Terry Gross

Tech reporter JOANNA STERN. She’s chief technology analyst for NBC news. Her new book is called I am Not a Robot: My Year Using AI to do (almost) Everything. It chronicles the experiment she tried throughout most of 2025, handing over every task, large and small, to AI - if AI was capable of doing it. From reading her mammogram and ultra sound, to folding her t-shirts, responding to her email and texts, serving as her therapist, and helping her write her book.

Producer JEFFREY SELLER. He produced Rent with his business partner. Seller's own company produced Hamilton. He also was a producer of Lin Manuel Miranda’s first musical, In the Heights – as well as the satirical adult puppet musical, Avenue Q, and the revival of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, starring Josh Groban. Seller grew up without much money in a neighborhood outside Detroit that was nicknamed Cardboard Village, because the houses were so cheap and shoddy. Seller is the author of the memoir Theater Kid.

(1.) Journalist GEORGE PACKER is a staff writer at The Atlantic. His new article is titled The Venture-Capital Populist: How David Sacks and the New Tech Right went Full Maga and Captured Washington.” He writes about how and why many Silicon Valley leaders have become identified with the Right, with President Donald Trump and MAGA. These tech billionaires are now often referred to as oligarchs, because of their money, power, and access to the White House. (THIS INTERVIEW CONTINUES INTO THE SECOND HALF OF THE SHOW).

Legal scholar KIMBERLE WILLIAMS CRENSHAW. She coined the expressions: critical race theory and intersectionality. She wanted those expressions to help describe racial and gender discrimination in America. Her new memoir is called Backtalker: An American Memoir. (INTERVIEW BY TONYA MOSLEY) (THIS INTERVIEW CONTINUES INTO THE SECOND HALF OF THE SHOW).

(1.) Scottish writer DOUGLAS STUART. His debut novel Shuggie Bain won the Booker Prize in 2020. His other novel is Young Mungo. His latest, John of John, is about a son dealing with the weight of his father’s expectations on a remote Scottish island. Both father and son are concealing their sexualities. (THIS INTERVIEW CONTINUES INTO THE SECOND HALF OF THE SHOW)

Writer, actor, and comedian RICHARD GADD. His Netflix series Baby Reindeer became a phenomenon in 2024, a story about a struggling comedian, a stalker who wouldn't let go, and a sexual assault he'd kept hidden for years. The show won six Emmys. His new HBO series called Half Man, about two boys who become brothers when their mothers fall in love, and who spend the next thirty years trying to survive each other. (INTERVIEW BY TONYA MOSLEY)
(THIS INTERVIEW CONTINUES INTO THE SECOND HALF OF THE SHOW).

New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert says EPA chief Lee Zeldin has rescinded regulations, cut or eliminated departments and terminated the jobs of many scientists. Trump calls Zeldin "our secret weapon."

Terry Gross interviews singer songwriter, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist ST. VINCENT, also known as Annie Clark. (REBROADCAST)

Tonya Mosley interviews Harvard professor NAMWALI SERPELL. Her new book, On Morrison, is a close reading of Toni Morrison's entire body of work, eleven novels, the criticism, plays, and poetry

Terry Gross interviews actor Amanda Peet.