Radio Programs

The Farewellopens with five cheeky words: "based on an actual lie." This funny, melancholy ensemble drama was inspired by an experience that the writer-director Lulu Wang and her family went through years ago, when they were told that Wang's grandmother was terminally ill.

On June 30, the Showtime network launches a new TV miniseries called The Loudest Voice. Based on the Gabriel Sherman bookThe Loudest Voice in the Room, it's a seven-part drama about the television triumphs and controversies of Roger Ailes, who created and ran the Fox News Channel.

On the next Fresh Air – Terry talks with Loudon Wainwright the third.

Editor's note: This review includes racial epithets that appear in the book.

In her foreword to America Is in the Heart — Carlos Bulosan's classic 1946 novel about Filipinx and Mexican migrant workers on the West Coast — the Filipina American novelist Elaine Castillo asks readers, "Do you remember how old you were when you first read a book that had a character who looked and lived like you in it?"

As a white reader, my answer to Castillo's question is most assuredly different than that of readers of color — I can't share the thrill of discovering people who look like me in the pages of Bulosan's gorgeous and brutal autobiographical novel, nor in the other three mid-century Asian American novels that Penguin Classics has just reprinted.

On the next Fresh Air Lucas Hedges who stars in Ben is Back, and is in two other new films:   Boy Erased and Mid 90’s.

There has been a large turnout for hundreds of town hall debates across France, called by President Emmanuel Macron in an effort to diffuse social tensions amid the yellow vest protests.

Maggie Gyllenhaal talks about starring in the HBO series The Deuce, in which she plays a sex worker who becomes an actress in, and then a director of, porn films.

When the creators of the HBO series The Deuce first approached Maggie Gyllenhaal about starring in the show as a sex worker, she didn't immediately say yes.

Set in New York City in the 1970s, The Deuce centers on the intersection of sex work, pornography, organized crime, the police, politicians and feminists.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. The next stage of the Mueller investigation could be shaped by the plea deal that Paul Manafort reached last Friday with federal prosecutors.

On the next Fresh Air – Terry talks about President Trump’s Secretary of State and former CIA director Mike Pompeo with Mattathias Schwartz a contributing writer at the New York Times magazine.

Many of the best of this year's books were graced with humor and distinguished by deep dives into American identity. It was also a very good year for deceased authors whose posthumously published books were so much more than mere postscripts to their careers.

"Lost Hollywood." The phrase conjures up starlets in silver lamé and lunchtime gimlets at The Brown Derby; it does not bring to mind slimy swamp creatures or screwball surrealists starring in movies featuring walking melons.

Growing up, Tara Westover had no birth certificate, never saw a doctor and didn't go to school. She writes about her transition into the mainstream in Educated. Originally broadcast Feb. 20, 2018.

When Linda Kay Klein was 13, she joined an evangelical church that prized sexual "purity" and taught that men and boys were sexually weak.

According to Klein's faith, girls and women were responsible for keeping male sexual desire in check by wearing modest clothing, maintaining a sexless mind and body and taking a "purity pledge," in which they promised to remain virgins until marriage.

The pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co., Inc. is ending a six-year agreement to supply a lifesaving vaccine for children in West Africa.

At the same time, the company has started sending the vaccine to China, where it will likely be sold for a much higher price.