Fresh Air

Fresh Air

Fresh Air from WHYY, the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues, is one of public radio's most popular programs. Hosted by Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, the show features intimate conversations with today's biggest luminaries. Subscribe to Fresh Air Plus! You'll enjoy bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening - all while you support NPR's mission. Learn more at plus.npr.org/freshair And subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Fresh Air Weekly, to get interview highlights, staff recommendations, gems from the archive, and the week's interviews and reviews all in one place. Sign up at www.whyy.org/freshair

Episodes

The Making Of ‘Young Frankenstein’

October 31, 2025 • 47 mins

Mel Brooks’s classic 1974 movie Young Frankenstein parodies the iconic Frankenstein movies of the 1930s. This Halloween, we’re featuring our interviews with director Mel Brooks and stars Gene Wilder, Peter Boyle, Teri Garr and Cloris Leachman.

And film critic Justin Chang reviews the new film Bugonia.


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The ‘Shadow President’ Dismantling The Government

October 30, 2025 • 43 mins

In a New Yorker article co-published with ProPublica, reporter Andy Kroll describes Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, as a "shadow president" with oversized influence. “I don't think you can take in the full sweep of what this administration has done in less than a year and not come away with thinking that chaos is a goal, and certainly an outcome that serves Vought and his team’s larger ...

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Filmmaker Nia DaCosta Defies Categorization

October 29, 2025 • 44 mins
DaCosta directed the box office hit horror movie Candyman and The Marvels. Her latest, Hedda, is an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's 1891 play, Hedda Gabler. She reimagines the main character as a queer, mixed-race Black woman, played by Tessa Thompson. DaCosta spoke with Tonya Mosley about navigating white spaces in Hollywood, why she loves horror, and her time as a production assistant. 


Also, jazz critic Martin Johnson ...
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Judd Apatow Unpacks His Comedy Memorabilia

October 28, 2025 • 44 mins
Long before Judd Apatow was directing box office hits or launching the careers of comedy superstars, he was a fan. As a kid he wrote letters to his heroes, collected autographs, and obsessively documented everything. He’s now opened up his personal archive: decades of photographs, letters, scripts, and journals for a new book that reveals how his childhood inspirations led to the creation of works like '40-Year-Old Virgin,' 'Knocke...
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For Cameron Crowe, Being 'Uncool' Is A Badge Of Honor

October 27, 2025 • 46 mins
The filmmaker's new memoir, 'The Uncool,' is about his teen years in the '70s as a rock journalist for 'Rolling Stone.' His unconventional story was dramatized in the 2000 movie 'Almost Famous.' Crowe spoke with Terry Gross about getting access to rockstars before he could drink, being mentored by Lester Bangs, and his interviews with David Bowie. 
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Also, David Bianculli reviews the new season of 'The Diplomat.' 

Le...
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Best Of: Malala Yousafzai / Ken Burns On The Revolutionary War

October 25, 2025 • 47 mins
We know Malala as the youngest Nobel Prize laureate, the girl who survived a Taliban bullet at 15 for advocating for girls' education in Pakistan. Now in a new book, she's reintroducing herself to the world. It's called Finding My Way, and in it she writes about the messy, funny, and flawed experiences that come with age, while carrying both the honor and the weight of being an activist for women’s rights...
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Remembering NPR 'Founding Mother' Susan Stamberg

October 24, 2025 • 46 mins
As longtime co-host of All Things Considered, Stamberg was the first woman to anchor a national news program in the U.S. People weren't used to hearing women's voices on the radio. "We were imitating men, so I was lowering my voice to sound as authoritative as I could," she said. Stamberg died Oct. 16. She spoke with Terry Gross in 1982, 1993, and 2021.

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Guillermo Del Toro Finally Makes His Own 'Frankenstein'

October 23, 2025 • 45 mins
When Oscar-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro was a kid growing up in Guadalajara, Mexico, he would draw monsters all day. His deeply Catholic grandmother even had him exorcised because of it. But when del Toro saw the 1931 film Frankenstein, his life changed. "I realized I understood my faith or my dogmas better through Frankenstein than through Sunday mass." His new adaptation of Mary Shelley's classi...
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Confused By The U.S. Economy? You're Not Alone

October 22, 2025 • 46 mins
How are changing tariffs, the AI boom, immigration policies and uncertainty in employment and the stock market impacting the economy? Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of The Economist, explains.

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Malala Yousafzai On Breaking Rules & Finding Her Way

October 21, 2025 • 44 mins
After surviving the Taliban's 2012 attempted assassination, activist Malala Yousafzai didn't back down. She continued to advocate for girls' education across the globe. In 2014, Yousafzai became the youngest person to win a Nobel Prize, an honor that weighed on her when she went off to college. In Finding My Way, she writes about her life at Oxford and beyond. She spoke with Tonya Mosley about reliving childhood, PTSD, and her deci...
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Ken Burns On The American Revolution

October 20, 2025 • 45 mins
Burns' new six-part PBS documentary series includes the perspectives of women, Native Americans and enslaved and free Black people — all of whom were initially excluded from the declaration "all men are created equal." The series begins Nov. 16. 

Also, Lloyd Schwartz reviews a recording of Handel arias from soprano Julia Lezhneva.


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Best Of: Julian Brave NoiseCat / Laufey

October 18, 2025 • 47 mins
Julian Brave NoiseCat's Oscar-nominated documentary Sugarcane is about the mostly Catholic missionary boarding schools which Indigenous children, including older members of his family, were required to go to get "assimilated." Many were physically and sexually abused. While making the film and writing his new memoir, NoiseCat learned why minutes after his father was born, he was abandoned in a boarding school trash incinerator room...
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A Girl Grows Up In The Epicenter Of Gay Liberation

October 17, 2025 • 44 mins
The new movie Fairyland, produced by Sofia Coppola, is adapted from the memoir by Alysia Abbott. She wrote about being the child of a gay single father at the dawn of the gay liberation movement. He raised her in 1970’s San Francisco, after her mother died. He later died from complications from AIDS. Abbott spoke with Terry Gross in 2013. 

John Powers reviews the new film Blue Moon, directed by R...
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A Story Of Indigenous Survival & Resurgence

October 16, 2025 • 43 mins
Filmmaker and writer Julian Brave NoiseCat is the son of an Indigenous Canadian father and white mother. After a cultural genocide, he says, living your life becomes an existential question. "To live a life in an Indigenous way is a kind of profound thing, and it has been really beautiful to get to make art and tell stories from that position." NoiseCat spoke with Terry Gross about his father's origin story, dancing ...
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How Trump’s Transactional Nature Led To The Ceasefire

October 15, 2025 • 45 mins
Former State Department negotiator Aaron David Miller, now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, attributes the Gaza deal in part to Trump's transactional nature and breaking of traditional diplomatic crockery. Miller spoke with Dave Davies about the prospects for lasting peace and recovery in the territory. 

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Remembering Diane Keaton

October 14, 2025 • 45 mins
The incomparable Diane Keaton died last week at age 79. Her career spanned more than five decades and 60 film and TV roles, including standout performances in Marvin's Room, Reds, The First Wives Club and Something’s Gotta Give. But it was her starring role in the Woody Allen classic Annie Hall that made Keaton an American film icon. The Oscar-winning actor spoke with Terry Gross in 1997 about finding the character's...
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Mitch Albom Is A 'Walking Example Of A Second Chance'

October 13, 2025 • 43 mins
Albom's new novel, Twice, asks a question most of us have daydreamed about: what if you could go back and relive any moment of your life? In the book, a man is born with that exact power, but every second chance comes with a cost. Albom talks with Tonya Mosley about his new book, and the lasting influence of Morrie Schwartz, his old college professor who died in 1995 of ALS. Nearly 30 years ago, Albom chronicled their weekly visits...
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Best Of: Dwayne Johnson / Comic Cristela Alonzo

October 11, 2025 • 48 mins
WWE superstar Dwayne Johnson plays MMA fighter Mark Kerr in Benny Safdie's The Smashing Machine. "The Rock" spoke with Terry Gross about the role, his many injuries, and his wrestling personas.

For the first seven years of her life, Cristela Alonzo lived in an abandoned diner in a south Texas border town. She spoke with Terry Gross about the culture shock of having money after growing up so poor ...
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Jane Goodall

October 10, 2025 • 45 mins
Today we’re remembering renowned primatologist Jane Goodall, known for her work researching the behavior of chimpanzees and protecting their habitats. She died last week at the age of 91. "Every time somebody discovers an animal doing something that we used to think was unique to us, there is this scientific uproar, because we [humans] have to keep our uniqueness. And of course the chimps have challenged this belief again and again...
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National Guard Deployment In American Cities

October 9, 2025 • 45 mins
President Trump has deployed National Guard troops to Portland, Chicago and D.C., and while Democrat-led states are fighting back, some Republican-led states are welcoming the troops -- even requesting them. Tonya Mosley talks with Atlantic national security staff writer Nancy Youssef about these deployments and the tensions building inside the Pentagon. Defense Secretary Hegseth has told military leaders...
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