Fresh Air

The former first lady is often remembered as a genteel Southerner who promoted highway beautification, but author Julia Sweig says archival records show Lady Bird was a savvy political strategist and key advisor to her husband, President Lyndon Johnson. Lady Bird was a supporter of women's rights, and a sponsor of ambitious programs to protect the environment and address urban poverty and blight. Sweig's book is 'Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight.' Also, jazz critic Kevin Whitehead...

Deborah Feldman's memoir, 'Unorthodox,' about leaving the Satmar Hasidic community in Brooklyn, inspired the Netflix series of the same name. Growing up, she wasn't supposed to pursue an education or career, and, at 17, she entered into an arranged marriage with a man she'd barely met. Her departure from the community earned the scorn of Satmar leaders and forced a break with family members she'd known all her life. Ken Tucker reviews Julien Baker's third studio album, 'Little...

The country music star's 50th studio album, 'Still Woman Enough,' is out now. Lynn spoke with Terry Gross in 2010 about her memoir, 'Coal Miner's Daughter.' Also, Justin Chang reviews 'The Father,' starring Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Coleman. And Lloyd Schwartz reviews a PBS special about Black contralto singer Marian Anderson.

'New Yorker' writer Jane Mayer talks about the criminal investigation into whether Donald Trump engaged in tax, banking and/or insurance fraud. If convicted, he could be sentenced to prison. "The thing that's most complicated about this case and makes it really hard is that in order for this to be a criminal act, they have to prove that there was criminal intent — that Trump intended to break the law and knew what the law was," Mayer says.

The Nobel Prize-winning novelist's new book, 'Klara and the Sun,' is set in the future and has an artificially intelligent narrator. "I wanted some of that childlike freshness and openness and naivety to survive all the way through the text in her," he says. We talk about his writing process, hitchhiking in the '60s, and his family history in Nagasaki. Ken Tucker reviews Julien Baker's third studio album, 'Little Oblivions.'

'New York Times' tech columnist Kevin Roose says we've been approaching automation all wrong. "What we should be teaching people is to be more like humans, to do the things that machines can't do," he says. We talk about misconceptions about A.I, how algorithms decide who gets government assistance, and which jobs are less likely to be automated. His new book is 'Futureproof.' Also, Justin Chang reviews the film 'Quo Vadis, Aida?' about the legacy of the Bosnian war through the eyes of a...

Deborah Feldman's memoir, 'Unorthodox,' about leaving the Satmar Hasidic community in Brooklyn inspired the Netflix series of the same name. Growing up, Feldman spoke Yiddish and was discouraged from speaking or reading English at home. She wasn't supposed to pursue an education or career, and, at 17, she entered into an arranged marriage with a man she'd barely met. Her departure from the community earned the scorn of Satmar leaders and forced a break with family members she'd known all her...

The bandleader of 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' joins us from his home piano where he plays music he wrote for the Pixar movie 'Soul' and songs from his new album 'We Are.' Batiste has been playing pop-up shows at Black Lives Matter protests, vaccination sites, and voter registration events. Sleight-of-hand master Derek DelGaudio explores themes of identity, honesty and the emotional cost of keeping secrets in the memoir, 'AMORALMAN.' His one-man show 'In & Of Itself' is now...

Journalist David Zucchino tells the forgotten story of a murderous coup that led to a white supremacist takeover of a Southern city. In the 1890s, Wilmington, N.C., was a mixed-race community with a thriving Black middle class, Black aldermen and police officers, and a Black newspaper. But white supremacists plotted a bloody purge around the 1898 election. They rampaged through the streets, killing 60 Black men, and banished prominent Black people and their white allies from the city. His...

The bandleader of 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' joins us from his home piano where he plays music he wrote for the Pixar movie 'Soul' and a stirring rendition of the national anthem. Batiste has been playing pop-up shows at Black Lives Matter protests, vaccination sites, and voter registration events. "I wanted to articulate through the music and through my presence there that we're all in this together," Batiste says. "Ultimately, this is our time. This is our world. We have to come...

MIT professor and social scientist Sherry Turkle was 27 when she learned that her estranged father had conducted psychological experiments on her when she was a child. She looks back on her childhood in a new memoir, 'The Empathy Diaries.' Also, Maureen Corrigan reviews 'Reality and Other Stories,' John Lanchester's collection of ghost stories about the digital era.

Journalist Katie Engelhart's new book, 'The Inevitable,' follows people who are planning to end their lives due to terminal illness or unbearable disability — either legally with physician-assisted death, or as part of the "euthanasia underground," outside of the law. "Most people who choose to end their lives at a preplanned moment are more concerned with things like dignity ... autonomy," she says. "They're worried less about the physical pain than the loss of themselves."

Biochemist Jennifer Doudna, the subject of Walter Isaacson's new biography 'The Code Breaker,' shared a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2020 for the part she played in developing the CRISPR gene editing technology. We discuss mRNA vaccines, how gene editing works, and some of the moral questions that these developments raise. Also, Ken Tucker reviews 'Living The Dream,' an expanded album by Hailey Whitters.

Known for his novel 'The Things They Carried,' Tim O'Brien is now the subject of a new documentary, 'The War and Peace of Tim O'Brien.' When he became a father in his late 50s, he initially feared parenthood would curtail his writing. "Much as Vietnam did, [parenthood] gave me a body of material, that kind of context to write about," he says. Also, TV critic David Bianculli reviews 'Behind Her Eyes,' a thriller series on Netflix with many twists and turns. George Polk Award-winning...

James McBride's novel 'Deacon King Kong' takes place in 1969, in a Brooklyn housing project similar to the one he grew up in. "In this book and in this community, people generally love each other," he says. McBride's novel 'The Good Lord Bird' was adapted last year into a miniseries starring Ethan Hawke. Also, Kevin Whitehead reviews the new box set of music by jazz saxophonist and composer Julius Hemphill. And Justin Chang reviews the new Disney animated film 'Raya and the Last Dragon.'

America's 19-year war in Afghanistan may soon be coming to an end. The Trump administration negotiated a deal with the Taliban, in which the U.S. agreed to withdraw all its troops by May 1. But the Afghan government was not included in those talks. Now President Biden has to decide whether to honor the Trump deal and risk that the Taliban will try to take over the country again. We speak with 'New Yorker' reporter Dexter Filkins about what he saw in Afghanistan while he was there in January.

Based on Chung's own childhood, 'Minari' is about a Korean American family that moves to rural Arkansas to start a farm. The director spoke with contributor Arun Venugopal about the memories that inspired the film, why he initially kept the project a secret from his family, and choosing the title of the movie. 'Minari' just won a Golden Globe for best foreign language film. Also, Maureen Corrigan reviews 'Klara and the Sun,' by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Eliot Higgins is the founder of an online collective that picks apart conspiracy theories and investigates war crimes and hate crimes using clues from the Internet — like social media posts, leaked databases and free satellite maps. We talk about how Bellingcat traced the origin of the missile that shot down flight MH17 in Ukraine, the ethics of the Bellingcat methods, and the emotional impact of seeing atrocities online. His new book is 'We Are Bellingcat.' Also, David Bianculli reviews...

The sleight-of-hand master explores themes of identity, honesty and the emotional cost of keeping secrets in the memoir, 'AMORALMAN.' DelGaudio's one-man show 'In & Of Itself' is now available on Hulu. "[Secrets] are like a drug," he says. "They enter your system and they intoxicate you and they get you to modify your behavior, whether you know it or not. And so it's learning to control the effects of secrecy that really were key for me, in terms of creating a convincing illusion." John...

British actor Sacha Baron Cohen is known for taking his absurd characters like Borat, Brüno and Ali G into the world and interacting with unwitting real people. Baron Cohen has been chased, sued and nearly arrested while in character. We talk about why he revived Borat after a 13-year hiatus and playing Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman in 'The Trial of the Chicago 7.' Also, John Powers reviews the film 'Minari.' For four years, Georgetown Law professor and human rights activist Rosa Brooks...