Fresh Air

Our week of archival music interviews continues with Smokey Robinson, one of the greatest soul singers ever, and one of the most important figures in the development of Motown Records. He spoke with Terry Gross in 2006.

The movie Shaft helped launch the blaxploitation genre of the '70s. The academy award-winning theme was composed and performed by Isaac Hayes...

We continue our weeklong series of great music interviews from the archive with singer and songwriter Rosanne Cash. When she was 18, her father, Johnny Cash, gave her a list of 100 essential country songs he thought she should know. After recording many great songs of her own, in 2009 she made an album in which she performed a dozen songs from that list. She spoke with Terry Gross about that record.

We continue our weeklong series of favorite music interviews from our archives with Jay-Z and Lizzo. Jay-Z grew up in a housing project in Brooklyn, and sold drugs before hitting it big as a rapper. He talks about his life and career.

Lizzo grew up thinking she would become a professional, classical flute player. She talks about she how pivoted to pop and hip hop, how Prince helped her, growing up in the church, and making body positivity a theme in her work.

We're continuing our weeklong series of some of our favorite music interviews from our archive. We'll hear several interviews recorded with the late Charlie Haden, one of the greatest bass players in the history of jazz. Haden grew up singing in his family's country music radio shows but turned to the bass when polio damaged his vocal cords. He helped lead a musical revolution in the late 1950s and early '60s, performing in the Ornette Coleman Quartet...

We're kicking off a weeklong series of some of our favorite music interviews from our archive. We'll begin with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, who was our guest in 2010. He'll tell us about cofounding the band, writing songs with Mick Jagger, and how things changed when the Stones became famous.

Later, we'll hear our 2010 interview with Brian May, a founding member of Queen, and their lead guitarist. May wrote one of the band's most famous songs, "We Will Rock You...

Comedian Mo Amer is of Palestinian descent, but he grew up in Kuwait and Houston. So besides his native Arabic, he learned to speak Spanish, and the kind of English that sets Texans at ease. Amer stars in a new Netflix comedy about his life, called Mo.

Also, veteran cold case investigator Paul Holes talks about pursuing serial killers, and the emotional toll of obsessing over gruesome crime scenes. He played a key role in tracking down the Golden State Killer...

The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist talks about Harlem, hooligans, race and class in the '60s. His novel Harlem Shuffle, now out in paperback, is about a furniture store owner in Harlem who's sideline is fencing stolen goods.

Also Justin Chang reviews the new film Three Thousand Years of Longing by director George Miller, who made the Mad Max movies. It stars Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton.

Journalist Jesse Eisinger says a trove of IRS data acquired by ProPublica shows that many of America's billionaires avoid paying any taxes — sometimes by claiming big deductions from posh hobbies.

Also, John Powers reviews the German series Kleo on Netflix, which he says is reminiscent of Killing Eve.

China scholar Michael Beckley says China is engaged in the largest military buildup since World War II, and is being increasingly aggressive with its Asian neighbors and with the U.S. Beckley's book is Danger Zone.

Ken Tucker reviews a reissue by Roger Miller.

Amer stars in a new Netflix comedy about his life called Mo. His family is Palestinian, and fled the first Gulf War, so Amer grew up in Houston from age nine. "Palestinian culture is a folksy farmer kind of mentality and life," Amer says. "And when I came to Texas, one of the things that was really attractive to me was the country music, the folksy music, the storytelling tradition of that." Amer also has two Netflix comedy specials, and co-starred in the Hulu series Ramy...