Fresh Air at 7

Weekdays at 7pm
Hosted by: Terry Gross

An evening encore of the 2PM edition of Fresh Air.

Fresh Air opens the window on contemporary arts and issues with guests from worlds as diverse as literature and economics. Terry Gross hosts this multi-award-winning daily interview and features program. The veteran public radio interviewer is known for her extraordinary ability to engage guests of all dispositions. Every weekday she delights intelligent and curious listeners with revelations on contemporary societal concerns.

In addition to Terry's fascinating interviews and features, Fresh Air's stellar roster of contributors includes classical music reviewer Lloyd Schwartz of The Boston Phoenix, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism; language commentator Geoffrey Nunberg, usage editor of The American Heritage Dictionary; rock critic reviewer Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly; John Powers of Vogue; Maureen Corrigan, book reviewer and professor of literature at Georgetown University; David Bianculli, TV critic for the New York Daily News; and critic-at-large Gerald Early.

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Interviews
10:17 am
Wed August 22, 2012

Bill Hader On Sketch Comedy, His Love Of Old Films

Credit Mike Coppola / Getty Images
Bill Hader was nominated for an Emmy as Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for his role as Stefon on Saturday Night Live.

Originally published on Thu August 23, 2012 1:12 pm

Comedian Bill Hader is adept onstage and doing live performances. But he's scared to death of standup.

He says he remembers watching Chris Rock's 1996 HBO special, Bring the Pain, and thinking, "I don't know how people do that."

"I need a character," Hader tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "I need people out there with me."

So Hader has stuck with sketch comedy — where he has been wildly successful.

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Remembrances
11:10 am
Tue August 21, 2012

Fresh Air Remembers Comedian Phyllis Diller

Credit Central Press/Getty Images
Phyllis Diller plays peekaboo with the cameraman before the start of her television show Bonkers in 1979.

Originally published on Tue August 21, 2012 11:35 am

Phyllis Diller, one of the first and one of the few female comic headliners of her generation, died Monday at the age of 95.

Diller performed in the persona of a crazed housewife. She usually dressed in outlandish, bad-fitting clothes with her hair teased into a disheveled mop. Then she'd fire off long strings of self-deprecating gags. She was so unattractive, she used to tell her audiences, that Peeping Toms asked her to pull her window shades down. Onstage, she called her husband Fang. Diller told Fang jokes like her male counterparts told wife jokes.

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Author Interviews
11:10 am
Tue August 21, 2012

Student 'Subversives' And The FBI's 'Dirty Tricks'

Originally published on Wed August 22, 2012 10:21 am

In 1964, students at the University of California, Berkeley, formed a protest movement to repeal a campus rule banning students from engaging in political activities.

Then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover suspected the free speech movement to be evidence of a Communist plot to disrupt U.S. campuses. He "had long been concerned about alleged subversion within the education field," journalist Seth Rosenfeld tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

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Movie Interviews
10:32 am
Mon August 20, 2012

Mike Birbiglia, 'Sleepwalk'-ing On The Big Screen

Originally published on Mon August 20, 2012 10:58 am

When comedian Mike Birbiglia opened his one-man show Sleepwalk With Me in 2008 at the Bleecker Street Theatre in New York, he didn't anticipate that it would become material for a popular piece on This American Life and a New York Times best-seller. He especially didn't think it would turn into a feature film.

Birbigilia had never made a film before. And he was initially hesitant to make one about his dangerous sleepwalking condition, because he wanted to distance himself from the topic he had been immersed in for more than four years.

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Fresh Air Weekend
6:03 am
Sat August 18, 2012

Fresh Air Weekend: Susie Arioli, Frank Langella

Originally published on Mon August 20, 2012 2:09 pm

Fresh Air Weekend highlights some of the best interviews and reviews from past weeks, and new program elements specially paced for weekends. Our weekend show emphasizes interviews with writers, filmmakers, actors, and musicians, and often includes excerpts from live in-studio concerts. This week:

Jazz Vocalist Susie Arioli Goes 'All The Way': Listen to an in-studio concert and conversation with the Canadian singer and her longtime guitarist, Jordan Officer.

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Author Interviews
10:12 am
Fri August 17, 2012

Donald Ray Pollock On Finding Fiction Late In Life

This interview was originally broadcast on July 26, 2011. Donald Ray Pollock's The Devil All the Time is now out in paperback.

Knockemstiff, Ohio, is a tiny hamlet in southern Ohio. In the 1950s, Knockemstiff had three stores, a bar and a population of about 450 people. Most of those people, says fiction writer Donald Ray Pollock, were "connected by blood through one godforsaken calamity or another."

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Movie Interviews
9:34 am
Fri August 17, 2012

Sacha Baron Cohen: The Fresh Air Interview

Credit Melinda Sue Gordon / Paramount Pictures
Sacha Baron Cohen plays Admiral General Aladeen, the authoritarian, anti-Semitic and unexpectedly sympathetic protagonist of The Dictator.

Originally published on Fri August 17, 2012 10:12 am

This interview was originally broadcast on May 21, 2012. Sacha Baron Cohen's The Dictator is now out on DVD.

Actor and writer Sacha Baron Cohen is famous for taking his characters — Ali G., Borat, Bruno — into the real world, interacting with people who have no idea that they're dealing with a fictional character. But his new movie, The Dictator, is a scripted comedy about a tyrant on the loose in New York.

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Movie Interviews
10:39 am
Thu August 16, 2012

Frank Langella Embodies Wicked In 'Robot & Frank'

Originally published on Fri August 17, 2012 7:07 am

Frank Langella's career has not been an upward trajectory of success — and he likes it that way. He's had memorable roles on stage and screen, and times when he couldn't find work, or even an agent.

Now at 74, Langella is as busy as ever, and, as he tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies, he's never been hungrier to act.

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Music Reviews
9:19 am
Thu August 16, 2012

Autosalvage: The Psychedelic Band That Vanished

Credit Courtesy of the artist
Autosalvage, a New York quartet, made one album and then stopped playing.

Originally published on Fri August 17, 2012 12:14 pm

A little over 10 years ago, a friend with a small record company in England called me and asked if I wanted to do liner notes for an album he was re-releasing. When he told me it was the Autosalvage album, I flipped. Of course I did!

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Music Reviews
12:48 pm
Wed August 15, 2012

How Jan Garbarek Came To Epitomize Nordic Jazz

Originally published on Wed August 22, 2012 12:22 pm

Saxophonist Jan Garbarek was a teenage protege of American composer George Russell in Norway in the 1960s and later played in Keith Jarrett's Scandinavian quartet. More recently, he has collaborated with the vocal quartet the Hilliard Ensemble, improvising as they sing medieval music.

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