Fresh Air

"My father was not a good person, but he was a great character," Sedaris says. The humorist writes about his efforts to make peace with his memories of his late father in Happy-Go-Lucky.
Also, Ken Tucker reviews Kendrick Lamar's new album, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers.

Carlin was one of the most famous comics to emerge from the '60s counterculture. After it was broadcast on radio, his comic monologue Seven Dirty Words You Can't Say on Television became the focus of an obscenity case that made it all the way to the Supreme Court. Carlin is the subject of a new two-part HBO documentary by Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio. Carlin spoke with Terry Gross in 1990 and 2004. Our TV critic, David Bianculli also reviews the documentary.
Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews the reissue of Max Roach's classic 1960 album We Insist! Freedom Now Suite. Last month, it was named to the National Recording Registry.

As a kid, Silverman says, the fact that she wet the bed was her "deepest, darkest shame." Decades later, she wrote about the humiliation in her 2010 memoir The Bedwetter — now adapted into a musical. The comic talks with Terry Gross about the songs, cringing at some of her old jokes, and satirizing the Left in I Love You, America.

Historian Kelly Lytle Hernández tells the story of the rebels who fled Mexico to the United States, and helped incite the 1910 Mexican Revolution that overthrew dictator Porfirio Díaz. Hernández spoke with guest interviewer Tonya Mosley about her new book, Bad Mexicans. "People who were being disparaged at that time as 'bad Mexicans' in the United States were those who organized, those who protested against the conditions of what was then known as Juan Crow, a similar form of social marginalization as Jim Crow," Hernández says.
Also, Maureen Corrigan recommends the new novel The Poet's House, which she describes as a wry and vivid story about class, competition, and the magic of art.
And Lloyd Schwartz reviews early recordings by the late violinist Joseph Szigeti.

We remember actor Anne Heche, who died Sunday at age 53. She starred in Donnie Brasco, Wag the Dog, Six Days, Seven Nights, and Walking and Talking. Early in her career, she made headlines when she had a relationship with Ellen Degeneres. She spoke with Terry Gross in 2000.
Also, we listen back to our 2015 interview with actor Jonathan Banks, who co-starred as fixer and hitman Mike Ehrmantraut on Better Call Saul.
Ken Tucker reviews the new album by Loudon Wainwright III about growing older, and John Powers reviews the new documentary Three Minutes: A Lengthening.