Terry Gross

Film critic JUSTIN CHANG reviews Silent Friend, a century-spanning film about humanity’s relationship with the plant world.

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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.

TV critic DAVID BIANCULLI reviews the latest adaptation of William Golding's classic novel Lord of the Flies. It's the first adaptation for television and it is presented by Netflix and the BBC.

(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)

Critic-at-large JOHN POWERS reviews The Devil Wears Prada, 2 starring Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep.

We remember conductor, composer and musician MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS. He was a longtime music director of The San Francisco Symphony, known for his innovation, his ability to translate classical music for the general public, and for fostering contemporary music. He founded the New World Symphony for young players. He got his musical inheritance from his grandparents, who were stars of the Yiddish theatre. Tilson died last week at age 81. He had battled brain cancer since 2022. (THESE INTERVIEWS ARE REBROADCAST. THEY ORIGINALLY AIRED ON SEPTEMBER 27, 1995 and MARCH 28, 2012.)

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