"People can get trapped in a recipe, and feel so bound to the written letter," Samin Nosrat says. "They feel really constraining, and that constraint hurts my heart."

From @whyy.org in Philadelphia, our talk with Terry Gross. Now on video! An honor to celebrate half a century of @nprfreshair.bsky.social.

Go Sam. Go Terry. Go Birds.

Review: The new Naked Gun film, starring Liam Neeson, captures its predecessors' slapstick spirit. Freakier Friday, meanwhile, proves less compelling, despite a solid performance by Lindsay Lohan.

As he winds down his podcast, WTF, after 16 years, Marc Maron reflects on what he'll miss: "These conversations are very real conversations for me ... and that is kind of nourishing for the spirit and the soul."

Listen, when you finally fulfill your absolute lifelong dream of talking to Terry Gross on @nprfreshair.bsky.social, you get to ask her some of your burning questions, too. ✨ www.npr.org/2025/07/23/g...

Review: The internet and its discontents run wild in a new film by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, a prolifically offbeat Japanese filmmaker who's spent the last four decades putting subversive spins on traditional genres.

For decades, Condé Nast publications such as Vogue and Vanity Fair were consequential tastemakers. Writer Michael Grynbaum explores the heyday of these magazines and how they lost their footing.

Ebon Moss-Bachrach has won two Emmys for his portrayal of an abrasive and ornery cook/maître d on the FX series The Bear. The show is known for kitchen chaos, but he says the set is calm.

Review: Mariska Hargitay has only the vaguest memories of her mother, Jayne Mansfield, the sex-symbol movie star who died in the 1967 crash. Now, Hargitay examines her family history in a new documentary.

We've got four summertime suspense novels for you.

Review: Thomas Mallon has been keeping diaries for most of his life. The Very Heart of It collects entries from the years 1983 to 1994, when he had recently come out as gay and moved to New York City.

Review: An Edinburgh police detective and a team of misfits search for a woman who vanished several years earlier. Critic John Powers says the byplay of characters makes Dept. Q worth watching.

"People show up wearing wigs of my bowl cut to my shows now. I've started a movement." - Atsuko Okatsuka

Review: Mike Flanagan's new film, a maudlin mystery about a man dying of cancer, feels hobbled by its extreme faithfulness to the Stephen King novella on which its based. @justincchang.bsky.social

Ocean Vuong's new novel, 'The Emperor of Gladness,' is the first he's written, from start to finish, since his mother died in 2019. He says writing it was a way to honor her memory. @tonyamosley.bsky.social

Review: Laura Piani's amiable new romance is weighed down by all its allusions and borrowings — and ultimately fails to deliver on Jane Austen's wit.

[email protected] spoke to Fresh Air about auditioning for Star Wars, voiceover work, and the advice Carrie Fisher gave him.

The success of I Love Lucy is often credited to Lucille Ball's comedic talent, but biographer Todd Purdum says Desi Arnaz was more than just "second banana" to Lucy. He also helped shape the modern sitcom.

Review: Benicio Del Toro plays a globe-trotting tycoon trying to convince his estranged daughter (Mia Threapleton) to be his heir. The film is darker, angrier and more violent than Anderson's usual fare. @justincchang.bsky.social

"[My mom] was looking up at me and she smiled, and then she had this concerned look on her face, and she reached up and she said, 'Your hair. It's so dry.' That was the last thing she said to me." -Sarah Silverman

Review: The two hour, 49 minute conclusion to the seven-sequel franchise is boundlessly self-congratulatory. But, as always, it's fun to watch Tom Cruise, now 62, execute eye-popping stunts.

Cole Escola gives the former first lady a wild second act in the Tony-nominated play Oh, Mary! "This play is about a woman with a dream that no one around her understands," Escola says.

Review: This documentary-drama hybrid is one of the best new movies our critic's seen this year. It draws on archival footage to tell a story of two lovers separating and reuniting over roughly two decades.

Actor Ramy Youssef was in 5th grade and living in New Jersey when the Twin Towers fell. His new Amazon Prime animated show, #1 Happy Family USA, draws on the experiences of his own Egyptian American family navigating Islamophobia after Sept. 11.

Review: Thunderbolts* is unapologetically formulaic. And yet, Florence Pugh is terrific; the action is coherent; and the character dynamics strike the right balance of earnest sincerity and glib humor. @justincchang.bsky.social

Michelle Williams stars in the FX series 'Dying For Sex,' about a woman who leaves her sexless marriage to pursue pleasure and live out her final months with her best friend.

Sarah Snook has been busy since 'Succession' ended. She's on Broadway now in Oscar Wilde's 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' and plays all 26 characters. @ambaldonado.bsky.social

Today on Fresh Air, a special remembrance of Terry's husband, Francis Davis. They were together for 47 years. He died April 14. Listen to Terry's piece: tinyurl.com/29udnvz3

Review: By examining the value of libraries in the distant and recent past, this PBS film makes a compelling case for the importance of the American public library system today.

Review: Matthew Specktor grew up the son of a famous Hollywood agent. In The Golden Hour he serves up family saga, cultural criticism, fictionalized biography, history and lament for a vanishing world.

Review: David Cronenberg's thriller centers on an unusual technology that allows people to watch their loved ones decompose in real time. The Shrouds is both deeply morbid and disarmingly funny. @justincchang.bsky.social

Harvard professor of government Steven Levitsky studies how healthy democracies can slip into authoritarianism. He says the Trump administration has already done grave damage. Listen: tinyurl.com/495bnzbb

Noah Wyle, star of The Pitt, talks to us about the making of the show. "It's really less important the audience understands and more important that the audience sees that the doctors know what they're talking about. It's competency porn."

It is with great sadness we share the news that Terry's husband Francis died on Monday. Francis was an esteemed jazz critic and writer. They were together for nearly 50 years.

Richard Kind is the announcer and host sidekick on the Netflix show Everybody's Live with John Mulaney. "I don't know what the hell I'm doing. You must understand — it's anarchy," he says of the show.

Review: Inspired by the true story of a squad of Navy SEALs who came under fire in Iraq in 2006, 'Warfare' offers a moment-by-moment view that manages to say something new about the combat experience.

Review: Wealth comes lined with rage and melancholy in a new Apple TV+ series about a hedge-fund hotshot who loses his job and begins to steal from his suburban friends.

"This is, without a doubt, the biggest trade policy shock, I think, in history," Zanny Minton Beddoes, the editor-in-chief of The Economist, says.

F. Scott Fitzgerald would be stunned to know that celebrations of Gatsby's centennial are taking place around the world this year. The novel was largely forgotten at the time of his death in Hollywood in 1940 at the age of 44.

In his new book, 'Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History,' author Chris Whipple argues that Biden's family and closest advisers operated in a "fog of delusion and denial" with regard to his ability to serve another term.

Isbell’s sort of routinely great in interviews; he can’t help himself. But with the GREATEST interviewer, you get what might be his greatest interview.

Jason Isbell on playing old love songs now, post-divorce: "Writing songs and watching how the meanings of those songs evolve over time, that's just art. I think it's that way for everybody who creates something that has emotional weight to them."

As ICE agents arrest international students at campuses across the U.S., immigration law professor Daniel Kanstroom discusses the human cost. He says the round-ups are designed to "send a message... to scare people, and it's working."

"There's a wonderful saying, which is, it takes a village to raise a child," Stephen Graham says. "And within that kind of complexity of what that says, to me, within what we are doing, it's kind of like maybe we're all accountable?"

I'm on @nprfreshair.bsky.social! Please listen! prfx.byspotify.com/e/play.podtr...

Review: Misericordia is one of the most surprising films our critic's seen this year. It focuses on a man who returns to his small village for a funeral — only to become enmeshed in countless entanglements. @justincchang.bsky.social

"Two very young women went to Perugia and one of them didn't get to go home and one of them came home completely and utterly changed," Amanda Knox tells @tonyamosley.bsky.social. "It's a grieving process for me, for both of us."

Looking ahead, we'll likely see more Congressional disfunction, rather than less — especially since "it seems that voters actually like the fisticuffs." @lukebroadwater.bsky.social @anniekarni.bsky.social

Review: Robert De Niro plays rival mob bosses in a new biographical crime drama. But while it's fun to watch De Niro argue with himself, The Alto Knights ultimately feels dubious and derivative. @justincchang.bsky.social