Gracie and Rachel met in high school and they’ve been playing music together ever since. You can hear the connection and familiarity they feel with one another in their lush harmonies, haunting melodies and lyrics that express vulnerability and emotional depth. Gracie and Rachel tour extensively and record on Grammy-winning singer Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records. They’re also featured on two NPR Tiny Desk concerts. I spoke to Gracie and Rachel in the Brooklyn loft where they live and create their work. At the end of our conversation, Gracie sat down at the piano and Rachel picked up her violin. They treated us to a live performance of Ideas, a song about empowerment and change from their album Hello Weakness, You Make Me Strong.

Garrison Keillor spent 42 years as the host of “A Prairie Home Companion, a folksy show that was performed live on Saturday nights and broadcast on hundreds of public radio stations. Keillor, who likes to wear red sneakers, brought his audience news from Lake Wobegon, a fictional town in the state of Minnesota where he grew up. He also performed in skits where he played Guy Noir, Private Eye. Keillor likes to sing patriotic songs and recite poetry. He’s also written more than 15 books and many articles for the New Yorker and the Atlantic. Keillor is currently at work on a novel which he says he better finish fast. “I’m 82. I don’t have time to write Moby Dick.” We talk about why he likes being old, his fellow Minnesotan Tim Walz and the joys of living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.  

He worked for CNN for 17 years. One day last year Don Lemon woke up to find out he he’d been fired. Lemon had won Emmys for his reporting on the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa and the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. He also hosted Don Lemon Tonight where he talked about controversial topics with politicians and newsmakers. Lemon ran into trouble after he began co-hosting a morning show and made a comment about a former Republican Presidential candidate in a discussion about age: “Nikki Haley is not in her prime, sorry.” After leaving CNN, Lemon made a deal with Elon Musk to host an exclusive show on X. That fell apart and Lemon’s show is now streaming on digital platforms and YouTube TV. He’s also written a book called I Once Was Lost about his Christian faith. We talk about how you pick up the pieces after a fall.

 Stan Milford is a Navajo Ranger who spent more than a decade investigating paranormal activities. Milford says he examined hauntings, witchcraft and skinwalkers. He also looked into reports involving dozens of witnesses who claim to have seen a creature known as Bigfoot on the Navajo reservation, an area of 27,000 miles that runs through 4 states. Milford says he took the reports of all these incidents seriously and understands that the people who experience them can be deeply affected by what they’ve seen. Milford, who describes himself and his partner as a real-life X-files team, talked about what might be other dimensions on the Netflix series Unsolved Mysteries. And he’s written a book about a lifetime of mysterious occurrences called The Paranormal Ranger.

David Rohde is a National Security reporter for NBC News and a longtime foreign correspondent. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the war in Bosnia. When Rohde was a reporter for the New York Times, he was kidnapped by the Taliban and held for 7 months before he managed to escape. Rohde's latest book is called Where Tyranny Begins. He looks at all the ways in which former President Donald Trump tried to interfere with the Department of Justice including the FBI. We know about many of these instances but when you read the meticulous reporting job Rohde has done and listen to our conversation, you see Donald Trump’s actions as an attack on our democracy itself.  

Griffin Dunne, the actor and producer who early in his career starred in Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, often thinks out of the box. He grew up in Beverly Hills in a family of story tellers. His father Dominick was a celebrity journalist. His uncle, the screenwriter John Gregory Dunne was married to Joan Didion. In addition to acting in series like This is Us, Griffin has written a memoir called The Friday Afternoon Club which tells the story his life and a family tragedy that will never be forgotten: the murder of his sister Dominique. We talk about getting through the tough times and how you start laughing again. 

Charles Busch made a name for himself as a playwright and a leading lady in drag with productions like the off-Broadway cult classic Vampire Lesbians of Sodom. That campy theatrical spoof was followed by his movie Psycho Beach Party. Busch was recently inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame for his Tony-award winning play The Allergist’s Wife. He appeared in the TV show Oz where he plays a cross-dressing homosexual who smothers his Mafia cellmate. When it comes to playing male roles, Busch says he’s nothing great. It’s when he puts on gowns and wigs that his imagination really takes flight. Sitting in his duplex apartment with the red walls and a closet filled with sparkly gowns, we talk about his tell-all memoir Leading Lady and what it was like to be a sex worker before becoming an overnight sensation on stage. Then Charles dresses me up like Norman Desmond for this photo. So much fun. So many laughs.

She’s a film director who made a movie called Desperately Seeking Susan in 1985. It’s a caper that revolves around mistaken identity that stars Rosanna Arquette and a then unknown Madonna. Seidelman went on to direct She Devil with Meryl Streep in her first comedic role and Roseanne Barr performing in her first feature film. But Hollywood is a tough place for women directors. Nora Ephron came on the scene and directed Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail in the 1990s. And 25 years later Greta Gerwig had a big hit with Barbie. Seidelman eventually started working in TV, directing the pilot episode of a series that was to become a cultural icon, Sex and the City. She’s written a memoir called Desperately Seeking Something. We talk about sexism, ageism and the challenge of staying on top of your game.

Chelsea Devantez is a writer and comedian who has a good time being outrageous, hilarious and outspoken. She grew up in a family that moved around a lot when she was a kid. They never had much money. She was bullied in school. She was a victim of domestic violence.  Chelsea had always wanted to be an artist. And her dream came true when she was hired to perform as part of the improv team at Second City in Chicago. Chelsea got her next dream job when Jon Stewart hired her to be the head writer of his streaming series The Problem with Jon Stewart. Now, she produces original comedy projects at 20th Century Studios. Chelsea is also the host of the Glamorous Trash podcast and she’s written a memoir called I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This. We talk about all the things she shouldn’t be telling us.

I started to think a lot about music when I knew I’d be talking to Chuck D, the rapper and frontman of the hip hop group Public Enemy. I related to the rock and roll of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Rap was from a different generation. Some critics point to Public Enemy as the revolutionary voice in hip hop which helped to plant the genre in the heart of American culture. Chuck D and Flavor Flav formed Public Enemy in 1985 and the group became known for its political messages on albums like Fear of a Black Planet. But in the decades since he first became a legendary hip hop artist, Chuck D developed his talent as an artist illustrating three graphic books. His latest, Rap Pilates, is about the exercise he credits with helping him to perform high-energy concerts. We talk about drawing, creativity and changing the world.

Ever since he was a kid, Nicholas Kristof dreamed of being a foreign correspondent. And that’s what he spent decades doing, traveling to more than 150 countries to cover conflicts and crises. Kristof is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for his reports on the deadly Tiananmen Square protests and for columns focusing attention on genocide in Darfur. He’s exposed human rights abuses, social injustices, global health catastrophes and gender issues in the developing world. Kristof has also been called the moral conscience of a generation. His new memoir is called Chasing Hope. We talk about close calls, terrifying moments and how to be an optimist in a world torn apart by conflict. 

Gail Godwin has written 18 books. Many of her novels were best sellers including A Mother and Two Daughters and Evensong. Three of them were finalists for the National Book Award. Her book Grief Cottage features a boy who has a relationship with a ghost. Godwin says she herself has seen ghosts. When she was a reporter, an apparition dressed in a medical uniform once visited her in the middle of the night. Godwin’s new book is a memoir. It opens with the story of how the writer, who’s 87, went into her back yard to water her dogwood tree, wound up falling on her face and breaking her neck. We talk about how curiosity saved her in her darkest moments on the new episode of “Now What?”

Lahiri grew up in Rhode Island after her family emigrated from India when she was a toddler. Her first language was Bengali and she spoke English in school. When she was 32, Lahiri won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her first book called Interpreter of Maladies. It was an honor but it also put a lot of pressure on her as a writer. Then she fell in love with the Italian language and when she moved to Rome, she discovered a kind of freedom. Now, Lahiri writes her books in Italian. Her latest work of fiction is called Roman Stories. We talk about identity, culture and what it’s like to live between 2 different worlds on the new episode of “Now What?”