Fresh Air Weekend: Novelist Thomas Mallon; Life and Death in the ER

Fresh Air Weekend highlights some of the best interviews and reviews from past weeks, and new program elements specially paced for weekends. Our weekend show emphasizes interviews with writers, filmmakers, actors and musicians, and often includes excerpts from live in-studio concerts. This week:

Novelist Thomas Mallon looks back on the early years of the AIDS epidemic: The New Yorker recently published Mallon’s diary excepts detailing life in Manhattan in the ’80s. His new novel, Up With the Sun, isbased on the life of a little-known actor who was gay and closeted.

‘Return to Seoul’ is a funny, melancholy film that will surprise you start to finish: In this wonderfully unpredictable film, first-time actor Park Ji-min stars as Freddie, a young woman raised by adoptive parents in France who returns to the country of her birth.

An ER doc reflects on life, death and uncertainty in the early days of COVID-19: Dr. Farzon Nahvi spent the first few months of the pandemic as an emergency room physician in Manhattan. He talks about trying to improvise treatments during that time. His new book is Code Gray.

You can listen to the original interviews and review here:

Novelist Thomas Mallon looks back on the early years of the AIDS epidemic

‘Return to Seoul’ is a funny, melancholy film that will surprise you start to finish

An ER doc reflects on life, death and uncertainty in the early days of COVID-19