Society & Culture

Scorsese's latest movie, The Irishman, stars Robert De Niro as a truck driver and World War II veteran who becomes a hit man for the mob. Like many of the director's previous films, The Irishman features backroom deals, shootings and explosions. But Scorsese says the film is also an expression of his "religious beliefs or concerns or obsessions" — particularly in the way it explores morality and what happens to gangsters at the end of their lives.

Journalist David Zucchino says Wilmington, N.C., was once a mixed-race community with a thriving black middle class. Then, in 1898, white supremacists staged a murderous coup that changed everything.

Henry, who died Jan. 8, co-created the film Get Smart with Mel Brooks and made regular appearances as a guest host on Saturday Night Live in the show's early years. Originally broadcast in 1997.

After writing about the lives of girls for decades, Peggy Orenstein, turns her attention to boys in the #Metoo era. Her new book is 'Boys and Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent and Navigating the new Masculinity.'

This week, we're listening back to some favorite Fresh Air interviews from the past decade. In 2016, Springsteen reflected on how he and his music were shaped by home, roots, family and community.

This week, we're listening back to some favorite Fresh Air interviews from the past decade. The Nobel Prize winner, who died in 2019, spoke about aging and regret in this 2015 interview.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg tells us his word of the year, and why he chose it.

In a new film by writer/directors Josh and Benny Safdie, Adam Sandler plays a jewelry store owner and gambler who's deep in debt. The brothers' father worked in Manhattan's diamond district.

Julie Andrews and her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton have written over 30 children's books together. Now they've collaborated on a new memoir about Julie Andrews' Hollywood years, which began when she was invited to Disney studios to play Mary Poppins.

The Oscar-nominated actor, who died Dec. 12, started out as an official with the New York Transit Union, but quit when he was 35 to pursue acting. Originally broadcast in 1992.

Borstein's won back-to-back Emmys for playing a tough, street-wise talent manager on the Amazon series, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. She says the character reminds her of her mother and grandmother.

Author Adam Minter remembers two periods of grief after his mother died in 2015: the intense sadness of her death, followed by the challenge of sorting through what he calls "the material legacy of her life."

Wilson, who died Nov. 21, was fascinated by monsters, which he saw as metaphors for human fears and weaknesses. His work was often inspired by science fiction. Originally broadcast in 1986.

Musician Leonard Cohen left behind many unpublished poems and lyrics when he died in 2016. Now his son Adam, who spoke to Fresh Air in 2018, has a new album of his dad's songs, Thanks for the Dance.

New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz spent years with far-right online extremists, embedding with them and watching them spread false news by exploiting social media. His new book is Antisocial.

As a black gay kid growing up in Texas in the 1990s, poet Saeed Jones remembers getting negative messages about his identity from every aspect of his life. It was around the time of Matthew Shepard's murder in Wyoming, and Jones felt alone and unsafe.

Our ears are complicated, delicate instruments that largely evolved in far quieter times than the age we currently inhabit — an early world without rock concerts, loud restaurants, power tools and earbuds.

Writer David Owen describes our current age as a "deafening" one, and in his new book, Volume Control, he explains how the loud noises we live with are harming our ears.

Kevin Wilson's new book 'Nothing To See Here' about a set of twins who burst into flame when angry or afraid, is inspired in part by the intrusive fearful images he has had since childhood.

Perrotta's novel, Mrs. Fletcher, is now an HBO series. In 2017, he told Terry Gross that the book was inspired by the upheaval he experienced when his kids grew up and moved out of the house.

Jojo Rabbit centers on a 10-year-old boy who joins the Hitler Youth. Writer and director Waititi, who is from New Zealand, is half-Jewish and half-Maori. He plays the boy's imaginary friend, Hitler.