Monday, May 30, 2022

David Sedaris, Kendrick Lamar, Sarah Silverman

Terry Gross (Fresh Air, NPR.org, from WHYY); CC Liu, Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Fresh Air is a Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues, one of public radio's most popular programs. Hosted by Terry Gross, the show features intimate conversations with today's biggest luminaries.

Today (May 31, 2022) it's gay writer David Sedaris (the brother of the funnier Amy "Jerry Blank" Sedaris), returning with his new book, Happy-Go-Lucky. "My father was not a good person, but he was a great character," Sedaris says.

The humorist writes about his odd family and efforts to make peace with his memories of his late father in Happy-Go-Lucky. Rapper Kendrick Lamar's new album is reviewed after five years since his last release. It's a more pensive and conversational record [with, alas, no "bangers" it sounds like].

MAY 30, 2022: Country music stars Tim McGraw and wife Faith Hill star in the Paramount+ series 1883. The show tells the story of a group of Eastern European immigrants trying to make their way in covered wagons from Texas to Oregon. Before they filmed, they attended "Cowboy Camp," to learn the basics of riding horses and driving wagons. Dave Davies spoke with McGraw about the series, falling in love with Faith Hill, and learning about his birth father, MLB pitcher Tug McGraw.

MAY 28, 2022: It's the best of Fresh Air: Comic Sarah Silverman - As a kid, Sarah Silverman says, the fact that she wet the bed was her "deepest, darkest shame." Decades later, she wrote about the humiliation in her 2010 memoir The Bedwetter — now adapted into a musical. The comic talks with Terry Gross about the songs, cringing at some of her old jokes, and satirizing the Left in I Love You, America.

MAY 27, 2022: Angela Lansbury - In June, Lansbury will receive the Tony Award for lifetime achievement. The Murder, She Wrote star previously won Tonys for her performances in Gypsy and Sweeney Todd. She spoke with Terry Gross in 2000.

MAY 26, 2022: How a Disinformation and Harassment Expert Became a "Target" with ex-chief Disinformation Czar for Biden's White House Nina Jankowicz. The divisive [and histrionic-sounding] wannabe music theater star was tapped to head the Biden administration's new Disinformation Governance Board but resigned after being called out for trying to run a US "Ministry of Truth" and deluged with online threats. Her new book is How to Be a Woman Online.

MAY 25, 2022: Diana Goetsch's Long Journey to Living as a Woman -- transsexual Diana Goetsch grew up in a time when s/he didn't have the language to help him/her understand what it meant to be trans. The poet chronicles her later-in-life transition in the memoir This Body I Wore. "I felt that the universe owed me 50 years as a female living this way," she explains. "That's crazy, but it's this sense that I wanted more life."

MAY 24, 2022: Comic Sarah Silverman [because we can't enough of our favorite female standup comic] - As a kid, Silverman says, the fact that she wet the bed was her "deepest, darkest shame." Decades later, she wrote about the humiliation in her 2010 memoir The Bedwetter — now adapted into a musical. The comic talks with Terry Gross about the songs, cringing at some of her old jokes, and satirizing the Left in I Love You, America.

Fresh Air

From NPR

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