Fresh Air

A new AARP study finds family caregivers spend, on average, nearly a third of their household income on care. Sometimes, the first challenge is understanding how much help someone needs. We talk with NYT and KFF Health News journalist Paula Span. "Parents will downright lie and tell you on the phone they're fine and they're handling everything, and ‘you can just butt out, thank you,’ and then you go home for Thanksgiving or Christmas and you see the reality and think, things are not fine,” Span tells Tonya Mosley.

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Lifting wallets and watches was part of Turturro's training for the new film, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. In it, he plays a small-time thief who's also the primary caretaker for his ailing wife. Turturro spoke with Terry Gross about growing up around volatility, helping his parents with both construction and dressmaking, and how his background helped him connect with Spike Lee.

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Spanish filmmakers Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi (Los Javis) turned an unfinished play by a gay poet murdered during Spain's Civil War into a sweeping epic. La Bola Negra tells the story of three generations of gay men. They spoke with Tonya Mosley about the making of the film.

Also, New Yorker cartoonists Roz Chast and Jason Adam Katzenstein talk with Terry Gross about their embarrassment and shame over their kitchens.Their new graphic book is The Two Saddest Kitchens.

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Nobel Prize-winning writer Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Klara and the Sun is now a feature film, directed by Taika Waititi. The story is set in a future time, where children no longer go to school; instead they learn on devices, isolated from each other. The story is narrated by a human-like robot, who serves as one child's "artificial friend." Ishiguro spoke with Terry Gross in 2021, at the time of publishing.

Also, Justin Chang reviews La Bola Negra.

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From Virginia to Kansas, the battle over data centers has reached the ballot box this midterm election. Communities are voting on whether to limit or ban the massive facilities being built to power AI – and the fight crosses party lines. Both Democrats and Republicans are accusing their opponents of being too eager to welcome billions of dollars in tech investment without considering the costs. Darrell West, a researcher at the Brookings Institution, has been studying the backlash. He says it's become something much bigger. "The data center fight is no longer just about data centers. It's about AI and its possible impact on people." Communities want to know what they'll have to give up, and who gets to decide.

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Jordan Neely, a Black unhoused man in crisis, was frightening fellow passengers on the New York City Subway. A white former Marine named Daniel Penny put Neely into a chokehold, killing him. Journalist Anand Giridharadas investigates the incident, and what it reveals about American society in Man in the Mirror. He spoke with Tonya Mosley.

John Powers reviews the Thomas Mann film Fatherland.

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Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi — known as "Los Javis" — have turned four pages of an unfinished play by Federico García Lorca into a sweeping epic about three generations of gay men in Spain. They spoke with Tonya Mosley about making La Bola Negra, their creative partnership, and art as a weapon against fascism.

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New Yorker cartoonists Roz Chast and Jason Adam Katzenstein confess to the horrors lurking behind their kitchen cabinets and refrigerator doors – and the comedy they find in their anxiety. They spoke with Terry Gross about their new book, The Two Saddest Kitchens. Katzenstein also talks about his graphic memoir about living with OCD.

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Singer, songwriter, and bassist Meshell Ndegeocello helped define the sound of neo-soul, blending funk, jazz, and R&B into music that was unmistakably her own. Now, on her new album, Synonym, she's taking familiar duets and turning them into something unexpected.

In the hit horror/comedy series Widow's Bay, Betty Gilpin plays a new bride in 1700s New England who finds herself caught in a terrifying satanic curse. She talks about why she’s drawn to weird "anti-algorithm" projects.

Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews some newly released recordings by Stevie Wonder for the 50th anniversary of Songs in the Key of Life.

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Hall of Fame songwriter Jimmy Webb talks about writing some of the 1960s songs he’s best known for: “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” “Wichita Lineman,” and “MacArthur Park.” Now 80, he’s got a new album of unreleased songs titled Yours for the Taking. He spoke with Terry Gross in 2004.

Also, Justin Chang reviews the new film Possible Love, South Korea’s official Oscar submission for Best International Feature.

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"There's an understandable pull in my industry to make things that are kind of like a gleaming vanilla car commercial, like super safe, super familiar, appeal to the masses. And [then there are] people that are out there who are like, I'm actually going to go the other way,” she tells Fresh Air’s Ann Marie Baldonado. Gilpin won an Emmy for her guest role in the horror-comedy Widow’s Bay, and now she currently stars in the noir series The Lowdown. She talks about growing up with actor parents, aging out of archetypal roles, and the 105% it takes to play Mary Todd Lincoln in “Oh, Mary!” on Broadway.

Also, John Powers reviews the documentary Once Upon a Time in Harlem.

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Ahead of the midterms, we talk with two election experts about President Trump’s efforts to interfere with voting. Richard Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project, and Pennsylvania’s lead election official, Al Schmidt. Both are hoping the states, the courts and the public will ensure free and fair elections. They spoke with Fresh Air's Dave Davies.

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Ojibwe writer David Treuer’s new book, The Savage Mind: An American Legacy, is written as a letter to his three children. It examines how the violence that shaped America's founding still influences who we are today. Treuer has spent much of his career challenging the idea that Native American history is a story of tragedy and disappearance, and that Native culture is a thing of the past. He spoke with Tonya Mosley about why he felt compelled to write the book now.

Plus, rock critic Ken Tucker reviews an extended version of Stevie Wonder’s iconic 50 year-old album Songs in the Key of Life.

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Grammy-winning singer, bassist, and composer Meshell Ndegeocello helped shape the sound that became known as "neo-soul," but she's spent more than three decades resisting the labels placed on her and her music. Now, on her new album, Synonym, she's reimagining familiar songs, including duets made famous by Sonny and Cher and the Human League. But these aren't simply new arrangements. “This album is not just about rearranging chords and rhythms, but also about queerness and self-expression, visibility, liberation," she tells Tonya Mosley. Meshell talks about her "soulful" musical influences, growing up in the Baptist church, and why she loves 'Wicked.'

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In his new film, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, Oscar-winning actor Mahershala Ali plays a devout Muslim father and hit man whose life is upended when he suddenly has to care for his children on his own. The role brings together a lot of what has shaped Ali as an actor, including an attraction to characters who live in morally complicated places. “That’s why I think someone like myself signs up to do a part like this,” he tells Tonya Mosley. “Because it isn’t simple. It isn’t easy. It’s a little nasty. It’s a little gray. But it just makes for great drama.”

Also, we hear from writer Yiyun Li. She won a Pulitzer for her memoir about the suicides of her two teenage sons. In her new novel, she escapes the present and writes about two piano prodigies. “I’ve written everything I’ve known about life into this novel,” Li tells Terry Gross.

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The actor Eva Marie Saint died last week at age 102. She won an academy award for her first film role in On the Waterfront opposite Marlon Brando, and in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest she co-starred with Cary Grant. She said Hitchcock didn't give her much direction. “Things like lower your voice, don't use your hands… and look directly into Cary Grant's eyes at all times – which was not difficult.” She told Terry Gross in 2000.

Also Anne Rice's debut novel Interview with the Vampire turns 50 this year. Terry spoke with Rice in 1990. “I think if a vampire were to come to me and say, 'I can make you immortal, we do exist,' I think I might find the offer irresistible,” she said.

Film critic Justin Chang reviews Nathan Fielder’s highly-anticipated documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, You Can See Everything.

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Atlantic staff writer Josh Tyrangiel says Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos each want to colonize the moon, mine its resources and launch thousands more satellites -- but their only real competition is each other. “Ordinarily, we have entrusted the future of our civilizations to people we elect to office,” Tyrangiel tells Terry Gross. “We now have folks with a tremendous amount of power over our future, particularly if you view the future as being partially in space, and we have to reckon with it.”

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As polar ice melts in the Arctic, shipping lanes are opening up, making the region a new zone of super-power competition. Writer Rana Foroohar spoke with Dave Davies about the stakes. Her book is in Sea Change.

Also, Maureen Corrigan reviews the new graphic book The Saddest Kitchens, by New Yorker cartoonists Roz Chast and Jason Adam Katzenstein.

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If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, call or text988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

Li’s teenage sons both died by suicide six years apart, Vincent in 2017 at age 16, and James in 2024 at age 19. Her Pulitzer-Prize winning 2025 memoir, Things in Nature Merely Grow, chronicled the loss of her sons and her effort to go on. Her new novel is about two piano prodigies in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It’s called Music Against the Night. She spoke with Terry Gross about the “abyss” of sadness, finding comfort in piano and writing.

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In his new action thriller, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, Mahershala Ali plays a devout Muslim father and hit man whose life is upended when he suddenly has to care for his children on his own. The role brings together a lot of what has shaped Ali as an actor, including an attraction to characters who live in morally complicated places. He spoke with Tonya Mosley about why the script blew him away, filming Moonlight, and his childhood.

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