Fresh Air on KTTZ HD2

Hosted by Terry Gross

Opening the window on contemporary arts and issues with guests from worlds as diverse as literature and economics.

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Fresh Air Weekend
12:38 am
Sat July 21, 2012

Fresh Air Weekend: Weaver, Sorkin, 'Dark Knight'

Credit Andrew Eccles / USA Network
Sigourney Weaver stars as Secretary of State Elaine Barrish in the USA Network miniseries Political Animals.

Originally published on Sat July 21, 2012 12:12 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:

Aaron Sorkin: The Writer Behind 'The Newsroom': HBO's new behind-the-anchor-desk drama follows in the footsteps of Sorkin's hit series The West Wing. "I like writing about heroes that don't wear capes or disguises," he says.

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Music Reviews
10:55 am
Fri July 20, 2012

Jesse Davis: Rapid-Fire Grace At 'Smalls'

Originally published on Fri July 20, 2012 3:26 pm

Many jazz musicians, the kind who wear jackets and ties on stage, are often carelessly referred to as playing bebop. In reality most of them are post-boppers, who build on that dynamic style that burst forth after World War II, without bringing it back in pure form. It's the rare modernist who gets an authentic bebop sound on alto saxophone, who catches some of the raw explosiveness and rapid-fire grace of jazz god Charlie Parker. And then there's Jesse Davis.

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Music Interviews
10:55 am
Fri July 20, 2012

Eddie Palmieri: Now A True 'Jazz Master'

Credit Raymond Roig / AFP/Getty Images
Eddie Palmieri

Pianist Eddie Palmieri has been given many nicknames. He's been called The Latin Monk because of his Thelonious Monk-inspired dissonances. He's been called The Piano Breaker Man, because he hits the keys so hard. He's even been called the 'madman of Latin music.' He's taken many of the innovations of modern jazz pianists and brought them into his Latin bands. But he's never stopped playing good dance music.

In 1994, Palmieri's lobbying culminated in the announcement of a new Grammy Award category for Afro-Caribbean Jazz.

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Author Interviews
9:28 am
Fri July 20, 2012

When Zombies Attack Lower Manhattan

Credit Erin Patrice O'Brien / Doubleday

Colson Whitehead is a 2002 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship. His writing has also appeared in Salon, The Village Voice, and The New York Times.

Originally published on Thu November 8, 2012 10:55 am

A zombie plague has wiped out 95 percent of America. Camps of survivors band together in pockets across the country, waiting for small squadrons of human "sweepers" to inch their way across major cities, destroying the remaining zombie-like creatures hiding out in office buildings and shopping malls.

But now the human sweepers have to tackle their biggest challenge yet: clearing the undead from Lower Manhattan.

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Remembrances
11:34 am
Thu July 19, 2012

Fresh Air Remembers Actress Celeste Holm

Originally published on Thu July 19, 2012 12:44 pm

Celeste Holm, the actress of stage and screen, passed away of a heart attack on July 15. She was 95 years old.

Made famous on Broadway for her role as Ado Annie in Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!, Holm earned more fans for her performances in All About Eve (1950), The Tender Trap (1955) and High Society (1956).

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The Fresh Air Interview
10:21 am
Thu July 19, 2012

Sigourney Weaver's Stately Role In 'Political Animals'

Credit Andrew Eccles / USA Network
Sigourney Weaver stars as Secretary of State Elaine Barrish in the USA Network miniseries Political Animals.

Originally published on Thu July 19, 2012 4:56 pm

In the new USA Network miniseries Political Animals, Sigourney Weaver plays smart, tough Secretary of State Elaine Barrish. It's a role many critics have likened to current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but Weaver says the show's creators were thinking beyond Clinton when they devised the role.

"We've had three remarkable women who've been our secretaries of state in our last three administrations, but somehow we're not willing as a country to elect a woman president," she says. "And I think this show partially investigates what that's about."

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Book Reviews
9:40 am
Thu July 19, 2012

A Little Advice On 'How To Be A Woman'

Originally published on Thu July 19, 2012 11:03 am

Funny feminists should never die; there are too few of them who've gained any cultural prominence in the first place. That's why Nora Ephron's death earlier this summer flattened me, even though I hadn't read her in a while and had mixed feelings about the whole "I Feel Bad About My Neck," self-flagellation routine. Still, she made me laugh at the same time she often made me think: I wanted her playing on Team Feminist forever.

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Movie Reviews
4:55 pm
Wed July 18, 2012

As Class Warfare Brews, A 'Dark Knight Rises'

Originally published on Fri July 20, 2012 10:54 am

The canvas is epic, the themes are profound, the execution is ... clunky. Welcome to Christopher Nolan's third and allegedly final Batman picture, The Dark Knight Rises — that so-called rising taking hours, by the way. No Batman film ever had less Batman.

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Anti-Government Protests Roil Egypt
11:33 am
Wed July 18, 2012

A Reporter Looks At Where Egypt May Be Headed

Originally published on Thu July 19, 2012 11:03 am

Reporter David Kirkpatrick covered Washington's political scene for many years for The New York Times. But early last year, he decided that he was ready for a change of scenery. Kirkpatrick volunteered to move to Egypt to become the Times' Cairo bureau chief — and boy, was his timing good.

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Music Reviews
11:49 am
Tue July 17, 2012

Ravi Coltrane: A Noble Sound, Witness To Its Heritage

Originally published on Wed July 18, 2012 9:54 am

The jazz musician Ravi Coltrane, 47, didn't make his burden any lighter by choosing to play tenor and soprano saxophones — the same instruments his father, John Coltrane, indelibly stamped with his influence.

Ravi knew early he needed his own voice. On tenor, he has his own ways of bending and inflecting a note, applying flexible vibrato. Even when his noble sound bears witness to his heritage, Ravi Coltrane can draw on his father's language and make it his own.

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