High Plains Public Radio

Fresh Air Weekend highlights some of the best interviews and reviews from the past, as well as new program elements specially paced for weekends. Our weekend show emphasizes interviews with writers, filmmakers, actors and musicians, and it often includes excerpts from live in-studio concerts. This week: Everywhere Man traces the trajectory of under-the-radar music producer Peter Asher: When Asher was a teen in the '60s, Paul McCartney lived with his family and wrote Beatles songs.

This week's show was recorded in Milwaukee with host Peter Sagal, judge and scorekeeper Alzo Slade, Not My Job guest Jason Narducy and panelists Alonzo Bodden, Adam Burke, and Negin Farsad. Click the audio link above to hear the whole show.

The New York Times says several of its journalists have been subpoenaed by the Department of Justice over their reporting on Air Force One, describing it as a "brazen act." On Wednesday, the newspaper published an anonymously sourced story that the Secret Service urged President Trump to leave the recent NATO summit in Turkey on an older version of Air Force One instead of the Boeing 747 donated by Qatar last year because of security concerns.

Updated July 11, 2026 at 10:14 AM CDT Union Pacific Railroad's Big Boy No. 4014– the world's largest operating steam locomotive – has been barnstorming from coast-to-coast in a celebration of America's 250th birthday. Based in Wyoming, the train came east to Philadelphia for the July 4th weekend.

A new film version of Azar Nafisi's critically-praised, worldwide bestselling memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran, is now in theatres. The film shows a group of women meeting clandestinely in Nafisi's home in the mid-1990s, to read forbidden books. They read classics of the West, like Madame Bovary, The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, and Lolita. Education had become dangerous and even deadly during the Islamic Revolution, and reading forbidden books was Nafisi's way to fight back.

In recent years, Sangita Kalita has watched as her mother and mother-in-law go to the local temple — called a naamghar — in Assam State, India and leave disappointed. Each visit, their hope was to read the sacred Hindu texts, "but due to vision issues, they faced a lot of problems recognizing the small letters in the book," explains Kalita.

NPR's Scott Simon talks to Shannon Sanders about "The Great Wherever," her new novel, which tells a story through ghosts from multiple generations of a Black family on a Tennessee farm.

NPR's Scott Simon speaks with sportscaster Andrés Cantor about announcing the 2026 World Cup.

NPR's Scott Simon and sportswriter Howard Bryant discuss the World Cup quarterfinals.

"Steal This Story, Please!", a documentary about journalist Amy Goodman, is appearing at film festivals and community gatherings.