Dr. Mary Steichen Calderone is known for her groundbreaking work in reproductive health and sexual education in public schools. Calderone attended medical school later in life, and from 1953-1964 was the Medical Director of Planned Parenthood. In 1965 Calderone founded Sex Information and Education Council in the United States (SIECUS), an organization devoted to establishing sexuality as a part of physical and mental health. Calderone delivers a talk on her life and career.
Godfrey Reggio is an experimental filmmaker whose work makes uses of montage and sound. His first film, a documentary, "Koyaanisqatsi," derives its title from the Hopi word meaning "unbalanced life." The film manipulates images of cityscapes, and Reggio describes it as showing "the beauty of the beast." The film's music is composed by Philip Glass. Reggio intends the documentary to produce a mind-opening experience for the viewer through the fusion of music and image--to be inspiration, not entertainment.
Jane Ira Bloom is a jazz soprano saxophonist and composer. Her most recent album is "Mighty Lights." She joins the show to discuss her choice in instruments as a child, working as a woman in the jazz industry, and branching out into producing her own music.
Judge William Marutani, who was appointed by President Carter to the United Commission on War Relocation and Internment of Civilians, opens up about what judges do, like, and think.
Ethnomusicologist Steven Feld shares soundscapes of the daily life of indigenous rain forest communities in New Guinea. He explains the importance of song as a mode of communication in the cultures he studied.
Etheridge Knight began writing poetry while serving a sentence for robbery. He talks with Fresh Air producer Danny Miller about how he draws inspiration from his past experiences as a former prisoner and drug addict.
The married couple joins Fresh Air's Terry Gross to discuss their experiences a black actors, the need for strong African American writers for theater and television, and their work to promote new works by and about marginalized groups.
Goode will be the first African American mayor in the city's history. He was elected on a platform of job growth, crime reduction, and an improvement of government services. WHYY City Hall reporter Tia O'Brien asks him how he plans to achieve his goals. Fresh Air listeners call in with their questions.
Esther Rolle played a maid in the television show Maude, a role which she hoped would subvert the racist tradition of mammy characters typically given to African American actresses. Rolle now works mostly in theater, and is featured in a production of Carson McCullers' The Member of the Wedding.
Louis Armstrong grew up in poverty and was raised by a single mother. Despite his later success, he remained shy and modest until the end of his life. Biographer James Lincoln Collier looks at the jazz musician's personal and musical development in New Orleans and Chicago.
In conjunction with the Design Since 1945 exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, consumer rights activist Ralph Nader delivers a lecture about the political aspects of aesthetics.
After relocating to England and publishing a book documenting Chinese life, Eve Arnold returned to her home country to capture different facets of the American experience, including Native Americans, biker gangs, Jerry Falwell, and the Ku Klux Klan,
Historian Paul Fussel has observed nine distinct class categories in the United States. He says that, while belief in social mobility is strong in American culture, few people are able to move out of the class into which they were born.
In her new memoir, Deborah Spungen remembers her daughter, who was the girlfriend of the Sex Pistols' bass player Sid Vicious. Vicious confessed to murdering Nancy, but died of a drug overdose before his conviction.
Inspired by cultural shifts in the postwar era, choreographer Alwin Nikolais seeks to break down gender differences in contemporary dance. In order to cultivate a purely aesthetic style, he downplays the sexual tension and eroticism often associated with ballet and other dance traditions.
Mark Alan Stamaty's new anthology of his nationally-distributed cartoon, which follows the misadventures of the fictional congressman Bob Forehead, satirizes the world of policymakers, lobbyists and the White House.
As the founder of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which fought for civil rights using nonviolent tactics, Farmer organized 1961's Freedom Rides.
Fresh Air broadcasts a lecture by music critic and journalist Nat Hentoff. He worries that the accessibility of U.S. citizens' computerized data is leading to increased surveillance and a troubling, Orwellian practice of law enforcement.
The writer and Ms. Magazine founder has a new collection of her work, which collects two decades' worth of essays. She tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross about her writing evolved to become more politically-focused.
