Pop Culture

Marielle Heller's film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood centers on Fred Rogers' unlikely friendship with a cynical journalist. Originally broadcast Nov. 20, 2019.

The flute-playing pop star reflects on self-acceptance in this May 23, 2019, interview: "About 10 years ago, I made the decision that I just wanted to be happy with my body."

In the second half of our two-part interview, Stern talks about his 2017 cancer scare, his thoughts on retirement and his mother's depression. His new book is Howard Stern Comes Again.

Looking back on his early career, Howard Stern remembers being "petrified" that he wasn't going to be able to make a living. "All the sexual antics, the religious antics, the race antics — everything that I talked about, every outrageous thing that I did — was to entertain my audience and grow my audience," he says. "Whether you liked it or not, or the person down the street liked it or not — I didn't care as long as I kept growing that audience."

Judy Garland's daughter Lorna Luft talks about what her mother went through while making the 1954 film. The movie was produced by Sid Luft, who was Lorna's father and Garland's husband at the time.

Jay, who died Sunday, was an avid scholar of con games and could make cards disappear and reappear in ways that seemed impossible. He spoke to Fresh Air in 1987, 1998 and 2002.

Billionaire filmmaker Howard Hughes has long been regarded as one of Hollywood's most eccentric and prolific playboys. A few years back, writer and film critic Karina Longworth stumbled onto an online message board, listing women Hughes had had sexual relationships with — just a list of names, no other information.

"In each of these names there's a whole life and a whole story," says Longworth, who hosts the film podcast You Must Remember This.

The filmmaker behind Hairspray and Pink Flamingos made his name setting new lows in bad taste. The Baltimore Museum of Art now has a retrospective of his work. Originally broadcast 2004 and 2010.

Vanity Fair editor-at-large Cullen Murphy grew up the son of a cartoonist. His father, John Cullen Murphy, drew the popular Prince Valiant strip, which Murphy eventually wrote for 14 years.

Billy Eichner indulges his passion for all things pop culture as host of the truTV series, Billy on the Street. On the show, Eichner roams the sidewalks of Manhattan with a microphone, asking strangers open-ended questions about pop culture, and offering them a dollar if he likes their answers.