Fresh Air

Monday - Friday, 9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. on KUOW2

Fresh Air with Terry Gross is a Peabody Award-winning magazine of contemporary arts and issues. The show gives interviews as much time as needed, and complements them with comments from well-known critics and commentators. Fresh Air is produced at WHYY in Philadelphia and broadcast nationally by NPR.

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Author Interviews
12:09 pm
Wed October 24, 2012

Tom Wolfe Takes Miami's Pulse In 'Back To Blood'

Credit Jim Cooper / AP
Author and journalist Tom Wolfe's books include The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Bonfire of the Vanities and I Am Charlotte Simmons, among others.

Originally published on Thu October 25, 2012 6:37 am

Tom Wolfe wrote his new novel, Back to Blood, entirely by hand. But the author of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and The Bonfire of the Vanities also says that wasn't entirely by choice — he'd rather have used a typewriter.

"Unfortunately, you can't keep typewriters going today — you have to take the ribbons back to be re-inked," Wolfe tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies. "There's a horrible search to try to find missing parts."

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Music Interviews
11:05 am
Wed October 24, 2012

Stephen Colbert's Most Meaningful Musical Moments

Credit Kris Long
Stephen Colbert (right) performs with Ben Folds on the set of his TV show, The Colbert Report.

Originally published on Fri December 7, 2012 7:12 am

Stephen Colbert loves music and loves to sing. That's why Fresh Air's Terry Gross asked him to bring a few songs that mean a lot to him and tell her why. For example, as a kid, Colbert discovered his first lesson about character acting through "King Herod's Song" from Jesus Christ Superstar, even though he thought the words were scandalous at first: "Oh, so you are the Christ? You're the great Jesus Christ. Prove to me that you're no fool. Walk across my swimming pool."

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The Impact of War
1:41 pm
Tue October 23, 2012

Iraq Vet Seeks Atonement For Early War Tragedy

Originally published on Tue October 23, 2012 2:09 pm

On April 8, 2003, in the early days of the Iraq War, the Kachadoorian family found themselves in the middle of a firefight at a major intersection in Baghdad.

They had approached the intersection in three cars and didn't respond to Marines' warnings to stop and turn around; so the Marines opened fire, killing three men and shooting a young woman in the shoulder, not realizing that the people in the car were civilians.

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Movie Interviews
12:15 pm
Mon October 22, 2012

Ava DuVernay: A New Director, After Changing Course

Originally published on Mon October 22, 2012 12:59 pm

In January, Ava DuVernay became the first African-American woman to win Sundance's best directing award for her second feature-length film, Middle of Nowhere. The film is about a young black woman named Ruby, who puts her life and dreams of going to medical school on hold while her husband is in prison.

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Music Reviews
9:35 am
Mon October 22, 2012

The Big Man Behind 'Shake, Rattle And Roll'

Credit Heinrich Klaffs / Wikimedia Commons
No figure in the history of rock 'n' roll is more incongruous than Big Joe Turner.

Originally published on Mon October 22, 2012 12:59 pm

Big Joe Turner's hardest-hitting singles have been collected on a new compilation, titled Big Joe Turner Rocks.

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Fresh Air Weekend
6:03 am
Sat October 20, 2012

Fresh Air Weekend: Michael Feinstein, Roxy Music, Tyler Perry

Credit Simon & Schuster
Michael Feinstein (right) worked for six years as Ira Gershwin's cataloger and archivist.

Originally published on Sat October 20, 2012 12:39 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:

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Music Reviews
9:55 am
Fri October 19, 2012

Gary Clark Jr.: A Raucous Blues Shout

Originally published on Fri October 19, 2012 2:03 pm

On his major-label debut Blak and Blu, you can hear the roar in Gary Clark Jr.'s blues guitar, and in his vocal throughout "Bright Lights." It's one of the few straight-up blues songs on what is essentially an introduction to one of the most highly praised young blues guitarists in recent times. While Clark comes out of a blues tradition, he's also a twentysomething who's taken in all of contemporary music.

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Author Interviews
9:21 am
Fri October 19, 2012

Baratunde Thurston Explains 'How To Be Black'

Credit Courtesy of the author
Baratunde Thurston is an American comedian and the digital director of The Onion. He co-founded the black political blog Jack & Jill Politics. He is also a prolific tweeter.

Originally published on Fri October 19, 2012 9:55 am

This interview was originally broadcast on Feb. 1, 2012. How to Be Black will be released in paperback on Oct. 30.

It's no coincidence that Baratunde Thurston's new memoir and satirical self-help book How to Be Black was slated for release on the first day of Black History Month.

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Movie Reviews
7:51 am
Fri October 19, 2012

'The Sessions': Sex, Comedy And Something More

Originally published on Fri October 19, 2012 7:53 pm

In 1983, Berkeley poet and journalist Mark O'Brien wrote an article about sexual surrogates — women and men trained to help people with disabilities learn to use their bodies to give themselves and others erotic pleasure.

For O'Brien, the subject wasn't academic. After a bout of childhood polio, he had spent much of his life in an iron lung. He could talk, and tap out words on a typewriter holding a stick in his mouth. He could feel things below the neck. But he couldn't move his muscles.

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Book Reviews
11:59 am
Thu October 18, 2012

'Master' Jefferson: Defender Of Liberty, Then Slavery

His public words have inspired millions, but for scholars, his private words and deeds generate confusion, discomfort, apologetic excuses. When the young Thomas Jefferson wrote, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," there's compelling evidence to indicate that he indeed meant all men, not just white guys.

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