Fresh Air with Terry Gross, the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues, is one of public radio's most popular programs. Each week, nearly 5 million people listen to the show's intimate conversations broadcast on more than 624 NPR stations across the country, as well as in Europe on the World Radio Network. In 2015, Fresh Air was the No. 1 most downloaded podcast on iTunes.
Though Fresh Air has been categorized as a "talk show," it hardly fits the mold. Its 1994 Peabody Award citation credits Fresh Air with "probing questions, revelatory interviews and unusual insights." And a variety of top publications count Gross among the country's leading interviewers. 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-FM in Philadelphia and broadcast nationally by NPR.
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Living in the desert is "not for everybody," says Watkins. Her home, in the Mojave Desert near Death Valley, is staggeringly beautiful and brutal. Her new novel Yellow Pine shares this landscape. -
The new Hulu series stars Emmy Rossum as an FBI agent on the trail of a serial killer. It was inspired by Black Widow, but Furious totally transforms the 1987 film. -
New York Times reporter Eric Lipton discusses his Pulitzer Prize-winning investigations into Trump's conflicts of interest and whether he's exploiting the power of the presidency for self-enrichment.
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The fifth and final season of the HBO Max series Hacks is nominated for 24 Emmys, including one for Smart as best actress in a comedy series. The writers "raised the bar every single season," Smart says.
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Daniel Mason's new novel is a spin on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, in which academics collide with locals — and a few seductive fairies — in the woods of Vermont. -
Historian Micki McElya revisits one September afternoon in 1968, Atlantic City, when the Miss America pageant collided with a changing country. Her new book is Liberation Summer.
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A 10-part HBO Max spin-off to The Big Bang Theory expands on that long-running sitcom by following a quartet of its characters. Every episode offers a new multiverse — and surprising cameos. -
Classics scholar Emily Wilson says Christopher Nolan shouldn't have written The Odyssey himself. Whether he's appearing in Spider-Man, The Odyssey or The Bear, Jon Bernthal loves to "take it too far." -
Olivia Wilde plays an artist who initiates a wildly inappropriate sexual relationship with her younger employee. But between the sex scenes, there are thoughtful conversations about age and intimacy. -
Bennett, who died in 2023, was known for a string of hits, including "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." Kevin Whitehead offers an appreciation and remembers some of Bennett's lesser-known songs.
