Fresh Air
Weekdays at 7:00pm
Opening the window on contemporary arts and issues with guests from worlds as diverse as literature and economics.
Watch a tense romantic triangle play out on the tennis court in 'Challengers'
by Justin Chang
Three superb actors — Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O'Connor — star in this sweaty, sexy, entertaining drama about tennis stars with a very complicated past.
At 74, Outlaw Billy Joe Shaver Is Still An Outlier
by Ken Tucker
Billie Joe Shaver has just released his first new studio album in six years, called Long in the Tooth.
Jaki Byard, A Post-Bebop Pianist Who Was A Master Of Stride Piano
by Kevin Whitehead
On The Late Show, a set of previously unheard solo music from 1979, the jazz pianist employs techniques like suspenseful dropouts. He had a rare ability to sound archaic — and way ahead of his time.
For Novelist Jonathan Lethem, Radicalism Runs In The Family
His new book, Dissident Gardens, follows three generations of an activist family. The book is fiction, but its characters were inspired by Lethem's own story. Originally broadcast Sept. 9, 2013.
A Label Paramount To Early Blues And Jazz
by Ed Ward
Between 1917 and 1932, the label released thousands of records. Jack White's Third Man Records has joined with the reissue label Revenant to release the first of two packages documenting Paramount.
A Lost Piece Of Soul History Appears
by Milo Miles
In the early 1960s when soul star Sam Cooke had his own record label, SAR, he recorded songs by his younger brother, L.C. Cooke. Fifty years years, the complete set's finally issued.
How Interactive TV Is Older Than TV Itself
by David Bianculli
As technology gets more complex, TV producers aim to take advantage of it, such as relying on phoned-in votes from viewers. The interactive talent show, it turns out, predates TV itself.
Spoon Wants Your Soul
by Ken Tucker
They Want My Soul is another fine Spoon album in a career that has now come to display a remarkable consistency