Terry Gross

Writer SALMAN RUSHDIE. Two years ago he was nearly killed at a festival about keeping writers safe from harm. He had just come on stage, when an assailant ran onto the stage, came at him with a knife and kept stabbing Rushdie, for 27 seconds. There was so much damage and blood loss, it’s remarkable he survived. RUSHDIE’S attacker is a muslim extremist, who wasn’t even born when the fatwa, a religious ruling, calling for Rushdie's death was issued by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini. SALMAN RUSHDIE’s new memoir is called Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder.

Diarra Kilpatrick is a write, actor, and star of the new series Diarra from Detroit. It is a dark comedy about a public school teacher going through a divorce who decides to hit the dating scene. When a guy she meets on Tinder ghosts her, Diarra goes on a hunt to find out why — and winds up embroiled in a decades old mystery.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is out. We listen back to archival interviews with film historian Rudy Behlmer about the original 1933 King Kong and with Steve Ryfle about the original 1954 Godzilla.