‘In Anatolia,’ A Murder And A Meditation Or Three
Once upon a time, long ago, I asked the late, great Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski why his Three Colors triptych was so operatic. He thought about this for a minute. “My dear,” he said dryly, “life is boring,” and then he tucked into his lunch. I’ve thought of that exchange often when pondering the cosmos [...]
A Secret, A Kiss: ‘The Moment’ Your Life Changed
The six-word memoir conceit grew into a popular series of books, but the editors knew it was tough to share a meaningful story in so few words. So Smith Magazine prompted its community to write about the moments that changed their lives — the moments of clarity, the things that happened to them, the things [...]
Pamela Adlon: From ‘Hill’ Kid To ‘Californication’
When Pamela Adlon meets her daughters’ middle-school aged friends, she asks them nicely not to watch Californication, the show she’s starred in for the past five seasons. “I say, ‘I’d appreciate if you don’t watch my show and you don’t Google me,’” she tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. But Adlon, who plays the brash, unapologetic, [...]
How to Keep That New Year’s Resolution
What’s your New Year’s resolution? Whatever it is, on the next edition of The Living Room, you can hear how to keep it.
A Toast To Fresh, Festive Cocktails
I am no stranger to unnatural drinks. Pittsburgh’s Panther Hollow Inn, home bar for Carnegie Mellon students, is famed for its Purple Hooter — made with vodka, citrus soda and a heavy dose of raspberry liqueur. I was famed for ordering them. If you know how many calories are in these kinds of drinks — [...]
The Big Bad Swap: The Problem With Replaced Music
Imagine that you pay for a copy of a movie you particularly like. You’ve loved it forever; you know it by heart. You fire it up on your TV — or your iPad, or your computer — and you discover that the locations are all different. A scene that once took place on the streets [...]
ABC Hacks Up ‘Work It,’ Which Dares To Ask: What’s A Step Down From ‘Wretched’?
Would that there were an adequate way to convey just how pointless, just how devoid of the barest spark of wit, just how arid a humor desert, ABC’s new sitcom Work It actually is. The story of two men who pretend to be women in order to land pharmaceutical sales jobs, Work It manages to [...]
What’s In Store: 3 Tales Of A Terrifying Future
When I was a kid, I assumed that in the future things would get better and better until we were all driving flying cars and playing badminton with space aliens on top of 500-story buildings. Frankly, I kind of counted on this happening. But now I don’t assume that we’ll just keep going up anymore. [...]
Imprisoned In A Mysterious Mistaken Identity
Alex Gilvarry is the author of From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant. I was a college student in New York City when security checks became the norm. Being half-Filipino with a Scottish last name, I wasn’t easy to profile. And since I was always carrying a big backpack of textbooks in and out of [...]
Seth MacFarlane: A ‘Family Guy’ Sings Out
This week on Fresh Air, we’re marking the year’s end by revisiting some of the most memorable conversations we’ve had in 2011. This interview was originally broadcast on October 17, 2011. When Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane was growing up, his parents exposed him to Broadway, movie musicals and the Great American Songbook. Meanwhile, his [...]
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