Fresh Air - Best Of: Michael Shannon / ‘Pluribus’ Star Rhea Seehorn

Episode Date: December 13, 2025

Michael Shannon understands he’s associated with some intense, menacing characters he’s played, like Agent Nelson Van Alden in ‘Boardwalk Empire.’ “I’m a big fella, and I got this giant head, and it’s not too difficult for me to seem intimidating I suppose, but it couldn’t be further from what I’m actually like,” he tells Dave Davies. In two new projects, though, Shannon plays good guys. He’s President James Garfield in the new series ‘Death by Lightning’ and he’s a prosecutor trying Nazi leaders for war crimes in the new film ‘Nuremberg.’Also, we hear from Rhea Seehorn, star of Apple TV’s ‘Pluribus.’ The series has a sci-fi premise, but the themes of the show are more existential. Like, what is happiness? What is the importance of individuality? She spoke with Terry Gross. Maureen Corrigan shares her list of the best books of the year.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

From W. H.Y.Y. in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Dave Davies. Today, actor Michael Shannon, he understands he's associated with some intense, menacing characters he's played, like Agent Nelson Van Alden in Boardwalk Empire. I'm a big fella, and I got this giant head, and it's not too difficult for me to seem intimidating, I suppose. But it couldn't be further from what I'm actually like. In two new projects, though, Shannon plays good guys. He's President James Garfield in the new series Death by Lightning, and he's a prosecutor trying Nazi leaders for war crimes in the new film Nuremberg.

Also, we hear from Ray Seahorn, star of Apple TV's Pluribus. The series has a sci-fi premise, but the themes of the show are more existential, like, what is happiness, what's the importance of individuality? Later, Maureen Corrigan shares her list of the best books of the year. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. This message comes from Wise, the app for using money around the globe. When you manage your money with Wise, you'll always get the mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Join millions of customers and visit Wise.com.

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with Albert Brooks and Woody Harrelson. You should do that every afternoon. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Dave Davies. My guest today, actor Michael Shannon, has appeared in nearly a hundred movies in television productions, perhaps best known for playing brooding, villainous, or unhinged characters, like Agent Nelson Van Alden in HBO's Boardwalk Empire. But Shannon's range is far broader, and his two latest friends, projects find him playing real-life historical characters engaged in noble pursuits.

In the film Nuremberg, he plays the U.S. Supreme Court Justice, who organized the International Tribunal to try Nazi leaders for war crimes after the Second World War, serving as lead prosecutor in the ensuing trial. And in the new Netflix series, Death by Lightning, he's President James Garfield, who fought against corrupt Washington politicians for civil service reform before being assassinated only four months in new office. Michael Shannon earned Oscar nominations for his performances in the film's Revolutionary Road and Nocturnal Animals. He's also appeared in the films Take Shelter, Knives Out, The Shape of Water, and Man of Steel, among many others, and in the

Showtime series, George and Tammy. He also formed an indie rock band and has collaborated with musician Jason Nardusi in performing songs from several albums of the group Rien. We'll talk about that. Well, Michael Shannon, welcome back to fresh air. It's been a while. Oh, it's my pleasure, Dave. Thanks for having me. You know, you've had a lot of roles, and as I said, in many of the better-known ones, your characters are unhinged or villainous. In these films, you play not just good guys, but, you know, real historical characters fighting battles to right wrong, strength and democracy. Do you think this was intentional to cast you in these roles? Oh, gosh. I don't know. So much of what has happened in my career just seems like dumb luck, you know?

I don't know what got into these people's heads to look my way for these things. But I sure am grateful that they thought of me, you know. I mean, I guess typically with a project like Nuremberg, I think when people hear that I'm in Nuremberg, they assume I'm playing a Nazi. And when they hear about Death by Lightning, they assume I'm playing the assassin. So I guess it's nice to surprise people.

All right. Well, you know, you play President James Garfield, as we mentioned, in Death by Lightning. That's the Netflix series. He was elected in 1880. What drew you to this project? Well, it started with Candace's book, Destiny of the Republic. Candice Mallard. Yeah, she's been on our show, terrific historian, yeah. And for anybody who watches the program and gets a kick out of it, I highly suggest you read the book if you haven't already. because it's very captivating and very informative and illuminating. But I find that a lot of people really don't know much about this period. It's kind of sandwiched between the Civil War and the World Wars and the Depression, you know, which are all, I guess, more inherently dramatic periods.

But I think this period is really worth studying and looking at because the country seemed very lost at sea, as Garfield hence said, and his address at the Republican Convention. And it's easy, I think, to feel that way now. So if you're curious about how we might get out of this quagmire we're currently in, it might behoove people. to take a look at this period in our nation's history. Yeah, and it's interesting because Garfield was kind of an accidental hero. I mean, he was initially going to nominate someone else for the presidency, and the convention got deadlocked, and people who were so captivated by his speech, they turned to him.

You know, I didn't remember anything about James Garfield. I'm sure most of us don't. But when I saw you in that suit and that big beard and, you know, that long coat and vest and bow tie, I thought, yes, that's the picture we've seen. of James Garfield. Talk a little bit about physically occupying the character. Did you grow that big beard? I literally could not grow that beard, even if you gave me five years.

It wouldn't look anything like that. But we had such a brilliant team of hair and makeup and wardrobe, and they just, they do their magic, you know. Well, I want to play a clip. To set this up, Garfield was a Republican, and the Republican Party had been the dominant party in Washington for years, but it was a party beset by corruption, you know, patronage employment, self-dealing were kind of the rule of the day. There was no such thing as civil service, which Garfield was determined to change. And the scene we're going to listen to is where Garfield had been president a short time, and his opponents within the party were blocking all of his cabinet appointments in the Senate because he refused to give these corrupt politicians the control of key. federal jobs, especially the port collector in New York, because that was a big center of money and patronage.

Anyway, in this scene, there's a bunch of senators and cabinet members gathered in the White House, and they're all arguing with each other because you, as Garfield, are determined to stick with this fight that they think he's never going to win. They think he should just give in and play ball with the machine. You've been listening quietly while they argue, and then you finally erupt with a stern message. Let's listen. Gentlemen, harm yourselves this instant, where I will expel you from this building for good. That includes you, Mr. Secretary.

Now, I made a vow to end the rot in our government. Spoils, patronage, call it what you want. It's no good. Do nothing siphoning taxpayer money for jobs that don't even exist. Elected officials brazenly peddling their influence at auction. This is not how democracy endures. This is wrong, and all of us know it. This is our fight.

One day, years from now, each one of us will be judged by what we do in this moment. how will they talk about us i wonder and that's our guest michael shannon in the new netflix series death by lightning that's a powerful speech you want to talk a little about that moment you know it's interesting i know we're not talking about it right now but it draws a comparison to something that robert jackson says in nuremberg when he's talking to the pope That's your character, right. Yeah. Yes, he tells the Pope, you know, you validated the Nazis and how will you be remembered.

And, you know, sometimes I wonder how much people are really concerned about how they're remembered. In a sense, why would that be important? I mean, you're gone, right? But it's a shame that you have to appeal to people's ego to get them to do the right thing. It shouldn't really be ultimately because you're concerned about how you're remembered. It should be more that you're concerned about the future of the next generation and the generation that follows. But if you can bend people at their ego, then you might as well take advantage of it, I guess. So let's talk about Nuremberg.

You play Robert Jackson, a Supreme Court justice, who's the lead prosecutor in this trial, trying former Nazi leaders for their crimes. You know, people of a younger generation might not be as aware of this as you and I. But he also really kind of organized the whole thing. And I thought we'd hear a clip here. You in this clip are speaking with the Army psychiatrist who has been sent to the prison where these captured Nazis are being held. His job is to keep them from committing suicide for one and then to pursue some combination of therapy and also building psychological profiles to assist in the prosecution. And in this scene, this is well before the trial gets underway.

You're telling the psychiatrist, you want him to get information from Herman Goring, the highest-ranking Nazi, about their defense strategy. And the psychiatrist is resisting. The psychiatrist, he's played by Rami Mollick, speaks first. You want me to be a spy. I want you to do your duty for your country. No, you want me to break doctor-patient confidentiality. I think you already have, Doctor. We read every report. We need more.

Why not just shoot them? That's whatever he wants. I mean, if you're just going to cheat... It's not cheating. If you're asking me to betray my oath... Why not just shoot them and be done with it? After the last great war, we made Germany crawl. We humiliated them, made them pay reparations they can afford.

We made them hate us so much that in less than two decades, they went from a broken nation to near world conquerors. We have to do this right because if we don't, if 15 years from now they come back even stronger, I don't know if we can beat them a third time. If we just shoot these men, we make them martyrs. I'm not going to allow them that. There will be no statues of them.

No songs of praise. I'm going to put Herman Goering on the stand, and I'm going to make him tell the world what he did, so that it can never happen again. You brought me here because of a good, right? No. I brought you here to show you that before the bullets were fired, before tens of millions of men died,

all of this started with laws. this war ends in a courtroom. And that's our guest Michael Shannon with Rami Mollick in the new film Nuremberg. Give us your sense of your character here, Robert Jackson, the Supreme Court Justice on this historic mission, how you got into his head. You know, I was able to do some research that was helpful, a lot of breeding. In addition to his work on the Nuremberg,

trials. I mean, throughout his career, he was a part of so many momentous decisions in the court's history. But I feel like he's a pretty plain dealing, straight shooting kind of guy, you know. And what was really fascinating to me was just how extraordinarily difficult it was for him to do something that seemed very logical and necessary. How much opposition you. he met at every step of the way. How many people said, you know, you shouldn't do this or this isn't how we should handle this situation or let's just shoot him, which was the prevailing sentiment among a lot of the people in power in America at the time. Yeah, we just finished a dreadful catastrophic war, yeah. Yeah. And then now here he is, you know, talking to this very well-meaning

at the time, doctor, and still just meeting so much obstruction. And it goes all the way throughout the story. And I think you finally actually in the showdown going, see him really start to lose it a little bit to say, why is this so difficult? It's so obvious what's happened. It seems to be so obvious what the outcome should be. Why am I having such a hard time? doing this. But I'm so glad that he insisted on it. You know, it was the first time in our civilization's history that there was an international tribunal, I believe. And it was an important president that he established. I wish that it was being honored more fervently nowadays. Right, but there really weren't these international laws before that. So he had a lot of work to do. They were

Improvising a lot of it in a way. Yeah, yeah, I mean, the charges themselves were, I believe, that was the first time that anybody had been charged with, you know, crimes against humanity. I don't think that was a term that existed prior to this trial. Michael Shannon stars as President James Garfield in the new Netflix series Death by Lightning, and he plays a prosecutor trying Nazi leaders for war crimes in the new film Nuremberg. We'll hear more of our conversation after a break. I'm Dave Davies, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.

We're listening to my interview with actor Michael Shannon. He has a busy acting career, but he's also revived his long-standing interest in music. For several years, he and musician friend Jason Nardusi have assembled the band and toured performing covers of whole albums by several artists, focusing in particular on REM. Here they are performing the REM song, Driver 8, on The Tonight Show. Michael Shannon is the lead singer.

The walls are filled up, stone by stone, it feels divided one by one. And the train ductus says, take a break, driver A, driver A, take a break, we've been on this in too long. And the train ductus says, take a break, driver's break, driver A, take a break, we can't reach our destination, but still the way is away. And that is our tree house on the outskirts of the barn. And that is our guest, actor Michael Shannon, singing Driver 8 with a band, including Jason Nardusi. The band sounds tight, I got to say. Do you think that music has informed or affected your acting in any way, you know, rhythm, pace?

Oh, definitely. Yes, they're very interwoven. Particularly when I'm doing theater, I rely on music to inspire me and to give me energy to perform a lot of times. I listen to music on my way to the theater before the show. I mean, I have so many albums on my phone that I'm constantly having to delete things because I'm running out of storage in my memory.

but I just I like to have as much music as close to me as possible at all times yeah yeah REM is aware of you're doing this and I think some of the band members showed up at a performance once

and went on stage with you right I mean they've all yeah when we play in Athens Georgia we've done two tours so far and when we go to Athens they all make a point of coming to that show which is really sweet and special and mind-blowing. And there have been other shows where one of them might make an appearance

depending on where we are in the country. But yeah, they're definitely interested in it. And they've been unbelievably gracious about the whole thing. So what's next for you? Oh, goodness. Well, we are going to do yet another R&M. tour. These tours have been commemorating the 40th anniversary of particular album. So the first one was for Murmer, R.M.M.'s first full-length album. And the second one we did was the 40th

anniversary of Fables of the Reconstruction. So now we are going to go back out on the road with the 40th anniversary of an album called Life's Rich Pageant. And that tour is in February in March. In terms of my actual day job, I'm not quite sure what I'm doing next. I did shoot a film earlier this year called Mr. Irrelevant, which is a football movie in which I play the coach Bill Parcells. Right. And that will be coming out, I assume, sometime next year. But other than that, I don't have anything in the can, the proverbial can, so it'll be, it's as much a mystery to me as anybody else right now. Michael Shannon, thank you so much for speaking with us again. Thanks for having me, Dave.

Michael Shannon is a two-time Academy Award nominee. He stars as President James Garfield in the new Netflix series Death by Lightning, and he plays a prosecutor-trying Nazi leaders for war crimes in the new film Nuremberg. Terry has our next interview. Here she is. One of the most talked about TV series now is the Apple TV series, Pluribus, created by Vince Gilligan. It stars my guest Ray Seahorn. You may know her as the co-star of Better Call Saul, which was both a prequel and sequel to Breaking Bad.

Seahorn and Pluribus were just each nominated for a Golden Globe. In Pluribus, Seahorn plays Carol, a writer of Best Seahorse. selling romance novels. Her life partner, Helen, is her manager. One night, Carol and Helen are leaving a bar when Helen has a seizure and dies. Suddenly, everyone around Carolyn, the bar and in the ER, are frozen in place or have fallen down and having a seizure. And then most of them get up and seem changed. They're talking and walking in unison. Their faces are somewhere between happy and hypnotized. What's going on? Back home, when Carol turns on the teeth, looking for a new show that might explain. All the channels are blank, except C-SPAN. A man on that

channel is at a White House podium talking directly to Carol by name. He gives her a phone number to call for more information. She calls, and the man she saw on the TV is the one talking to her, he apologizes for Helen's death. Millions of others have died, including the president. He explains that everyone now has the benefits of an extraterrestrial technology. Through pulsing signals that were sent, everyone around the world is now held together by a psychic glue. Here's part of that scene. Rest assured, Carol, we will figure out what makes you different.

Figure it out, why? So we can fix it. So you can join us. Carol, you're still there? You said my life was my own. It is 100%. So what happens when I say now? Carol, once you understand how wonderful this is.

Carol? As time goes by, Carol that everyone has access to everyone else's memories and knowledge. Everyone is happy and there's peace around the world, except for Carol and a few others. She isn't buying that these transformations are a good thing, and she does everything she can to resist. Ray Seahorn, welcome to fresh air. I love this series. I loved you on Better Call, Saul. It's really such a pleasure to have you on the show. Oh, my gosh. Thank you. It is such a pleasure to be here. Thank you. The premise of this series is sci-fi. But the show itself is asking so many questions about human nature like, what is happiness? Is it happiness if there's no longer a larger meaning to your life? And is being an individual with your own temperament and thoughts, is that more valuable than this happiness? And is anger lethal or is it good to let out your life?

your anger and resist what you think is wrong. And, you know, maybe we'll find out some answers to those questions and many other questions later. But I just want people to know it's, there's some really interesting thoughts in this. Thank you. And did you find yourself asking what is happiness as you made the series? Yeah, I definitely was asking myself a lot of those questions throughout this series. And we had amazing conversations among the crew and the cast, you know, some of these late night shoots and even on weekends, stuff of like, well, would you choose what's best for the individual versus what's best for the community as a whole? I personally think I would absolutely be Team Carroll as far as arguing, you know, the necessity and the positives of

individual thinking and independent thinking. For one thing, a big thing that came up for me was the fact that this group think, no matter how intelligent and how peaceful, one of the ideas of happiness and joy, which maybe is slightly different, is being surprised by things, whether it's wonder growing up as a kid and hopefully still as an adult or a giant belly laugh. And if you cannot be surprised, there's never going to be any new art. There's never going to be a joke that you haven't heard. There's never going to be surprised behavior that makes you laugh. And that's just such a source of joy for me that I just can't imagine that contentment is the same as happiness.

One of the other characteristics of your character in Pluribus is that, that she is angry a lot of the time. She already had a kind of anger issue. But now that she's one of like 12 or 13 people in the whole world who haven't been affected by this, whatever it is, this alien technology, she's angry all the time. You know, her wife died as this thing started, as a result of this thing. And she has no one she can really confide in because everybody is transformed. And she knows that she believes there's something really terrible behind this. So she's angry all the time. Your character on better call Saul had her own anger issues. And you're really good at expressing anger. Kim Wexler was an incredibly capable person at suppressing it,

whereas I do not think Carol is. But yeah, I guess she did have anger. A certain righteousness about her. So, you know, we talked about how the series has affected you thinking about happiness. What about anger? Because anger can be really destructive. And in the series in Pluribus, when she gets angry, people die. Like anger is literally poison, a killing poison. But in real life, sometimes it's important to get angry because, first of all, you just need to express yourself. But second of all, somebody needs to know that you really offended or hurt or think that something is morally or ethically wrong. And sometimes it takes anger to really get the point across. Did you find yourself thinking about anger a lot and your levels of anger?

I have no idea if you like to express anger. No, I struggle mightily with how much I suppress my anger. And as you said, there's this idea of anger can be, you know, a miasma almost that like can spread. And we've all seen like horrible things can happen when you just are riling people up with, you know, frothing at the mouth with anger about things and negativity. But at the same time, it is a necessary emotion, which I think is one of the arguments in the show that I side with of the idea that all of the emotions are important, not just happiness. But I had asked Vincent, he wasn't coming at it from an angle of particularly a woman being angry, but because I'm a woman playing the role, that I paused a lot thinking about that

because I do think that I have grown up in a world that maybe it's on me, but it felt as though I was taught that anger was unpalatable specifically from females and that I should find a way to make it palatable, make my requests palatable, and not express a lot of anger. When I was much younger, I would scream it now. as a teenager, you know, screaming, yelling, like, the typical arguments you have over hairspray and idiotic things at home as a teenager. But, um, plus it was, uh, my parents were divorced. And so it was a household of three, uh, women, my mom and my sister and I. So there were

actually a lot of hairspray arguments. Um, but, uh, you know, you kind of grow out of this complete temperamental just, I'm going to spew anything I want coming out of my mouth. And you get out into the real world. And it, it, it did feel like, And it's interesting you ask, because I haven't pinned down, like, was it something I saw, was, you know, in real life or something on a television show, or where was I getting this messaging that it wasn't okay to raise my voice to be very, very sharp? I'm not sure of the answer of that, but I know that it got to a place where it went too far, literally to the place that's like, I'm nodding and just saying, yes or whatever to, you know, somebody that's maybe speaking to me in a way that I absolutely disagree with. And I go home and break out an eczema. And that's not an exaggeration.

Oh, gosh. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm just like, clearly the anger is going somewhere. I don't think it's okay to scream and yell on someone's face, but I think I have become conflict avoidant in the suppression of that anger to a degree that's not healthy. I will stand up for somebody else, though, in a heartbeat. If somebody else is being mistreated next to me, I'm in there. I'll take you to the mat. But if it's at me, I tend to swallow it and try to figure out how I can

make it better. We're listening to Terry's interview with Ray Seahorn, who stars in the new Apple TV series Pluribus. We'll hear more of their conversation after a break. And Maureen Corgan will share her list of the year's best books. I'm Dave Davies, and this is

Fresh Air Weekend. Let's get back to Terry's interview with Ray Seah She stars in the new Apple TV series Pluribus. Both Seahorn and the show have been nominated for Golden Globe Awards. I want to point out something else that I think is very relevant to today in the series. The series is called Pluribus, which translates to, you know, out of many one. And in this era where diversity, equity, and inclusion is basically being, um, outlawed to the extent that they can by the Trump administration.

E pluribus unum has always been like one of the founding principles or slogans, if you want to call it that, of the United States. So this kind of conformity is really the opposite of DEI because there's no diversity and equity. There's no need, there's no diversity, so there's no need for equity and inclusion because everybody has the same thoughts. Or you could argue that it's the ultimate in all inclusion and everybody has equal everything. That's true. That's true. But that's by erasing their religion, their ethnicity, their geography. Or you could say they are all religions and they are all

geographies. Right. And you can also say they're all artificial intelligence because that's also how they sound when they're speaking. They're not. But when they speak, it sometimes sounds. It sounds like, you know, the verbal artificial intelligence talking to you. I also really appreciated that our new Pope, that his favorite motto apparently is e pluribus unum. So I really appreciate him advertising the show. Oh, yeah. I thought you were going to tell me he was a fan, and I thought, really? Has time?

No, no. He just says that. Like, that came out that that was one of his favorite mottos, I guess. And I was like, we were just laughing. Thanks. Thanks for the shout-out. So your character starts off as a famous romance novelist with this ardent following. And she goes to a bookstore and there's a reading there, which everybody loves.

And it's, you know, a romance novel, aboard a ship with a pirate. Anyways, the language is full of, like, really typical romance book language. So did you do research and go to readings of romance novelists? I did. I went to The Ripped Bottis, which is an amazing romance novel store that only does romance novels in Culver City. And just slipped in and looked around. I have to tell you, one of the first things that struck me is the amount of subgenres and the specificity. of these sub-genres, it's historical, paranormal, it could be romance suspense. Then within that, there were sub-sub-genres of ones that, people that want them to be more

dialogue, more chatty versus more descriptive, more descriptive, yeah, and certainly, you know, those LGBTQIA stuff, there's stuff that people really want to sound, period, there's stuff that people want to sound futuristic versus very contemporary slang language. It was kind of incredible. But I also watched a couple people do readings from their books. And I was really surprised at the breadth of people of fans listening. There was a lot of people dressed like early Stevie-Nicks in a beautiful way. But then there was also like, you know, just a...

there was some couple that looked like they came straight from a corporate job, a man and a woman in office suits, young people, people younger than me, people older than me. It definitely wizened me to how huge this genre is and how much it encapsulates, you know, all the different novels it has. So the character in Pluribus was originally written for a man by Vince Gilligan. And then he decided to rewrite it for you. How did that happen? I don't believe there were scripts, you know, with a male character. And then he went back and rewrote. I think he said he was conceiving it for that?

Kind of kicking around. Yeah, conceiving quite a few concepts he was interested in. I think he said that, and it was during Better Call Saul in season one, I think he said taking breaks from writer's room and walking around on lunch breaks and stuff and just started it's just how he works he just ideas will pop in his head sometimes questions without answers and one of them was what would happen if you woke up and the whole world was obsequious the whole world was willing to do whatever you wanted to and give you anything you want and it was a male character and he has said that it's just because that's second nature to him that he is a man and he has

written male protagonist. And then I don't know the exact like shift that happened or where, but I didn't know about it until after we had wrapped all of Better Call Saul, but he said it was during, I think towards the end of Season 1 of Better Call Saul that he was just watching me work and had talked to me a lot about the way I work as well as watching me perform and decided that I'm stuttering because it's hard. to say this because I'm I'm floored by the compliment and the flattery, to put it mildly and struggle saying it about myself. But he said that he realized, like, I have to write something for her. I have to, I need to make sure that I do a project with her and actually wouldn't

these concepts that I'm noodling with, wouldn't they work even better if they were her? And And he knew that he also wanted to play with tone and take wild swings as far as, like, it could be darkly comedic or it could be darkly psychological. Sometimes it's going to, you know, go between back and forth. And he was impressed at my ability to do those things so hard for me to say about myself. Stop bragging. That can be the title of this episode. Ray Sehorn brags about herself. Yeah, I don't know.

Listen, I've had to sit next to him in interviews when he's saying. And I'm just, I'm just, my face is one giant tomato red ball when he's saying it. But, but I'm certainly very thankful for it. You thought you would have a career in the visual arts as a painter. How did you get into acting? What changed your mind? I wanted so badly to run away with the circus. And by that, I mean television and film.

I was obsessed with television film. And as a kid in the suburbs in Virginia, I'd never known anybody that, had even the loosest association with the entertainment business and thought it was just an impossible dream. And then in my first year at George Mason University, you had to take an elective in the arts that was not your major. And my major was fine arts. And so I took an acting class with Lenny Reebuck. And very thankfully, it was not a emotional Ui-Gui class. I took plenty of those later, but this was a hardcore do-your-homework script analysis class using practical aesthetics that was developed out of the Atlantic Theater. And I just was in love

with the fact that if you work really hard and study, you can incrementally get closer and closer to being good at this and hopefully one day great at this. And that was the best news ever to me because I didn't know a lot about how to do this thing, but I thought, oh, if you just want hours put in and, like, stay home and study and work at this, I'm in. And then almost immediately the idea that, oh, this is studying the behavior of humans and the wise. And it was at times a very difficult household coming up. And the idea that you could actually start thinking about people's behavior as a result of what it is that they want and their inability to use the correct tactic or the given circumstance that are holding them back.

It's just like it blew my mind that that is how you can organize human behavior and not only have empathy for it, but mimic it in a way that invites people in to go on a journey with you when you're on stage. And then I started going to D.C. theater, which I think is some of the world's best theater is watching D.C. theater. And watching those performers and was just like, I have to do this immediately. I have to do this for the rest of my life. I don't know how many day jobs I'm going to have to have.

It was not about being famous. I knew that I had to be an actor and I'd support myself however I had to. Well, Ray C. Horn, I want to thank you so much. I've really enjoyed this interview. I really like Pluribus. Thanks. So thank you for all of that. This is a dream come true being here.

Ray Seahorn stars in the new Apple TV series Pluribus. Need a book for holiday gift giving? Maureen Corrigan can recommend at least 10. Here's our annual Best Books list. My picks for this year's best books tilt a bit to nonfiction. But the novels that made the cut redress the imbalance by their sweep and intensity. Karen Russell's long-awaited second novel, The Antidote, is my pick for novel of the year. An epic story of immigration, land grabs, and aspiration. The antidote is set in

Nebraska and framed by two actual weather catastrophes, the Black Sunday dust storm on April 14, 1935, in which people were suffocated by a moving black wall of dust. and a month later, the Republican River Flood. The central character here is a so-called Prairie Witch, who heals her customers by holding whatever they can't stand to know. Russell herself is America's own prairie witch of a writer, exhuming memories out of our national unconscious and inviting us through her spellbinding writing to see our history in full.

Patrick Ryan's Buckeye is a more straightforward historical novel, set, as its title indicates, in Ohio. Stretching from pre-World War II to the close of the 20th century, the story focuses on two married couples. When we first meet her, Margaret Salt, a red-headed looker, walks into the hardware store where Cal Jenkins works and demands that he turn on the radio. There's commotion in the streets, and because Margaret's husband is in the Navy, she wants to know what's happening. It turns out Germany has surrendered. Overwhelmed, Margaret kisses Cal, and Married Man Cal likes it. Throughout the novel, Ryan's narrator underscores how chance moments shape our lives. Like Karen Russell, Kieran Desai has kept readers waiting for her second novel. but the loneliness of Sonia and Sunny makes the weight worthwhile. At the outset, Sonia, a college

student in Vermont, is homesick for her native India. Her depression makes her vulnerable to a visiting painter, an art monster. Meanwhile, Sunny has left India to work in New York, but distance can't shield him from his fearsome mother. Desize near 700 pages. novel ruminates on exile and displacement and tells a tangled love story with enough coincidences to make Dickens blush. My last fiction pick is more in the Jane Austen miniaturist mode. Heart the Lover is a companion novel to Lily King's 2020 novel, Writers and Lovers. But the structure of this follow-up is so ingenious that you don't have to have read the earlier book. This is an emotionally charged story about a young woman with

literary ambitions, screwing up, wising up, finding herself, and realizing what she may have lost in the process. On to nonfiction, Gertrude Stein's writing, as the critic Wyndham Lewis put it, sometimes has the consistency of a cold black suet pudding, the same heavy, sticky, opaque mass all through. And yet, maddening as she can be, many of us sense that when it comes to Stein's literary genius, there really was a there there. Francesca Wade's lively, unconventional biography, called Gertrude Stein and afterlife, doesn't end at Stein's death in 1946, but also tells the story of the obsessive admirers who help Stein achieve serious, posthumous recognition. Mother Mary comes to me by Arundati Roy is one of the most vivid and exquisitely written memoirs

of a mother-daughter relationship I've ever read. Roy's single mother was a beloved teacher who founded a school in India. Roy and her brother, however, endured their erratic mother's rage, And yet, Roy writes of her mother, I truly believed she would outlive me. When she didn't, I was wrecked, heart smashed. Like Gertrude Stein and Roy's mother, Patty Smith defies easy characterization. Her latest memoir, Bread of Angels,

expands upon just kids, her 2010 memoir that's since become a classic. Smith delves into more intimate material here, like the secret of her paternity, her sense of her own sexuality, and her 14-year marriage to the late musician Fred Sonic Smith. If Patty Smith's title references Angels, Stephen Greenblatt's Dark Renaissance invokes the somewhat devilish figure of playwright Christopher Marlowe, I can think of nobody who brings the world of the English Renaissance to Life with the verb and erudition of Greenblatt. Here, he explores the mysteries of Marlowe's originality and his murder at age 29. In 2017, historian Judith

Geisberg and her team of grad student researchers launched a website called Last Scene, Finding Family After Slavery. It now contains over 4,500 ads. placed in newspapers by once enslaved people hoping to find loved ones. Geisberg's arresting book, also called Last Scene, closely reads 10 of those ads, giving readers a deeper sense of the lived experience of slavery and its aftermath. My final best book pick is A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhurst, which is part extreme adventure tale, part meditation on marriage. In 1972, Morris and Marilyn Bailey spent four months adrift in the middle of the Pacific

after a whale knocked a hole in their wooden sloop. They held themselves together mentally by focusing on small things, like the card games that Marilyn devised. Not bad advice, perhaps, for all of us in challenging times ahead. Happy holidays, everyone. Maureen Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University. Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.

For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies.