FRESH AIR: A new book examines the conservative direction the Supreme Court has headed in over the past 50 years, ever since Nixon became president. The author, my guest Adam Cohen, writes, for five decades, the court has, with striking regularity, sided with the rich and powerful against the poor and weak in virtually every area of the law. He says, in campaign finance law, the court has opened the floodgates to money from wealthy individuals and corporations. In election law, it’s upheld rules and practices that make it more difficult for the poor and racial minorities to vote. […]
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NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Here It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is now the richest man in the world, with an empire that stretches from Hollywood to Whole Foods — and even into outer space. The new PBS Frontline documentary, Amazon Empire: The Rise And Reign Of Jeff Bezos, investigates how Bezos transformed Amazon from an online bookseller into a trillion-dollar business that’s unprecedented in its size and reach. Director James Jacoby, who worked with fellow filmmaker Anya Bourg on the project, calls the company an “inescapable part of our modern lives.” “It’s not just how the majority of Americans are shopping online,” he […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR: “The Trump campaign is planning to spend more than $1 billion, and it will be aided by a vast coalition of partisan media, outside political groups and freelance operatives who are poised to wage what could be the most extensive disinformation campaign in U.S. history. Whether or not it succeeds in reelecting the president, the wreckage leaves behind could be irreparable.” That’s what my guest, McKay Coppins, writes in the new issue of the Atlantic in his article “The 2020 Disinformation War: Deepfakes, Anonymous Text Messages, Potemkin Local-News Sites, And Opposition Research On Reporters – A Field […]
GOD OF THUNDER: A Q&A With Gene Simmons
EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview originally published in June 2017. We are reprising it now in advance of Kiss’ performance at the PP&L Center in Allentown tomorrow night, the second date on the End Of The Road farewell world tour, with David Lee Roth opening. We will be sending a writer and photographer, stay tuned for a complete report. In the meantime, enjoy. BY JONATHAN VALANIA In advance of his performance at the Trocadero tonight as part of the Wizard World Philadelphia Comic Con nerd jamboree at the Pennsylvania Convention Center (June 1-4), we got Gene Simmons, commander in chief […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR: Amy Rigby was a sheltered Catholic teen from the Pittsburgh suburbs when she moved to New York City to attend Parsons School of Design and fell in love with the ’70s punk scene. “Downtown seemed to be where I felt comfortable,” she says. “It was grungy. It was dirty. It was dark. Everyone was smoking. It smelled of beer. And it felt like it was always really, really hot or really, really cold in New York back then.” Rigby spent years hanging out in the punk clubs before she found her calling as a singer-songwriter, playing first […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR: The stories of the hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal to silence them about their affairs with Donald Trump were first reported in The Wall Street Journal by my guest, Joe Palazzolo and Michael Rothfeld. Last year, their “Hush Money” series won a Pulitzer Prize. Palazzolo and Rothfeld have expanded on that reporting in a new book called “The Fixers: The Bottom-Feeders, Crooked Lawyers, Gossipmongers And Porn Stars Who Created The 45th President.” The hush money payments were made on behalf of Donald Trump with Trump’s knowledge during the […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR: Director Todd Phillips is fascinated by what he calls “left-footed characters” — people who are “out of step with the world.” His most recent film, Joker, is an origin story — of sorts — for the villain in the Batman series. The movie stars Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck, a party clown and aspiring stand-up comic who lives in a city overcome by garbage, rats and unemployment. Cuts in social services mean that Arthur is unable to afford the medications he needs to manage his mental illness. As Arthur’s mental health deteriorates, he begins to adapt the […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR: I’m Terry Gross. My guest Adam Sandler is famous for his comedy films and his work on “Saturday Night Live” in the ’90s. But he’s also given some terrific performances and dramas. He stars in the new manic thriller, “Uncut Gems,” which was written and directed by the Safdie brothers – Josh and Benny Safdie – who are also with us. Sandler plays Howard Ratner, a jeweler in Manhattan’s Diamond District who always has a deal or a con going on and never stops talking. And he’s a gambler. He’s made a lot of money and lost […]
LEONARD COHEN: On Moonlight
PREVIOUSLY: Leonard Cohen Is Ready To Die PREVIOUSLY: Leonard Cohen Is Dead RELATED: Adam Cohen Discusses His Father’s Work On Fresh Air PREVIOUSLY: Everybody knows that 2016 was a cruel and unusual year. Intolerably cruel. Everybody knows that war is over and everybody knows the good guys lost. So I am only half-kidding when I ask: How can we possibly be expected to endure the abominable presidency of Donald Trump without David Bowie, Prince or Princess Leia? But I’m dead serious when I say we can’t do this without Leonard Cohen, who died at the ripe old age of 82 […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR: In 2006, as Russia was preparing to host the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg, its parliament passed a law legalizing extrajudicial killings of accused “extremists” abroad. “It was an extraordinary moment,” BuzzFeed News journalist Heidi Blake says. “Even as Western leaders were sitting around the table with Putin in St. Petersburg, at that very moment, laws were being passed … that enabled enemies of the Russian state to be murdered by Russian state agents on foreign soil with absolute impunity.” Blake maintains that Russia subsequently engaged in an assassination program that targeted exiled Russian oligarchs, security officials […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR: Andrew Marantz has spent the past three years reporting on the alt-right’s use of social media. He’s embedded with the people he describes as the trolls and bigots and propagandists who are experts at converting fanatical memes into policy. Marantz is a staff writer for The New Yorker and started this reporting project during the 2016 presidential campaign. He watched how extremist memes and lies were created and went viral, and he profiled the people creating the means. Marantz has also been reporting on social media platforms, like Facebook, Twitter and Reddit, that claim they’re dedicated to free […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR: Judd Apatow was a teenager when he first “met” comic Garry Shandling in a phone interview for his high school radio show. Years later, their paths intersected again when Shandling, who was hosting the Grammy Awards, hired Apatow to write jokes for him. Shandling had been Johnny Carson’s guest host on The Tonight Show before creating and starring in the groundbreaking comedy series It’s Garry Shandling’s Show and The Larry Sanders Show. He became Apatow’s mentor and close friend. “He completely changed my life,” Apatow says of Shandling. “He hired me to write for his show. He […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR: Dan Piepenbring was a 29-year-old editor of the literary magazine The Paris Review in 2016 when he met Prince for the first time — and agreed to help the musical icon pen a memoir. It was the assignment of a lifetime for a writer who had not yet published a book, but Prince wanted someone he could open up to — and Piepenbring fit the bill. “If there was any advantage to the kind of guilelessness that I brought to our conversations, it was that it let me listen to him very openly and without judgment,” Piepenbring […]