Radio Programs

Count Laura Lippmanamong those who take issue with President Trump's recent tweetscharacterizing Baltimore as a "disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess." The crime novelist, who lives in Baltimore, says the president's comments represent a "basic disrespect" for city residents.

Partisan combat has always been a part of American politics, but Atlantic journalist McKay Coppins traces many of the extreme tactics used today to one man: former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

The Great Internet Novel. Like the great white whale, it's rumored to be out there somewhere beyond the horizon. So far, the novelists who've been hailed as coming closest to writing it have done so in dystopian doorstoppers even longer than Herman Melville's Moby Dick; I'm thinking of The Circle,by Dave Eggers, and Book of Numbers, by Joshua Cohen, both of which tell sweeping cautionary tales about the wired life within Facebook-type cult compounds.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. When a young staffer for the Democratic National Committee was murdered in Washington, D.C., in 2016, it appeared to be a street robbery gone wrong.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. Buying a new car is becoming more and more confusing. There's not just lots of brands.

Christina Applegate describes grief as "completely messy and unexpected and unapologetic." At least that's the way it's portrayed in her new Netflix series, Dead To Me.

The show, which has been described as a "traumedy" (a trauma-infused comedy/drama), centers on two women who meet in a grief support group.

Love it, hate it, or just hate the traffic, everyone has an opinion about Los Angeles. A new literary olio gathers hundreds of those opinions together, in a book called Dear Los Angeles: The City in Diaries and Letters, 1542 to 2018.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. There's no cure for dementia, and there's unlikely to be one in the foreseeable future, which is why my guest, Dr.

Iran would commit to permanent nuclear inspections in exchange for a permanent lifting of U.S. sanctions, Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told NPR's Steve Inskeep on Thursday.

"We can do it right now in order to make sure that people can be at ease that Iran will never develop nuclear weapons .

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Climate change is affecting the weather. And droughts, floods, storms and unseasonal temperatures are affecting the global food supply. Tech startups, as well as mega companies, are developing new, high-tech ways of growing vegetables and fruits, farming fish and growing meat without harming animals.

Cult filmmaker and self-described "filth elder" John Waters, 73, has plenty of ideas about what older people should and shouldn't do.

The worst thing, he says, is to get a convertible: "Because believe me, old age and windswept do not go hand in hand.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge writes female characters who are flawed, reckless and unpredictable. "As an audience, all we ever want really is to be surprised by things," she says. The actor and writer just finished an off-Broadway run of her one-woman show Fleabag,just as the second season of the TV show is dropping on Amazon.

When Lena Dunham's Girls appeared seven years ago, it cleared the path for a parade of smart, provocative television shows about smart, provocative young heroines.

The best of the bunch may well be Fleabag, the hilarious, raunchy and unexpectedly touching Amazon series by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the British writer and actress who created the terrific TV adaptation of Killing Eve and was recently asked to punch up the script of the new James Bond movie.

As the HBO series Veep concludes its seventh and final season, we listen back to archival interviews with showrunner David Mandel and shows stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tony Hale.

We listen to archival interviews with Michael Collins, of Apollo 11; Alan Shepard, the first American in space; Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield; and Chuck Yeager, who first broke the sound barrier.

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, editor of the website TV Worth Watching, sitting in for Terry Gross.

We celebrate the life of the legendary obit writer, who died Feb. 22, by listening back to a 1987 interview. Also, Philadelphia Inquirer editor David Gambacorta reflects on Nicholson's work.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. We're going to listen back to the interview I was lucky enough to record with Doris Day, who stayed out of the public eye for decades after giving up her movie career.

Horwitz, who died Tuesday, spoke to Fresh Air in '98 about Confederates in the Attic, his book about the legacy of the Civil War. Plus, Maureen Corrigan reviews his latest book, Spying on the South.

The Nobel laureate died Monday at 88. Terry Gross talked with Morrison in 1987 after she wrote Beloved, in 1992 after she authored Jazz and in 2015 when she published God Help the Child.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. As everyone has surely heard by now, on Sunday night, HBO will begin airing the final season of "Game Of Thrones" - a show with a huge and fanatical international fan base.

Last fall, a slim and eerie novel came out in Britain that tells a story about the lingering force of walls. That novel, which has just been published here, is called Ghost Wall,and its author, Sarah Moss, possesses the rare light touch when it comes to melding the uncanny with social commentary.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. The movie "Green Book" won three Oscars last night, including best picture.

President Trump is showing no signs of dialing back what Democrats are calling a "blatantly racist attack" on four members of Congress, who are all women of color. Trump is accusing the "squad" of "radical Democrats" of hating America and has said they should "go back" to where they came from.

Charlottesville city government was upended after a woman was killed and others injured in a car attack by a white supremacist in 2017. White nationalists had targeted Charlottesville for a "Unite The Right Rally" after the town decided to take down a Confederate statue, part of it's reckoning with a fraught racial history.

When author and illustrator Jarrett J. Krosoczka was in the fourth grade, his grandparents called him into the living room. "I remember thinking: Oh maybe we're going to go on another family vacation," he says.

Growing up as a third-generation Jehovah's Witness, there were certain things Amber Scorah did not question.

When, as a teenager, the community shunned her and prevented her from participating in her father's funeral, she accepted it as appropriate punishment for having sex with her boyfriend.

John Nordeen and Kay Lee served in the same Army platoon during the Vietnam War.

Nordeen and Lee had very different personalities, but in the life-or-death setting of war, the two bonded.

"I knew that I wanted to act since I was old enough to reason," says Henry Winkler. "I never had a Plan B. I never deviated. I never thought that there was anything else that I could possibly do in this world except to try and be a working actor.

Jacinda says she has "no idea" what her family of four will do if the government shutdown continues through January. Her husband's last paycheck was Dec. 28 and, like many federal workers, he's unlikely to get his next one at the end of this week.

In California's Yosemite National Park, the summit of the iconic El Capitan rock formation looms 3,000 feet above its base.

Six years after 26 children and educators were killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut by a troubled 20 year old, a group of parents is stepping up its efforts to make sure it doesn't happen again.

DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. For half a century, Jane Fonda's been a cultural lightning rod - an actress as well known for her personal and political life as she is for her acting.