing a lot of heroin. How did you start doing heroin?
How long did it take you to figure that out?
I want to play a song that you wrote the lyrics for called Sister Morphine that was released in England in 1969. Tell me a little bit about where you were in your life when you wrote the song and what the lyrics are about.
Why don't we hear Sister Morphine? This is Marianne Faithfull, recorded in 1969.
Marion Faithfull is my guest, and she's written an autobiography called Faithfull. The record company, Decca, you say yanked this record about two days after it was released.
What was their objection?
You said that after you became a junkie that it actually brought you anonymity that you hadn't known since you were 16, since 17, that is. You were living on the street. I'm sure that wasn't exactly, though, the kind of anonymity that you wanted.
When you're And I'm a fool When you're not in my sight Then everything Just fades from view. The mystery of love belongs to you.
Your voice is very dark. Your voice is very different from the way it was at the start of your career. Well, obviously. Yes.
Why did your teacher think that that would be good luck if it did?
I don't know what you'll make of this, but I think of you as being similar to Billie Holiday and Lottie Lenya as having great singers whose voices were very different at the beginning and end of their careers.
Was there anything that you missed about that pure soprano that you had?
You know, it's interesting, like, as tears go by, which is your famous first hit, you're singing in an almost uninflected voice. That's what Andrew wanted. That's what he wanted? Why? This is Andrew Luke Oldham, who was your producer, and he was the Rolling Stones producer.
Oh, I'm sorry. Okay.
Now you mentioned that La Delenia is one of your music heroes. So I thought maybe we could listen to a recording in which you sing Kurt Weill.
You write that sleep is very important both to memory and to synthesizing memory. Can you tell us briefly what goes on in the brain while we're sleeping that is so helpful?
So we should really give ourselves time to sleep, even when we feel like we don't have the time.
I remember the lyrics, but not who wrote it, even though I know who wrote it. And I know the name of the movie and I know the name of the show and I can't find it in my brain. And then a few seconds or a few minutes or a few hours or a few days later, without even thinking about it, it just kind of pops into my mind. What is going on?
Do you get enough sleep?
Right. So we all have problems. I think it's fair to say remembering names and faces, it's very common. And it's really embarrassing when it happens, especially if it's someone whose name you really ought to have remembered. I'm confident that this has happened to you. And it must be especially embarrassing because you are a memory scientist.
So how do you deal with it when you, especially if you're supposed to be introducing this person to somebody else and you can't even remember their name, how do you deal both with the embarrassment of it and just with the, you know, not wanting to hurt somebody's feelings by making them feel not important enough to have remembered their name? Like, what's your cover? Yeah.
Sharon Ranganath, thank you so much for talking with us.
Let me move to another track on the Simpsons' Songs in the Cave Springfield CD. And you wrote a theme for the Springfield news show on Springfield with Kent Brockman.
Tell me about writing this theme and what you think of TV themes and news themes that you hear.
Well, let's hear your version of this, the Ion Springfield theme with Kent Brockman.
What are some of the for real TV themes that you've written over the years?
But sometimes I know that the name starts with a K or it starts with an L. Why do I know that but I don't know the name?
And what is underscoring? Well, I've been known as an underscore music person.
And how much underscoring do you have to do for The Simpsons?
I want to get to another song on the Simpsons CD. And this is actually a parody of a song from Schoolhouse Rock, the song I'm Just a Bill on Capitol Hill. And this is a song written by Dave Frishberg that's supposed to describe, I mean, that does describe how a bill becomes a law. And this is a really clever parody of that by a demagogue named You know, sung in the persona of a demagogue.
And Jack Sheldon, the trumpeter who sang the original version, sings this one as well. Tell us how this one came about.
Well, let's hear the parody of I'm Just a Bill. The parody is called The Amendment Song, and this is from an episode of The Simpsons called The Day the Violence Died.
When you're writing a song parody, you're trying to write it as if it were serious, as if it were really a Broadway show or really a movie theme.
And like, for instance, my proper noun problem is a retrieval failure because it's in there. It's in my brain someplace. I just can't find it. It's like rummaging through the junk drawer to find something really small.
But you can't do that with every memory. I mean, it's like having a new password every time you sign onto a site. There's a limit to how many mnemonic devices or, you know, like little memory tricks you can use for every password and add to that everything you want to remember. How many memory devices can you come up with?
I want to ask you about social media because so many people are constantly like jumping from one post to another, from one screen to another. And, you know, attention spans on screens are getting shorter and shorter. How does it affect your memory of what you've seen on social media if you just keep scrolling? And does that have an impact on your general ability to remember?
Like if your attention is constantly getting diverted from one thing to another, one thing to another, does that have a sustained effect?
There are memories that we'd like to forget, but we can't. And that's mostly traumatic memories, especially PTSD, or memories of sexual abuse, rape, crime. And And when we have an experience like that, a traumatic experience, the fight or flight response kicks in whether or not we can actually fight or flight.
So what's going on chemically in the brain with that fight or flight experience that makes a bigger, like a deeper, unforgettable kind of memory? Right.
So once you have what seems like an indelible, horrible memory and things that are happening now make those memories come to the surface again and you're deep into post-traumatic stress disorder, how does our knowledge of that perhaps help in changing the trauma of re-experiencing the traumatic event?
Can you explain that a little bit more? Because I know early in your career or in your studies, you were working with veterans. And it was kind of like a group therapy session that you were running. And they were dealing with these kind of traumatic memories from their time, I think mostly in Iraq.
So how did the technique that you're talking about is changing the narrative that you tell yourself about that story? How did that go? How did that work?
Jaron Ranganath, welcome to Fresh Air. It's a pleasure to have you here. I learned so much about memory. I want to tell you, I've had proper noun issues for years or decades. And sometimes, if anything, that starts with a capital letter, a person's name, a movie, a television show, a recording, the songwriter's name, whatever.
So how does that make things any better?
And as you've pointed out, like memories change over time. Memories aren't like indelibly the same. You compare it to like a copy machine and making a copy of a copy of a copy. The image gets lighter. It can change, you know, change slightly. And it's no longer like the original. So what you're talking about is having that work in your favor.
Outside of him actually firing into the tent, into the hut, which happened. So I guess you were partially successful with that?
You can't argue that his presence isn't remarkable on screen. I mean, you can't take your eyes off of him. But there is that thing that one person had part of his finger shot off when Kinski fired into the bamboo hut. So, I mean, that matters too. I mean, I understand that what really matters to you as a filmmaker is what you see on screen, but there was some collateral damage.
You grew up, well, your very early years were during World War II, and then you grew up in the aftermath. Your father was a Nazi, and he fought in the war, but he was mostly like in the supply room, I think.
Yeah. And your mother was briefly a National Socialist. Did they talk with you ever about Nazism?
Werner Herzog, welcome back to Fresh Air.
Well, even your father. Your father was from an academic family. I mean, he was from a very educated family. He was an academic himself. So you must have wondered the same about your father. How could somebody who was educated from a very educated family...
Oh, it is always my pleasure. Do you know why you're attracted to extremes in your life and in your films?
You know, your mother took you to Bavaria in the mountains to escape the bombing. But in retrospect, she also escaped the Nazis. She escaped her own country. I mean, her own people.
Oh, I'm sure I hadn't thought of that. Did you know that?
Your parents had to undergo denazification after the war.
Did they ever tell you what that entailed?
Your father you hardly knew. Did your mother tell you?
How do you think growing up during the war affected you, even though you were at a remove from it in the mountains? In the war and its aftermath.
Although you say that, I'm wondering if you're thinking at all about the children in Israel and in Gaza. Like children in Israel were kidnapped. There's been missile attacks. Children in Gaza have getting bombed. Many children have been killed. I'm wondering if you're thinking about that a lot now.
Well, would you if you could? It sounds like you're against war and wouldn't want to participate in one.
Because.
I understand that.
We need to take another short break here, so let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is writer and filmmaker Werner Herzog. His new memoir is called Every Man for Himself and God Against All. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. The first time you narrated a film was when you made a film for a production company in Germany that specialized in extreme subjects.
And you did a film for them about ski jumping, which you knew a lot about having grown up in the mountains in Bavaria. And you used to build, God, what are they called? Like platforms to jump off, to ski off of?
Ramps, yes. And got terribly injured during one of those. And a friend of yours got terribly injured on one of his jumps. But anyway, so you made a documentary about that. And they told you, you have to narrate it because that's what everybody does. They narrate their own films. And you've become famous for your narrations in films, in your documentaries. Yes.
And you've had some movie roles, including in Jack Reacher, in The Mandalorian, which is like a Star Wars spinoff, parodying yourself on The Simpsons. And they're all like sinister roles. What do you think it is about your voice that gets you cast in sinister roles? Maybe it's the content of what you're saying.
That's good to know. Can you quote any of the lines?
Good. So we're about at the end of the interview, and I have to say you made it through without being shot at because you were shot at at the BBC, or at least you were shot and only mildly wounded. What was that about? Do you have any idea how it happened?
Were you outside when that happened?
Did you go to the emergency room after you were shot?
I should hope you would have gone to the emergency room if it penetrated your intestines.
Okay. So what's next for you?
Do you ever stop working?
Thank you so much for coming back to our show. I really appreciate it. And I really enjoyed our conversation.
But my question still stands. Why do you think you're attracted to making films that put you in risky situations and that put you in extreme situations? It's one thing to have in the film a metaphor like dragging a ship over a mountain, but it's another thing to actually have to do it in your film. At that point, it's not a metaphor. At that point, it's something your crew has to do.
You grew up in extreme circumstances during World War II in Munich and then in a remote part of Bavaria in the mountains where you were poor. And there was one time where your mother, when you were living in Bavaria during the war, took you and your brother up a slope to get a better view of Rosenheim, a city in Bavaria that had been bombed.
and was on fire, and you describe it as a vast inferno tracing the terrible pulse of the end of the world on the night sky. I knew that outside of our tight valley, there was a whole world that was dangerous and spectral. Not that I was afraid of it. I was curious to know it. A lot of people would have been afraid of it. Why were you more curious to know it?
So when you were young, you got into a fight with your older brother and you stabbed him in the wrist and the thigh. There was blood all over. And you're right that you realized you urgently needed some self-discipline. What did you do to acquire that self-discipline?
That strikes me as slightly less than hilarious and kind of dangerous.
You talk about wanting to see the dark recesses of the soul, but you also write when it comes to your soul that you'd rather die than go to an analyst because it's your view that something fundamentally wrong happens there. And you say it's a mistake to light up your soul, shadows and darkness and all.
Why do you not want to light up your own soul but want to explore the dark recesses of other people's souls?
It's nice to know you have your values straight.
Are you afraid of what you'd see if you shone a light on your soul?
One of the films that made you famous is Aguirre, The Wrath of God. And this is a film about a conquistador leading a Spanish expedition in South America, searching for El Dorado, the city of gold. And he goes mad along the way. He calls himself the wrath of God. What interests you about a mind that makes you want to write about it? Yeah.
Do you feel like you are mad?
Explain that.
All right. I'm definitely taking your word for it.
Aguirre is about a Spanish conquistador who goes mad. And you can argue that Fitzcarraldo is a little mad too. And the actor who you got to play both of them is Klaus Kinski, who you describe as a madman. And you knew him since you were 13 and he was 36. And you were living in the same boarding house. And you knew he'd go into rages. You'd witnessed his rages.
Did it seem like a good idea to you to have somebody who seemed mad play Mad Men? Or was it just your confidence in him as an actor?
Tonight, live from New York, The Ed Sullivan Show.
Sorry. There's some doubt that you can sing. No, we need money first. Our psychiatrist briefly said there's nothing but four Elvis Presleys. It's not two, it's not two. What do you think your music does for these people? Well... Pleases them, I think. Well, they must do because they're buying it. Why does it excite them so much? We don't know, really.
If we knew, we'd form another group and be managers. LAUGHTER
You've created this story about life in an office. Have you ever worked in an office? Yes.
Are any of the storylines in the office based on things that have happened to you?
Why don't we hear that scene? In the scene, David Brent is role playing with the guy who's running the seminar. And David Brent is supposed to be playing the customer. And the guy running the seminar is the hotel clerk.
David completely misses the point in that, but that's so typical of him.
Now, later in the same seminar, David turns the discussion into basically a Q&A about himself. And then he reveals he used to be in a band, and then he takes out his guitar, and he starts playing some songs. Awful. Awful, exactly. In fact, let me play some of the songs.
That's Ricky Gervais as David Brent in a scene from the British sitcom The Office, which is also now on DVD. Now, Ricky, I know you used to be in a band. Are any of these songs you used to do for real?
Good. I was really hoping you'd say that.
The other great thing about this scene is he does all these horrible things that make you so uncomfortable when a bad performer is singing in a small room. He looks people in the eyes in a dreamy way.
Yes, he bites his lip to show how sensitive he's being. Exactly. Now, as a musician yourself, is this something that you've done or that you've just... Stop me there.
But you've seen people be that way.
So in your one-word answers, like what did you say to the questions you were asked in the audition?
So when you're giving one of your pained looks or one of your this is absurd looks to the camera, who's the camera person? Is there an actor behind there that you can kind of like interact with or is it just like the camera with a camera person?
Now, how were your cast opposite John Krasinski? Did you have to do a scene together before you were both cast to make sure that there was chemistry between you? And for anyone who doesn't watch The Office, I should mention that he's one of the people who works in The Office. And you had a long period of flirtation. But, you know, when The Office starts, you're engaged to somebody else.
And even though things aren't working out between you two, you still feel like, you know, you're involved in this relationship and you can't get involved with the John Krasinski character of Jim. But eventually, you do get together. So there has to be this chemistry between you. So were you tested out together during the audition?
Do you have a favorite example of one of the times when Michael, the Steve Carell character, came up to your desk and did really bad schtick?
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Steve Carell, welcome to Fresh Air. How would you describe Michael?
You know, a lot of people who have worked in offices feel like they've worked with somebody like Michael Scott, but you've never worked in offices. It's just, you know, you're an actor. So who do you draw on for the character? Are there teachers that you had or other people who you knew who were as clueless? Primarily, yeah.
Mindy Kaling, Greg Daniels, welcome to Fresh Air. One of the things that happens on The Office is that since The Office is shot as if it were a documentary about this group of office workers, people are always talking to the camera, like looking away from the action and then talking to the camera in a confidential way, talking about what's really going through their mind.
And they're often giving these kind of pained glances to the camera as Michael makes a fool of himself in the office. And I'm wondering if like during auditions, Greg, you asked everybody to roll their eyes and give pained looks because that's so much of what they have to do. Everybody's always so embarrassed on Michael's behalf and looking so uncomfortable because of what he's doing.
She plays the receptionist, the character, Pam.
In the seasons that The Office has been on, are there ways that the characters have changed that you never would have expected? And are there ways that Michael has changed the main character that you didn't plan on? It just kind of evolved that way?
Yeah, and Jen, who you mentioned, is Michael's supervisor. And even when they do maybe, maybe not have an overnight relationship, because she's drunk and he's drunk and he doesn't, they probably just fell asleep, we think.
Right. Except he thinks that probably much more happened. And he's always acting as if they had this like long, passionate fling. Just like another example of him getting just like everything, everything wrong. It must be so much fun to write for a character like that.
On the latest bonus episode of Fresh Air, an interview with Yoko Ono from 1989. She says that she became famous for her marriage to John Lennon, but her own avant-garde art wasn't taken seriously then.
To listen, sign up for Fresh Air Plus at plus.npr.org slash freshair.
I have to say, Nikki, I never thought about that with the bank security question. There's so many security questions where it's mother's maiden name. It's really funny. I take it you would never change your name if you did get married. I mean, you can't in a way because your name, it's a famous name. I mean, you could, but why would you want to change your name because it's already a marquee name?
What are your thoughts about marriage? Do you want to get married at some point?
What about having children? You've talked as recently as your latest comedy special about not wanting to have children. Now that you're 40 and it would be more difficult to conceive, do you have second thoughts about that?
She made headlines in May at the roast of Tom Brady. Other people she's roasted include Rob Lowe, Alec Baldwin, and Bruce Willis. She's been a contestant on reality shows, including Dancing with the Stars, and hosted reality shows, including FBoy Island and the sequel, Lovers and Liars. Someday You'll Die is streaming on multiple platforms.
We're listening to the interview I recorded with comic Nikki Glaser in July. She's hosting the Golden Globe Sunday night and is nominated for one for her latest comedy special, Someday You'll Die, which is streaming on multiple platforms. We'll hear more of the interview after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to the interview I recorded in July with comic Nikki Glaser. We're featuring it as part of our end of the year series, collecting a few of our favorite interviews from 2024. She's hosting the Golden Globe Sunday and is nominated for one for her HBO Max comedy special Someday You'll Die, which is now streaming on multiple platforms.
A lot of her comedy is about the insecurities and absurdities surrounding sex. In Someday You'll Die, she also talks about why she doesn't want to have children, her thoughts on monogamy, her experiences with depression and suicidal thinking, getting older, she's 40, and how comics are often afraid of getting canceled. Note to parents, a lot of Glazer's comedy is about sex.
We don't get sexually explicit in our conversation, but it is an adult conversation. So a lot of comics complain about how you can't say anything anymore without risking being canceled, especially if you're performing on a college campus. And you kind of address that in your latest comedy special. And I mean, like you talk about how like you cannot make jokes about rape.
But if you were raped, then people will be relieved like, oh, I don't have to be upset that she's making a rape joke because she was raped. So she's allowed to talk about it. And I want to play an excerpt of that part of your performance. So here we go.
So, Nikki, when you did that whole bit about saying what you can't say unless you have that condition yourself or are close to somebody who does, were you afraid of risking insulting people with autism or women who were raped or any of the other things you talk about, including suicidal thinking?
Note to parents, this interview isn't explicit about sex, but we do have an adult conversation. Nikki Glaser, welcome to Fresh Air. You know, one of the things I really like about your comedy is it gets me to ask myself, where is the line between hilarious and tasteless or hilarious and maybe a little cruel? Do you wonder where the line is between tasteless and cruel?
Can you give us an example of an adjustment that you made? No.
When you are in a period of deep depression, are you capable of performing? And also, as somebody whom sure has listened to a lot of comedy over the years, does comedy ever help pull you out of despair?
Do you want me to be thinking about that when I listen to your comedy?
Well, I'm glad things have gotten better on that front. Thank you. Yeah. We're listening to the interview I recorded with comic Nikki Glaser in July. She's hosting the Golden Globe Sunday and is nominated for one for her latest comedy special, Someday You'll Die.
I just wanna mention here that if you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, there is help at the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can call or text 988 to speak to someone. That's 988, call or text, and you can speak to someone today. We'll hear more of my interview with Nikki Glaser after a break. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air.
Let's get back to the interview I recorded in July with comic Nikki Glaser. It's part of our end-of-the-year series featuring some of our favorite interviews of the year. I want to talk with you about roasts. You are very funny at roasts in a way that makes me laugh, but also makes me uncomfortable because it really cuts. I mean, I would never want to be roasted by you. No, I wouldn't either.
I bet you wouldn't want to be roasted by you either.
Well, yeah, first of all, some of your performances are like auto-roasting, like roasting yourself. But I think roasts end up being really funny, and roasts are sometimes a little cruel. But it's such a weird phenomenon that comics get together and choose a willing victim and just insult them with punchlines. It's so strange. Yeah.
Oh, OK. So I want to play an example. So this was during the roast of Tom Brady in May that was carried live on Netflix. And, you know, you talk about how he's the greatest quarterback of all time. And, you know, he announces retirement in 2022 and then returned for another season and then retired for real last year.
So here's an excerpt of what you said about Tom Brady with, of course, Tom Brady being in the room.
So Nikki Glaser, that is a stinging joke. And, you know, one of the things I notice at roast is this kind of these like forced smiles and like, I'm going to show I can laugh at this. And you can tell a person's just kind of like dying inside.
So how do you figure out if jokes like the one we just hear you tell about Tom Brady is too personal or too cutting, too cruel, not only to Tom Brady but to the girlfriend he left years ago?
I really think you succeed in that. Thank you. And I like the fact that it challenges me to think about where is the line. So that's part of what I enjoy about your comedy. Thank you.
Did he ever contact you personally or did you ever contact him personally?
Yeah. I'll tell you a couple of jokes that I did actually... Really wins at and kind of found offensive. So tell me what you think. Please. I think it was at the – I forget which roast it was at. But Sybil Shepard and Martha Stewart were there. And you made jokes about their older woman genitals. Yeah. And I thought, wow, that struck me as like really – So insulting to women.
Do you know that women have less value when they're older and their genitals are older?
Do you have to do research when you're preparing a roast so that you know enough about the person's life to know their vulnerabilities and their mistakes?
My guest is comic Nikki Glaser. She's hosting the Golden Globe Sunday and is nominated for one for her latest comedy special, Someday You'll Die. We'll talk more after a break. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to my interview with comic Nikki Glaser. Her latest comedy special, Someday You'll Die, is streaming on Max.
When we left off, we were talking about how she's known for her comedic insults at celebrity roasts, jokes that some people have interpreted as offensive. She gets it, and she mentioned she's been on the receiving end of jokes that really hurt her feelings. Would you want to tell a joke that really hurt your feelings? Is that too much to ask of you?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. We're continuing our end-of-the-year series featuring a few of the 2024 interviews we particularly enjoyed. Today, it's comic Nikki Glaser. She's hosting the Golden Globes on Sunday, and her latest comedy special called Someday You'll Die is nominated for a Globe.
Wow, that is a really heavy reaction to it. That was just like a joke.
Can I give you a different interpretation of the Sybil Shepard joke about you? Yes, please. That models look like models. And you turn around and you look like a real person. And looking like a real person, in my opinion, is a really good thing. Especially when you have fans and fans see you as being important and they look to you as kind of a role model. It's good to look like a real person.
How did sex and your own body become the focus of so much of your comedy?
I'm not saying models aren't real people, but they're like the visually perfected version of real people. And very few people can achieve that. And that's OK.
You might not have been a comic. Yeah.
But you are attractive.
Okay. It's not like you turned around and it's like, oh, no, it's the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Yeah. All right. Nikki Glaser, it's been great talking with you. Thank you so much.
You're incredible. I think you're so funny and so perceptive. So it's just been great talking with you. Thank you. It means the world to me that you feel that way. Thank you. My interview with Nikki Glaser was recorded in July. Her latest comedy special, Someday You'll Die, is streaming on multiple platforms. She's hosting the Golden Globe Sunday, and her special is nominated for one.
Well, that concludes our holiday end of the year series. Did the holidays mess up your sleep patterns, staying up late, changing time zones? Are the dark days of winter messing with you too?
Monday on Fresh Air, we'll talk with science journalist Lynn Peoples, author of a new book about what scientists are learning about our body's inner clock and how that knowledge can help us sleep and function better. I hope you can join us. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director is Audrey Bentham.
Our engineer this week is Adam Staniszewski, with additional engineering support from Joyce Lieberman and Julian Hertzfeld. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Baumann. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
Did you have friends who had sex before you did who could fill you in or were you uncomfortable just talking about it?
So you were afraid you would get made fun of because you were bad at sex. Did anybody actually make fun of you during or after a sexual encounter?
Wait a minute. Let's stop just right there for a second. There's a lot of male comics who, like you, talk about sex a lot. That strikes me, if you're self-conscious and worried that people are going to make fun of you, having relationships with comics seems to me like a very hazardous situation. Well, that's why I never got a relationship out of any of it.
She's also currently nominated for a Grammy for Best Comedy Album and a Critics' Choice TV Award for Best Comedy Special. When I spoke with her in July, I had to figure out how I was going to talk with her because a lot of her comedy is about sex in pretty explicit language that we cannot use in a broadcast. One of her comedy specials is called Good Clean Filth.
Well, when you started in comedy, when you were doing open mics, was it mostly male comics talking about sex? Because there was a period of so much of that.
How did you want to talk about sex on stage in a way that was different from the male comics that you heard coming up?
That's one of the things I find very interesting about you is on the one hand, you seem to really enjoy sex and are very sex positive. At the same time, you point out all of the absurdities and the embarrassments, the insecurities, the things you really don't like. And it's an interesting combination that I think so many people experience and you're saying it.
She says that she talks about her privates so much she thinks of them as her publics. That part of her comedy is about the pleasures, insecurities, embarrassments, and absurdities involved with sex.
You've been in a relationship for about 10 years and it's been a little on again, off again. I think it's very on again right now. But in periods when you are seeing other people, do men have weird expectations of you and what you will be like in bed because of your comedy? Oh, my God.
What does Taylor Swift have to do with it?
In Someday You'll Die, she also talks about why she doesn't want to have children, her thoughts on monogamy, her experiences with depression and suicidal thinking, getting older, she's 40, and how comics are often afraid of getting canceled. I think she's really funny.
If you were using the stage for revenge, especially if it was revenge against male comics who you had dated, did that affect your image within comedy circles?
So I want to play another clip, and this is from an earlier special of yours. And it's about maiden names. And I just think it's really funny. So let's hear this clip, and then we'll talk some more.
Watching her work, I'm fascinated by how she often walks the line between incredibly perceptive and potentially tasteless or offensive. Sometimes, as I laugh out loud, I start wondering, is it okay to laugh at this? That's especially true when she's featured at a celebrity roast, walking the line between hilarious and maybe a little too personal or a little too cruel.
And it's an interesting scene. You're in bed, and Hackman, who's, you know, your boyfriend, walks in the door, and you want to get to know him more. He's this very closed, unknowable guy, and you keep asking him these questions, and he gets more and more closed the more questions you ask. So it's a pretty interesting scene.
I just feel it. Why did Coppola ask you to sing Red Red Robin in your audition?
Is this Hackman's fantasy in the movie?
Hi, this is Molly C.V. Nusberg, digital producer at Fresh Air. And this is Terry Gross, host of the show. One of the things I do is write the weekly newsletter. And I'm a newsletter fan. I read it every Saturday after breakfast. The newsletter includes all the week's shows, staff recommendations, and Molly picks timely highlights from the archive. It's a fun read.
It's also the only place where we tell you what's coming up next week in exclusive. So subscribe at whyy.org slash fresh air and look for an email from Molly every Saturday morning.
So you work with Coppola not only on – not only on The Conversation, but on One From the Heart. And you suspect that it was during the filming of One From the Heart that when you had an accident that it kind of started your MS.
This is early in the film. Yeah. Yeah. So what were your early symptoms? When did you start to feel like this is something you needed to pay attention to and take seriously?
How do you think being a dancer and being very attuned to your body – And being taught to just kind of go on because you always have aches and pains as a dancer. How do you think that affected your ability to cope with the symptoms of MS?
On the other hand, I could see how being a dancer might have made you more bitter about having MS because your body was such a well-crafted tool.
Now, your recent roles have included Ghost World. You were the mother of one of the two girls in the movie. And you were the mother of Phoebe in Friends. That's right. And so two mother roles.
Can we talk about your parents a little bit? Please. Your mother, as you mentioned, was a rockette. You say she had wonderful legs. She did what hosiery adds to to show off her legs? Yeah, she called herself Legs Lind.
Was it for her sake or your sake?
What about your idea of show business, watching your parents? Did it seem like a good life or a bad life?
Was he like a joke teller at home?
Do you think that affected your relationships, that you didn't know much about your father?
Except me and my daughter, which is a good couple. You've played mothers in a couple of recent roles, like I said, including in Ghost World and the TV series Friends. Are there people you've been able to pattern those mothers on? Because it sounds like your mother was very different from the mothers that you've played. Yeah.
That's Terry Garr and Dustin Hoffman in a scene from Tootsie. Terry Garr, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you, Terry. Nice to be here. Now, you actually wrote some of your lines for this scene. You say in your book that the character was supposed to just get really angry and flip out when she finds out from Dustin Hoffman that he's in love with another woman. But that didn't ring true to you.
Why didn't it ring true and how did you change what the character said?
You started off as a dancer. And among your accomplishments, you danced in nine Elvis Presley movies. I'm not sure that's an accomplishment.
Okay, movies that you danced in include, correct me if I'm wrong here, Viva Las Vegas, all Elvis films. Viva Las Vegas, Roustabout, Kissin' Cousins, Speedway, Clambake.
It sounds like so much fun to dance in an Elvis film.
What's the silliest number you were in in one of the Elvis films?
So did you get to hang out with Elvis?
Well, something else you touched on, you were one of the dancers on Shindig.
Which was, you know, one of the rock and roll shows. The bands would be there, and there were dancers. You were in a cage, right?
Oh, you were on like a pedestal. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And what were the dances that you had to do? This was probably, what, 67? Yeah.
But my impression from the book is that you didn't particularly enjoy that.
One of the ways you made the transition from dancing to acting is you got an agent who got you a lot of TV commercials. Yes. And that was your portfolio in a way for, I guess, for casting agents?
Products you did TV commercials for include Crest Safeguard Soap, Greyhound Bus Lines, Came Soap, Bold Detergent, Sure Deodorant, General Foods Breakfast Squares. So many commercials, you have to look almost orgasmic as you taste the breakfast cereal or as you inhale the perfumed soap.
Did you have to have that really kind of fake, like, wow, it's amazing expression on your face for the commercials? No.
Well, let me ask you about another movie you were in, and that is Young Frankenstein, or Frankenstein. Frankenstein, yeah. Directed by Mel Brooks. How did you get to work with him?
Film festival what? What film festival?
Did you learn things about comic timing working with Mel Brooks on Young Frankenstein?
I see. And you were there because one of the films you're in was playing?
Here's a scene from Young Frankenstein. Dr. Frankenstein has just been fooling around with his seductive lab assistant, played by Terry Garr. In this scene, his assistant, Igor, played by Marty Feldman, has escorted the doctor's fiancée to the castle. The fiancée is played by Madeline Kahn.
Now, the first real movie role you got, like major movie role, was in The Conversation. Right. Directed by Coppola, starring Gene Hackman. Does it get better than that? It doesn't.
No, I know, but I mean... Dave? Yeah?
We're not being treated fairly by all judges. Oh, that's a subject. So you're saying that you don't like some of the rulings, some of the court orders. Well, I think the rulings will be overturned, yeah. Let me ask you about one man and one court order. Kilmer Abrego Garcia.
He's the Salvadoran man who crossed into this country illegally, but who is under a protective order that he not be sent back to El Salvador. Your government sent him back to El Salvador and acknowledged in court that was a mistake. And now the Supreme Court... Er hat einen Befehl vorgelegt, dass er zurückkehren muss, um seine Rückkehr in die Vereinigten Staaten zu ermöglichen.
Was machst du, um zu verabschieden? Der Jurist, der sagte, dass es ein Fehler war, war hier schon lange. Er wurde nicht von uns angemeldet. Er sollte das nicht gesagt haben. Er sollte das nicht gesagt haben. Er sollte das nicht gesagt haben.
The person that you're talking about, you know, you're making this person sound, this is a MS-13 gang member, a tough cookie, been in lots of skirmishes, beat the hell out of his wife, and the wife was petrified to even talk about him, okay? This is not an innocent, wonderful gentleman from Maryland. I'm not saying he's a good guy. It's about the rule of law.
The order from the Supreme Court stands, sir. He came into our country illegally. You could get him back. Spring Court.
... including terrorists, by the way. Now, can we give them a hearing when they came in? Well, the law requires that every single person who is going to be deported gets a hearing first. Do you acknowledge that? I'll have to ask the lawyers about that. All I can say is this.
If you're going to have 21 million people and we have to get a lot of them out because they're criminals, we're going to have to act fast. Do you think we can give 21 million trials? Let's say each trial takes two weeks. Is that what you want us to do?
The law doesn't say anything about trials. No, not trials, hearings. These people came in, they're not citizens. They came in illegally. They came into our country illegally. We have to get them out. There's a legal process for that. I can't, sure, and we follow the legal process. I can't have a trial, a major trial for every person that came in illegally.
Wait a minute, wait a minute. He had MS-13 on his knuckles tattoo. He had some tattoos that are interpreted that way, but let's move on. Wait a minute. Hey, Terry, Terry, Terry. He did not have the letter MS-13. It says MS-13. That was Photoshopped. That was Photoshopped, Terry. You can't do that. Hey, they're giving you the big break of a lifetime. You know, you're doing the interview.
I picked you because, frankly, I never heard of you, but that's okay. I picked you, Terry. But you're not being very nice. He had MS-13 tattoos. We'll agree to disagree. I want to move on to something else. Do you want me to show you the picture? I saw the picture. And you think it was Photoshopped? Here we go. Don't Photoshop it. Don't look at his hand.
He did have tattoos that can be interpreted that way. I'm not an expert on them. I want to turn to Ukraine.
Er hat MS, so klar wie du kannst, nicht interpretiert. Das ist, weshalb die Leute nicht mehr die Nachrichten glauben, weil es Fake News ist. In El Salvador sind sie nicht da. Aber lass uns einfach sagen, sie sind nicht da, wenn er in El Salvador ist. Oh, sie waren da, aber sie sind da jetzt, oder? Nein, aber sie sind da. Terry, er hat MS-13 auf seinen Knöcheln.
Terry, this meeting between the El Salvadorian president and President Donald Trump, does that indicate that the flights will continue, that the deportation, that you guys aren't going to allow the courts to stop you?
Secretary Christie, no. Thank you so much for joining the program.
Appreciate it.
You know, with hope and with optimism, it's sometimes hard to tell when hope and optimism are really more like denial and not helpful. And it seems to me that's one of the things you were grappling with.
She is no stranger to writing about death and the importance of memory, whether it's the memory of an individual child or genocide. Let's start with a video that Wildman posted on Instagram when Orly was 12 in sixth grade, and Sarah interviewed her about what she was experiencing. It was 16 months after the initial diagnosis.
If you're just joining us, my guest is Sarah Wildman. She's a writer and editor in the opinion section of the New York Times, where she wrote a series of articles about being the mother of her daughter Orly, who had terminal cancer. We'll talk more after this short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
Thank you. and the differences between how hospitals, hospice, and Judaism deal with the illness and death of a child compared to an adult. She described the expert medical care Orly received and the reluctance of some doctors and nurses to speak openly and realistically about what Orly was facing.
She was in the middle of a second round of chemo and, as a result, was bald.
She also wrote about the impact of Orly's ordeal and death on her younger daughter, Hana, who was nine when Orly died.
When it was time for tough conversations about turning points in Orly's health care, including it's time for hospice because there's probably no cure, are those things you wanted to tell Orly yourself, or did you want the professionals, the doctors, the nurses, the hospice care people to tell her? Which did you think would be easier for her to digest?
When you were wondering how much to try to talk with your daughter about the inevitability of death, Did you try to feel her out and see what is she ready to hear and what is she not ready to hear? Did you wait for her to bring it up instead of you bringing it up? We often let her bring it up.
Well, let me reintroduce you here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Sarah Wildman. She's a writer and editor in the opinion section of the New York Times, where she wrote a series of articles about being the mother of an adolescent with terminal cancer and what it was like at the end, three and a half years after the diagnosis. Her daughter, Orly, died in 2023 at the age of 14.
We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air.
I've read so much about how family members grow closer when they know a member of the family is dying. You make every minute count. You love each other more. But unless it's a sudden death or a few weeks before death, there's still plenty of time to get on each other's nerves and to argue. And you wrote that you still fought with Orly sometimes. What would you fight about?
And I wonder how it would make you feel when you did fight about something.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Parents want to protect their children, but how can you possibly protect your adolescent child from a terminal illness and inevitable death? My guest, Sarah Wildman, realized the inevitability after her older daughter, Orly, was enrolled in hospice. That was after three years of treatment for a rare form of liver cancer that had metastasized.
I did. Yes, I did.
So, you know, Orly had her reasons to be angry at God. You had to, like, redefine for her and for you the meaning of God. What about your younger daughter, Hana, who was only nine when Orly died, and that was like three and a half years after her diagnosis? What did Hana make of this, and how did she interpret God, or was she angry at God?
You write about grieving and how the Jewish tradition is different when grieving for a parent than when grieving for a child. What is the difference?
Let's take a short break here, and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is Sarah Wildman. She's a writer and editor at the Opinion section of the New York Times, where she wrote a series of articles about being the mother of an adolescent with terminal cancer and what it was like at the end, three and a half years after the diagnosis. We'll be right back.
This is Fresh Air.
You continued to do your job at the New York Times writing and editing for the opinion section. Did you feel this sense of guilt and inadequacy in both places at home, feeling like you're not doing a job at work and at work, feeling like you're not home with Orly in the hours that she's not in school and in the days when she couldn't go to school?
How did you handle that combination of having, you know, a stressful job and a stressful life at home that were both really time consuming?
At the New York Times now, as an opinion editor, are you focusing on editing people who have endured trauma or who are currently suffering or who are in the middle of a war? I mean, for example, you worked with Rachel Goldberg, the mother of Hirsch Pollen Goldberg, who was abducted by Hamas on October 7th, and in the attack, one of his arms was blown off.
He was used by Hamas in a hostage video, and he died in captivity. Was Orly why you wanted to work with Rachel? Did you initiate that?
I have one last question for you, and that is, where are you now in the process of mourning your daughter who died in March of 2023?
Sarah Wildman, I'm really grateful that you spoke to us. Thank you for sharing everything that you did.
Sarah Wildman is a staff writer and editor for the New York Times Opinion section, where you can find her personal essays. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, our guest will be Grammy-winning pop star and actress Ariana Grande. She's nominated for an Oscar for her role as Galinda in Wicked. She started acting on Broadway and TV when she was in her teens. I hope you'll join us.
To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews... Follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Meeble Donato, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
So that was Sarah Wildman interviewing her late daughter, Orly, when Orly was 12 and in sixth grade, going through her second round of chemo. Sarah Wildman, welcome to Fresh Air. You write so beautifully about your daughter and your family. Thank you for coming to our show. Why did you want to do that interview with your daughter?
Were you able to ask her questions because this was an interview that you wouldn't otherwise have asked her? Because it's a more formal situation that kind of begs for a serious conversation that reveals things. So I'm wondering if the interview format gave you a kind of safe space to ask things that would be uncomfortable to just bring up at dinner.
Early was 14 when she died in 2023. She endured several rounds of chemo, a liver transplant, two brain surgeries, and a tumor that pinched her spine, leaving her unable to walk. Wildman is a staff writer and editor for the Opinion section of the New York Times, where she wrote several pieces during Early's illness and after her death.
reflecting on what it was like to be a parent of a child facing mortality and the differences between how hospitals, hospice, and Judaism deal with illness and death of a child compared to an adult. She described the expert medical care Orly received and the reluctance of some doctors and nurses to speak openly and realistically about what Orly was facing.
Yeah, you describe in one of your pieces how sometimes when friends or neighbors would see you, they would just kind of break down into tears. How did that make you feel when friends saw you and just started to cry?
You write about how doctors and nurses tend to treat children who have terminal illness or who are at the end stage differently than they would treat an adult. What are some of the differences you observed?
You know how you were saying that terminal is the kind of thing you have to hear over and over before you're capable of absorbing it because it's so catastrophic? I mean, you write that conversations about death were discouraged in and out of the doctor's office.
She also wrote about the impact on her younger daughter, Hana, who was nine when Orly passed away. Several years before Orly's diagnosis, Wildman wrote the book Paper Love about her grandfather, who fled Austria after the Nazi invasion, and his girlfriend, who he left behind. No one in the family knew what happened to her, but the book describes how Wildman spent years tracking down the story.
Maybe that's why, because they have to give you a small dose at a time before you're ready to hear and comprehend the full reality of it.
Hi, it's Terry Gross, host of Fresh Air. I just talked to comic Bill Burr. He's known for his anger-fueled humor, which he connects to his upbringing. Let's talk a little bit about your childhood.
Thank you.
Hi, it's Terry Gross, host of Fresh Air. I just talked to comic Bill Burr. He's known for his anger-fueled humor, which he connects to his upbringing. Let's talk a little bit about your childhood.
He was hilarious and introspective in the interview, and it was a wild ride. You can hear a special extended version of this interview on the Fresh Air podcast from NPR and WHYY.
Yeah, it's a busy week in transatlantic relations. And just to start off, Leila, I have to note that as his officials were on the way to Europe, President Trump went ahead with announcing 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. So Europeans may have been smiling through gritted teeth as they welcomed their American counterparts here. But in sum, the travel plans look like this.
Vice President J.D. Vance spoke yesterday at an international summit on artificial intelligence in Paris. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is here at NATO today to join a meeting of some 50 countries that support Ukraine. after he met U.S. troops in Germany yesterday.
And Friday, Vance will be joined by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and members of Congress for the biggest annual foreign policy gathering in Europe, the Munich Security Conference.
Well, it ranges obviously based on the venue and the audience. In Paris, with leaders from Europe and Asia in attendance, Vice President Vance asserted Washington will be dominant in crucial ways, including production of the all-important microchips. He warned Europe it should drop its focus on regulation.
which has meant investigations into American companies, including Elon Musk's X platform, and has meant fines on some of them, such as Google, which Trump has blasted publicly as unfair. While he was in Germany, Hegseth gave a preview of what he'll say at NATO.
Well, first off, I'm sure they're relieved he describes this as friends talking to friends. And I'm not even joking. Europeans are so on edge here wondering if Trump's well-known animosity toward NATO in his first term will carry over. Added to that now, remember, are these Trump threats against two NATO allies.
that he may seize Greenland, which is a territory of Denmark, and that he wants Canada to become the 51st state. Diplomats tell me those issues are not expected to be raised here, in part because they're so inflammatory and no one wants to torpedo this first meeting. So back to Hegseth's remark on burden sharing, this is exactly what Europeans are expecting to hear.
They'll explain that they are increasing their investment, 23 of 32 countries now spend 2% of their GDP on defense. That's NATO's old target. They're expecting Hegseth to repeat Trump's new demand that this be raised to 5%. And what about concerns that the U.S. will pull out military support from Europe? That's particularly important for those countries along the front line of the war in Ukraine.
But Hegseth was also fairly reassuring about that yesterday. Let's have a listen.
Now, that doesn't mean there won't be decisions to move some U.S. troops, but he seems to be trying to tamp down fears of anything abrupt. If these are the kind of things he repeats at NATO over the next two days, allies will be relieved. And the fact that he's attending this Ukraine defense contact group meeting today is also reassuring.
They'd be happy to see Hegseth lead the group, which was set up by his predecessor, Lloyd Austin, but they weren't sure if he'd even come. So I think they'll be considering this a good start.
You're welcome.
Hi, it's Terry Gross, host of Fresh Air. I just talked to comic Bill Burr. He's known for his anger-fueled humor, which he connects to his upbringing. Let's talk a little bit about your childhood.
I would love to have someone who took care of my car or someone who cleaned up the dishes after dinner, but then I'd want them to leave.
He was hilarious and introspective in the interview, and it was a wild ride. You can hear a special extended version of this interview on the Fresh Air podcast from NPR and WHYY.
Hi, it's Terry Gross, host of Fresh Air. I just talked to comic Bill Burr. He's known for his anger-fueled humor, which he connects to his upbringing. Let's talk a little bit about your childhood.
He was hilarious and introspective in the interview, and it was a wild ride. You can hear a special extended version of this interview on the Fresh Air podcast from NPR and WHYY.
Hi, it's Terry Gross, host of Fresh Air. I just talked to comic Bill Burr. He's known for his anger-fueled humor, which he connects to his upbringing. Let's talk a little bit about your childhood.
He was hilarious and introspective in the interview, and it was a wild ride. You can hear a special extended version of this interview on the Fresh Air podcast from NPR and WHYY.
Hi, it's Terry Gross, host of Fresh Air. I just talked to comic Bill Burr. He's known for his anger-fueled humor, which he connects to his upbringing. Let's talk a little bit about your childhood.
He was hilarious and introspective in the interview, and it was a wild ride. You can hear a special extended version of this interview on the Fresh Air podcast from NPR and WHYY.
That's a good question. Do I know how to have fun? Did you then?
You know, I'm probably so much better at working than I am at relaxing.
I go to the movies, go to concerts, listen to you.
Thank you. I listen to you a lot. I think you're wonderful. I listen to your podcast. I watch your show. I have your comedy album. No, I think you're wonderful. I'm so glad for this opportunity to talk with you.
And can I get a chance to ask you a question?
That was the question I was going to ask you.
Okay. Yes.