Fresh Air with Terry Gross

Fictional 'Mothers' Reveal Facts Of A Painful Adoption Process

editor — Wed, 22 May 2013 17:08:00 +0000

After years of trying to conceive, novelist Jennifer Gilmore and her husband decided to pursue a domestic open adoption. They were told they'd be matched within a year; it took four. And along the way they faced complicated decisions and heartbreak.

Gilmore, who has channeled those decisions and heartbreaks into personal essays and articles for outlets such as The New York Times and The Atlantic, has now turned to fiction, her native genre, to explore the experience.

Daft Punk: Accessing Electronic Music's Humanity

Ken Tucker — Wed, 22 May 2013 15:14:00 +0000

I freely admit that, until the new Random Access Memories, I wasn't much of a Daft Punk fan. I could appreciate the craft and imagination that went into creating the French duo's mixture of electronic genres — techno, house, disco — but the mechanical repetitions and heavily filtered vocals didn't turn me on in any other way.

But now, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo have come up with an album that exposes the human side of their musical impulses.

Soderbergh's Liberace, 'Behind The Candelabra'

editor — Tue, 21 May 2013 16:51:00 +0000

Director Steven Soderbergh had been looking for a way to frame a film about the extravagant entertainer Liberace for years when a friend recommended the book Behind the Candelabra: My Life with Liberace.

The book — a memoir — is by Scott Thorson, who for five years was Liberace's lover, though that wasn't publicly disclosed at the time.

Thorson was 40 years younger than Liberace and still in his teens when they met in 1977.

Brooks: "I'm An EGOT; I Don't Need Any More"

editor — Mon, 20 May 2013 17:40:00 +0000

Over the 60 years that Mel Brooks has been in the entertainment business, his name has become synonymous with comedy.

Sarah Vaughan: A New Box Set Revels In Glorious Imperfections

Kevin Whitehead — Mon, 20 May 2013 17:01:00 +0000

Singer Sarah Vaughan came up in the 1940s alongside bebop lions Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, starting out in Earl Hines' big band. Hines had hired her as his singer and deputy pianist, while Gillespie praised her fine ear for chords as she grasped the arcane refinements of bebop harmony.