Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley's daily NPR interviews, each often paired with a critic's review.
Fresh Air treats conversation as a serious craft. Its interviews move from films and novels to war, grief, music, illness, comedy, and public life without losing their calm center.
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Fresh Air is a daily interview program from NPR and WHYY, built around a single long-form conversation per episode rather than a panel or roundtable format. Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley are the primary interviewers, with David Bianculli appearing as a host for review segments and Fresh Air Weekend material. Guests are drawn heavily from film, television, and comedy — actors discussing specific roles and their careers (Harrison Ford on Shrinking and his Star Wars years, Benicio del Toro on his Oscar-nominated performance), and comedians or writer-directors discussing their creative process (Julio Torres on Problemista and his immigration experience). Alongside entertainment interviews, the show regularly features journalists, historians, and medical professionals discussing reported or research-driven subjects: a magazine writer's year-long sports betting experiment, a Princeton historian's book on amateur blackface performance, a physician's mobile OB/GYN clinic, and a memoirist's account of stage 4 cancer. Many episodes end with a shorter segment in which a Fresh Air critic (John Powers, David Bianculli, or a guest critic) reviews a current film, TV series, or streaming release. The interview style favors detailed biographical and craft-level questioning — how a specific line was improvised, how a role was researched, what a specific data point means — over general banter. Conversations often surface personal or difficult material: illness, addiction, family loss, discrimination, and identity. The show benefits listeners interested in cultural criticism, in-depth celebrity profiles, and reported journalism on social issues, rather than news-cycle commentary or debate-format discussion. Production is a straightforward single-guest interview with light editing and occasional archival or 2024-recorded interviews re-aired around a guest's current release.
Made for: Listeners who want in-depth, single-guest conversations spanning entertainment profiles and reported journalism on social issues like health policy, gambling, and race.
What sets it apart: Unlike single-topic interview podcasts, Fresh Air alternates within the same daily program between entertainment-industry profiles and reported segments on policy and social issues, often closing with a critic's review of a current film or TV release.
Fresh Air from WHYY, the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues, is one of public radio's most popular programs. Hosted by Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, the show features intimate conversations with today's biggest luminaries. Subscribe to Fresh Air Plus! You'll enjoy bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening - all while you support NPR's mission. Learn more at plus.npr.org/freshair And subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Fresh Air Weekly, to get interview highlights, staff recommendations, gems from the archive, and the week's interviews and reviews all in one place. Sign up at www.whyy.org/freshair
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Fresh Air uses exacting interviews and criticism to connect artistic lives, public policy, and personal experience without sacrificing human detail.
Fresh Air treats conversation as a way into both public questions and private experience. Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley ask guests to connect the subject at hand to the assumptions around it, moving from plastic regulation and the Iran war to Black single motherhood, film,…
This is where your John Waters curiosity shares a waiting room with plastic policy and Iran diplomacy.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A steady hour that moves from grief to criticism to TV without losing its shape.
Fresh Air Weekend centers on Amanda Peet, and Terry Gross gives the conversation room to move from acting to the New Yorker essay about breast cancer while both of Peet's parents were in hospice.
A birthday portrait of John Waters, focused on outsiders, taboo, and individuality.
Fresh Air marks John Waters's 80th birthday with a look back at a career built on outsider taste, taboo, and a very specific kind of self-made style.
An Israeli whose parents were killed on October 7 and a Palestinian activist on why they call each other brothers.
Tanya Mosley brings together two men whose grief comes from opposite sides of the same conflict. Maoz Inan lost his parents in the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, among 1,200 Israelis killed that day -- the deadliest attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust.
Amanda Peet reflects on acting, writing, breast cancer, and the family losses that arrived alongside it.
Amanda Peet's conversation with Terry Gross traces a career known for intelligence and wit alongside a harsher stretch marked by breast cancer, the deaths of both parents, and the disorientation that followed.
A sober look at maritime leverage in a war shaped by blockade and diplomacy.
Fresh Air frames the Iran conflict through maritime pressure, with the announced blockade of Iran's ports and the push to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping at the center.
A precise close reading of Morrison's names, verbal sparring, and the craft beneath her stature.
Fresh Air turns attention back to Toni Morrison's sentences, away from the reverence that can gather around her legacy. Tanya Mosley speaks with Namwali Serpell, an author and Harvard professor who has read Morrison since her teenage years and taught her for nearly two decades,…
Two celebrity interviews that turn stagecraft into family story.
Fresh Air Weekend brings together two celebrity conversations: Arsenio Hall reflecting on a childhood dream of late-night hosting, and Jeff Ross speaking with unusual candor about family and vulnerability.
St. Vincent traces poetic songwriting back to family lessons, old selves, and the labor behind performance.
St. Vincent comes through as a musician whose glamour never quite hides the work underneath it. Fresh Air follows her dark, poetic songwriting into questions of persona, gender, intimacy, obligation, self-destruction, and mortality, while the new live album sets those songs…
Guardian reporters explain, in interview, the story behind one day's biggest headline.
The episode opens with Amanda Peet's three-shoes line, then settles into her New Yorker essay about breast cancer arriving while her divorced parents were in hospice on opposite coasts.
John Waters turns 80.
Grief brings two activists together.
Terry Gross introduces actor and writer Amanda Peet, then follows the conversation from Your Friends and Neighbors into the much harder stretch when Peet's parents were dying and she was facing breast cancer.
"A naval blockade is technically an act of war, right?" Dave Davies uses Trump's announced blockade, the Pakistan talks, and the fight over the Strait of Hormuz to ask what the United States is really doing with Iran.
Morrison's stature keeps growing.
Two comedians talk through the places that made them.
St.
A red gynecology table opens the story.
Existential dread sets the frame.
Jeff Ross comes in with the roast comic armor partly off.
Arsenio Hall remembers what changed when the desk went away.
John Lithgow starts with apples.
Julio Torres gets introduced through his work first.
John Lithgow is 80.
Plastic is everywhere now.
An exploration of alpha male camps and the cultural movement around reclaiming masculinity, featuring an interview with journalist Charles Bethea.
An interview with Josh Owens about his experience working at Alex Jones' InfoWars and the disinformation factory.
Host Tanya Mosley interviews musician Jill Scott and actor Riz Ahmed about their careers and personal experiences.
This episode is an obituary tribute to Chuck Norris, chronicling his journey from martial arts champion to Hollywood action star and his iconic role in Walker, Texas Ranger.
This episode explores America's first AI-fueled war with Iran, focusing on the Maven Smart System, the AI model Claude, and Marine colonel Drew Cukor's role in bringing AI to the battlefield.
Terry Gross interviews Brian Stevenson about his exhibition on Civil Rights history and Trump's efforts to erase parts of American history.
Terry Gross interviews John Lee Anderson about the current crisis in Cuba amid Trump's threats and broader Middle East conflicts.
Tanya Mosley interviews Riz Ahmed about his new Prime Video series 'Bait', a spy thriller with comedic and psychological elements.
This episode features an interview with Harrison Ford about his role in the series 'Shrinking' and a review of the film 'Peaky Blinders'.
Jury Duty begins with a trick.
Tanya Mosley interviews singer Jill Scott about her new album and the pressures of fame.
Sam Brigger opens with Francis Spufford's earlier novels, then moves into the love story in Nonesuch.
Terry Gross interviews Iran expert Karim Sadjadpour about the war with Iran, exploring the new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei's precarious position, the regime's decentralized military strategy, and whether the conflict could escalate to World War III.
Terry Gross interviews Daniel Okrent about his new biography of Stephen Sondheim, exploring the composer's life, work, and complex personality.
Fresh Air Weekend host Tanya Mosley interviews actor Delroy Lindo, nominated for his first Oscar at age 70-plus for playing blues musician Delta Slim in Ryan Coogler's Sinners, and novelist Tayari Jones, whose new book Kin follows two motherless girls in 1950s Louisiana.
Fresh Air airs a 2024 interview between NPR's Tanya Mosley and Benicio del Toro, timed to his Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for Paul Thomas Anderson's 'One Battle After Another.' Del Toro discusses his roles in The Phoenician Scheme (Wes Anderson), The Usual Suspects — where he invented a mumbling accent sourced from Joe Frazier and Thelonious Monk to survive dying on page 37 of the script — and Traffic, which made his Puerto Rican identity a career asset rather than a liability.
Fresh Air opens by treating real life as something people now wager on.
Terry Gross interviews Harrison Ford about his current Apple TV series Shrinking, in which he plays a therapist with advancing Parkinson's disease, and about his decades-long career.
Tanya Mosley opens by tracing the stigma attached to Black single mothers.
Terry Gross interviews Princeton historian Raelynn Barnes about her book Darkology, which uncovers the hidden history of amateur blackface performance in America from the 1830s through the 1970s.
Terry Gross interviews New York Times correspondent David Sanger about the escalating U.S.-Iran conflict and potential military action.
Fresh Air covers the congressional investigation into Jeffrey Epstein's network, including Ghislaine Maxwell's offer to testify in exchange for clemency and the release of unredacted Epstein files.
Tanya Mosley interviews legal scholar Dorothy Roberts about her new memoir exploring her family's history of interracial marriage and challenging narratives of race.
An interview with Chris Jennings about his book on the Ruby Ridge siege and its role in spreading apocalyptic and anti-government beliefs.