Radio Programs

On the next Fresh Air – for Thanksgiving a performance by and conversations with songwriter and singer Robbie Fulks and singer and pianist Linda Gail Lewis, Jerry Lee Lewis’s younger sister.

A tide of plastic waste is contaminating the oceans. And in Southeast Asia, as companies dump new products and packaging on their shores, they're desperate to stop the flow.

After the NRA tweeted “self-important anti-gun doctors should stay in their lane”, trauma surgeon Joseph Sakran started the twitter handle This is our Lane, which has mobilized doctors around the issue of gun safety.

For trauma surgeon Joseph Sakran, gun violence is a very personal issue. He has treated hundreds of gun wound victims, comforted anxious loved ones and told mothers and fathers that their children would not be coming home.

The men and women from eight African countries packed into a rubber raft late last month and set off from the Libyan city of Sabratha in the hope of crossing the Mediterranean to reach Italy.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. Aaron Lee Tasjan is a singer-songwriter currently residing in Nashville, but he's not a country artist.

Former President Barack Obama released a video earlier this week urging people to hurry up and shop for health insurance on the Affordable Care Act exchange.

"This year I'm giving it to you straight," Obama says in the video.

DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross, who's off this week. Our guest today, actor Damian Lewis, has become something of a staple of hit American cable TV series.

On the next Fresh Air -- Actor Rami Malek. He plays Freddie Mercury, lead singer of Queen, in the new film Bohemian Rhapsody.

Actor Richard E. Grant stars opposite Melissa McCarthy in “Can You Ever Forgive Me.

On the next Fresh Air – Terry talks with actor Steven Yuen of The Walking Dead and Sorry to Bother You.

Ben Stiller is directing the Showtime series Escape at Dannemora, based on the true story of two prisoners in a New York maximum security prison, who escaped with the help of a woman who worked there.

Melissa McCarthy stars in the film, Can You Ever Forgive Me? based on the true story of a writer who becomes a literary forger.

On the next Fresh Air, we talk about Russian disinformation with Adam Ellick of the New York Times whose video series examines the Russian playbook for spreading conspiracy theories, exploiting tensions and sewing chaos – dating back to the 1980s when they started a conspiracy theory about AIDS.

On the next Fresh Air- Adam McKay talks about his new film Vice, about Dick Cheney – perhaps the most powerful Vice President in American history.

NPR's Steve Inskeep speaks with Sanaa Abrar for her reaction to President Trump's remarks on border security. Abrar represents United We Dream, an immigrant advocacy organization.

The former secretary of state was having trouble changing the flat, and that's when Anthony Maggert saw him and stopped. Maggert has a prosthetic leg, which did not keep him from helping.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

It has been more than five years since we've said these words. Tiger Woods has won. Yesterday in Atlanta, that's exactly what happened.

This summer, musician Katie Sucha will be touring England. And she's scared.

"It really is a serious mental challenge to walk through those doors and get on the plane," she explains. Sucha's fear of flying is so bad that when she was a teacher in Mississippi and wanted to visit her family in Michigan, she'd take a 14-hour bus ride rather than spend two hours in the air.

With new enforcement priorities under the Trump administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are taking aim at employers that knowingly hire unauthorized immigrants. The most recent — and largest — bust happened at a trailer manufacturing plant in northeast Texas.

Temple Rodef Shalom in Falls Church, Va., is one of many Jewish congregations across the country that have been helping to resettle refugees in America.

Three years ago, its members agreed to sponsor a Muslim refugee — a single mother named Tilko who fled Iraq with her children and who was originally brought to this country by a Christian charity.

In February, Pope Francis acknowledged a longstanding dirty secret in the Roman Catholic Church — the sexual abuse of nuns by priests.

It's an issue that had long been kept under wraps, but in the #MeToo era, a #NunsToo movement has emerged, and now sexual abuse is more widely discussed.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. My guest Mary Pipher has written a new book about women in their 60s and early 70s who, like her, are transitioning from middle age to old age.