Fresh Air

The retired Army officer who testified about President Trump's call to the president of Ukraine, talks about the experience and the price he paid. Vindman's new memoir is 'Here, Right Matters: An American Story.'

Also, John Powers reviews the novel 'Bullet Train,' a thriller about five assassins boarding the same train.

Strong is nominated for an Emmy for 'Saturday Night Live.' She also stars in the new show 'Schmigadoon,' about a couple that ends up trapped in a town where life is a musical and the townspeople frequently burst into song. Her new memoir is about the depression, anxiety, and grief she experienced during the first months of the pandemic. "I just kept thinking, all the work I've done on myself with anxiety, I'm going to lose it all because of this," she says...

After winning an Oscar for co-writing the film 'Moonlight,' McCraney says he received a lot of opportunities, many of which he turned down. "Some of it had to do with waiting for the other shoe to drop," he says. He's now the creator of the TV series 'David Makes Man,' which is in its second season on OWN. The series begins with a Miami boy whose mother struggles with addiction — and has echoes of McCraney's own childhood...

76 years ago, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. Historian Lesley M.M. Blume's book, 'Fallout,' tells the story of John Hersey, the young journalist whose on-the-ground reporting in Hiroshima exposed the world to the devastation of nuclear weapons. "Hersey had seen everything from that point, from combat to concentration camps," Blume says. "But he later said that nothing prepared him for what he saw in Hiroshima...

Jane Mayer's latest investigation for 'The New Yorker' is about rich and powerful conservative groups that are exploiting Trump's false claims of widespread election fraud in order to promote alterations in the way that ballots are cast and counted. "The 2020 election is long since over in most people's minds, and settled and decided," Mayer says...

As the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks approaches, a new biography traces Osama bin Laden's path from a shy, religious teenager to the leader of a global jihadist group dedicated to mass murder. Journalist Peter Bergen, who met the al-Qaida leader in 1997, says that a series of events kept pushing bin Laden "further and further down the path of radicalization." Bergen's new book is 'The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden.'

James Lapine collaborated with Stephen Sondheim to create three musicals — 'Sunday in the Park with George,' 'Into the Woods,' and 'Passion.' "We're very, very different," Lapine says. "I tend to jump into the deep end of things and figure out how to swim. And Steve is very analytical and doesn't start writing until he knows exactly where he's going." Lapine has written a new book about the making-of 'Sunday in the Park' called 'Putting it Together...

Hall is the writer and a producer of 'Tina: The Tina Turner Musical.' She won a Pulitzer Prize for her play 'The Hot Wing King.' She's also the creator of 'P-Valley,' a breakout show on Starz about the women working in a fictional Mississippi strip club. "Any time I get an opportunity to lay my hands on a Black woman's story, I just want to make sure that she is fully rendered," Hall tells 'Fresh Air' guest interviewer and 'Atlantic' staff writer Hannah Giorgis...

Abumrad is the creator of the hit public radio series 'RadioLab.' The new 'RadioLab' miniseries, 'The Vanishing of Harry Pace,' is about the man who co-founded a publication with WEB DuBois, founded the first Black-owned record company, helped desegregate a Chicago neighborhood — and then kind of disappeared. Abumrad also co-reported the podcast miniseries 'Dolly Parton's America.'

Also, Maureen Corrigan reviews the novel 'Wayward' by Dana Spiotta.

Finally, Dr...

Vance is nominated for an Emmy for his guest appearance in the HBO series 'Lovecraft Country.' He played the charismatic and show-stopping attorney Johnnie Cochran in 'The People v. O.J. Simpson.' More recently, he played Aretha Franklin's father, Rev. C.L Franklin, in 'Genius: Aretha.'

Also, John Powers reviews a new edition of a 1963 novel by black reporter William Gardner Smith.

Then, we remember pioneering civil rights activist Bob Moses. He died Sunday at age 86...