Fresh Air on WUTC

Weekdays, Noon - 1pm
Terry Gross

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 4.5 million people listen to the show's intimate conversations broadcast on more than 450 National Public Radio (NPR) stations across the country, as well as in Europe on the World Radio Network.

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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11:13am

Fri June 1, 2012
Author Interviews

A Memoir About Mothers, Memory And Loss

Originally published on Fri June 1, 2012 11:40 am

This interview was originally broadcast on January 11, 2011.

Writer Mira Bartok was 40 years old when a semi-trailer hurled into her car on the New York Thruway. The force of the accident whipped the inside of her brain against her skull, causing what's known as coup contrecoup, a type of traumatic brain injury that for Bartok, affected both her long- and short-term memory.

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10:41am

Fri June 1, 2012
Movie Reviews

A 'Snow White' As Bleak As It Is Grimm

Originally published on Fri June 1, 2012 6:09 pm

The ads for Snow White and the Huntsman show a glum Kristen Stewart dressed for battle, obviously playing the huntsman. Hold the phone, she's Snow White. Another storybook heroine turned warrior! Just like the princess in this year's first Snow White picture, Mirror Mirror, who not only goes mano a mano with her patronizing, patriarchal prince, but tells him she's sick of stories in which damsels take their distress lying down.

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11:59am

Thu May 31, 2012
Author Interviews

The Internet: A Series Of 'Tubes' (And Then Some)

Originally published on Thu May 31, 2012 2:08 pm

Increasingly, Internet users are working "in the cloud" — creating and sending data that isn't stored on local hard drives. It's easy to imagine our emails and photos swirling around in cyberspace without a physical home — but that's not really how it works. Those files are still stored somewhere, but you can only find them if you know where to look.

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11:58am

Thu May 31, 2012
Movies

2012: 'Not The Best Year' At Cannes

Originally published on Thu May 31, 2012 2:08 pm

John Powers, Fresh Air's critic-at-large and the movie critic for Vogue, returns from the 2012 Cannes Film Festival to share his thoughts on the films he liked and the films he didn't care for.

Though Powers says 2012 was not the best year at Cannes, the experience once again left him feeling rejuvenated about the movies.

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12:00pm

Wed May 30, 2012
Commentary

The Word 'Hopefully' Is Here To Stay, Hopefully

Originally published on Wed May 30, 2012 3:52 pm

Geoff Nunberg, the linguist contributor on NPR's Fresh Air, is the author of the book The Years of Talking Dangerously.

There was something anticlimactic to the news that the AP Stylebook will no longer be objecting to the use of "hopefully" as a floating sentence adverb, as in, "Hopefully, the Giants will win the division." It was like seeing an obituary for someone you assumed must have died around the time that Hootenanny went off the air.

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8:45am

Wed May 30, 2012
Music

Fresh Air Remembers Traditional Music Legend Doc Watson

Originally published on Wed May 30, 2012 12:00 pm

Credit Rick Diamond/Staff / Getty Images Entertainment

This interview was originally broadcast on March 24, 1988.

Doc Watson, who was called "a living national treasure" for his virtuoso flat-picking and his repertoire of traditional folk and bluegrass tunes, has died. He was 89.

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1:11pm

Tue May 29, 2012
Music Reviews

Anti-Virtuoso Piano, Delicate And Despoiled

Credit John Rogers

The death of a great musician ripples through the jazz community. It's a special loss to those improvisers we might call immediate survivors: working partners who'll miss that special interaction with a singular musician.

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11:43am

Tue May 29, 2012
Movie Interviews

Wes Anderson, Creating A Singular 'Kingdom'

Originally published on Wed February 20, 2013 12:58 pm

Director Wes Anderson has many credits to his name — The Royal Tenenbaums, The Darjeeling Limited, Bottle Rocket and Fantastic Mr. Fox among them — but Moonrise Kingdom is his first film to open the prestigious Cannes Film Festival.

Starring Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Bruce Willis and Edward Norton, the quirky independent picture tells the story of a 12-year-old girl and boy who fall in love and then make a pact to run off into the woods together.

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8:03am

Mon May 28, 2012
Music Interviews

Catherine Russell: An In-Studio Fresh Air Concert

Originally published on Tue May 29, 2012 7:49 am

This interview was originally broadcast on February 21, 2011.

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1:58am

Sat May 26, 2012
Fresh Air Weekend

Fresh Air Weekend: David Alan Grier, Sacha Baron Cohen

Originally published on Sat May 26, 2012 11:02 am

Credit Courtesy of the American Repertory Theater

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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12:06pm

Fri May 25, 2012
Music Reviews

James Burton: The Teen Who Invented American Guitar

Originally published on Fri May 25, 2012 3:11 pm

What were you doing when you were 16?

When he was 16, James Burton was inventing the American guitar. He'd been born in Dubberly, La., in 1939, and was apparently self-taught on his instrument. At 15, he cut a single backing local singer Carol Williams, and then one day he came up with a guitar riff that he liked. He took it to a singer from Shreveport he was touring with, and they worked out a song to use in his act. One thing led to another, and it wound up on a record called "Suzie Q," credited to Dale Hawkins, the singer.

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11:30am

Fri May 25, 2012
Movie Reviews

A Wes Anderson 'Kingdom' Full Of Beautiful Imagery

Originally published on Fri May 25, 2012 3:11 pm

Credit Focus Features

Many people are rapturous over the work of Wes Anderson, and for them, I expect, Moonrise Kingdom will be nirvana. The frames are quasi-symmetrical: a strong center, often human, with misaligned objects on each side suggesting a universe that's slightly out of balance, like a series of discombobulated dollhouses.

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10:01am

Fri May 25, 2012
Author Interviews

Examining 'The Leftovers,' After The Rapture

Originally published on Fri May 25, 2012 3:11 pm

Credit Mark Ostow / Courtesy Tom Perrotta

This interview was originally broadcast on August 25, 2011. The Leftovers is now available in paperback.

Last year, California-based preacher Harold Camping announced that the beginning of the end of the world would take place on May 21, 2011. The date passed by with no apparent rapture, and Camping became the butt of many late-night talk show jokes.

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12:02pm

Thu May 24, 2012
Music Interviews

How Wes Anderson Soundtracks His Movies

Originally published on Thu May 24, 2012 4:28 pm

Credit Courtesy of Focus Features

If you see the new Wes Anderson movie Moonrise Kingdom, you'll hear background music from composers Benjamin Britten and Alexandre Desplat, as well as several songs from Hank Williams.

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11:31am

Thu May 24, 2012
Digital Life

Keeping Your Kids Safe Online: It's 'Common Sense'

Originally published on Wed May 30, 2012 2:44 pm

Credit iStockphoto.com

If you're a parent, you may have wondered what your kids are texting to each other or posting on their Facebook pages. Or maybe you've thought about it and decided you don't want to know.

That's not the best approach, says child advocate James Steyer. Steyer runs Common Sense Media, an organization that helps parents decide which kinds of technology are age-appropriate for their kids.

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