Fresh Air - Malala Finds Her Way

Episode Date: December 30, 2025

After surviving the Taliban's 2012 attempted assassination, activist Malala Yousafzai didn't back down. She continued to advocate for girls' education across the globe. In 2014, Yousafzai became the youngest person to win a Nobel Prize, an honor that weighed on her when she went off to college. In ‘Finding My Way,’ she writes about her life at Oxford and beyond. She spoke with Tonya Mosley about reliving childhood, PTSD, and her decision to get married.Also, critic at large John Powers highlights some things he wish he had reviewed this year. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, it's Terry Gross. Somehow, we're almost at the end of 2025. It's been a rough year for a lot of people and for NPR and all public radio stations because of the elimination of all federal funding for public media. Despite that loss and despite attacks on the free press, we are still here for you. We will not shy away from exercising the right to editorial independence guaranteed by the First Amendment. And with your support, we will not be silenced. NPR will keep reporting the news without fear or favor. And here at Fresh Air, we will keep bringing you interviews with investigative reporters, uncovering some of the most important stories of our time,

as well as interviews with authors, actors, actors, directors, musicians, composers, scientists, health experts, religion scholars, and more. If you're already an NPR Plus supporter, thank you so much. we're so grateful for you. If not, please join the community of public radio supporters now, before the end of the year, at plus.npr.org. Signing up, unlocks a bunch of perks like bonus episodes and more from across NPR's podcasts, including ours, and you get to feel good about supporting public media while you listen.

I know times are hard, but if you're in a position to give, please end the year by investing in a public service that matters to you and know how much we appreciate you for it. Just go to plus.npr.org. That's plus.npr.org. Thank you so much. This is fresh air. I'm Tanya Mosley. Today we continue our end of the year retrospective, featuring some of our favorite interviews of 2025, including this one, which was recorded in October. College is often a time to figure out who we are, to fall in love for the first time, to experiment, to fail, to question what we believe. But for Malala Yusuf Tsai, it was different. She spent her college years experiencing all of these things under scrutiny and 24-hour security.

When she was 15, Malala survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban, a gunshot to the head while riding home on a school bus. But long before that, she'd been standing up to them, demanding the right for girls to go to school in her hometown of Mingora and Pakistan Swat Valley. The Taliban had taken control, closing schools, banning women from public life, and brutally punishing anyone who resisted. After the shooting, Malala's life changed overnight. She became a symbol of resistance, praised, politicized, and picked apart. While the world saw an unshakable young woman with a message, Malala was also a teenager, undergoing certain, to reconstruct what was destroyed by the Taliban,

experiencing post-traumatic stress and navigating others' expectations of who she should be. Her new memoir, Finding My Way, reveals the person beyond the symbol. It's the story of a young Malala, learning the bounds of what it means to be a free woman, trying on jeans for the first time, falling in love, failing exams, and confronting the trauma of a shooting

that for a long time she had no memory of. of. Malala Yusuf Sai won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for her efforts to combat the suppression of children and advocate for their education. She's written several books, including I Am Malala, and We Are Displaced, True Stories of Refugee Lives. The 2015 documentary, He Named Me Malala, Chronicles Her Family's Activism. Malala Yusuf Sai, welcome to fresh air. Thank you. this memoir in a way in many ways picks up where your first memoir left off just to like put ourselves in this place I mean such a dichotomy here because and how remarkable this is because here you are entering college I mean you won the Nobel Prize at 17 so it's an unbelievable honor that I know you take great pride in

but it also comes as you say with this tremendous responsibility to always live up to all that you had endured and what you've accomplished, what it represents, that that expectation also feel like a cage in the way? Like you wanted to come into college almost as an anonymous person. Going to Oxford was my childhood dream and I wanted to be, myself, make as many friends, but I think with these titles and recognitions, like the Nobel Peace Prize, I thought I had to act differently. And because, you know, a lot of the people who receive these titles are much older in their life. And they, you know, they're usually in their 50s, 60s. They have, you know, like a family life already established. I received the

Nobel Peace Prize when I was in my chemistry class. So, you know, I was still, I was still a school student. So I see it as a big responsibility and I always have felt that now I need to live up to the expectation. You know, it was given for the work I had done, but it was also given for the work that that is ahead of us. So for me now, like I have to work for the rest of my life to prove that it was well deserved and for me that is just, you know, seeing this dream of girls' education becoming a reality in every part of the world. But at the same time, I thought, okay, like, but do you have to change as a person? Like, are you supposed to live a certain way?

In college, though, this was the first time that I allowed myself to be more of myself, to really just test it. And to be honest, I didn't even know who I was. Am I funny? Am I not? What do I enjoy? Like, I didn't know any of that. I have never seen boys my age.

I have never, you know, been away from my parents or lived on my own. I can decide. I can go to a Diwali party. I can stay up late at 3 a.m. and, you know, like my parents would not know about this. And, you know, I could sign up for rowing or I could go to the aerobics 80s-themed party. Any of that? We could do all of that.

I was somehow feeling that I was reliving all the missed years of my childhood because of the activism that I had to take from such a young age that I missed. Was there a particular moment when you realized, you're at college, when you realize, wait a minute, I could do whatever I want, you know? You know, I think about the roof climbing experience oftentimes because that was offered to me by a stranger at college who told me that there is this crazy thing that only cool college students do. And he offered it to me and I said, okay, I'll see you at midnight. I told my security like, I'm done for the day and you guys can go to sleep. And I just want to note for folks that you had 24-hour security because, Because during this time period, in the years after you were shot, you received lots of threats against your life. That's why you had 24-hour security in addition in the same way that many heads of state have security in the United States.

Yeah, I mean, it was awkward to have, like, guys following you. But at the same time, it just helped me have the opportunity to experience these things and not be worried about safety and security. So, yeah, but for that night, the roof climbing night, I told them, I think I'm going to. be safe on my own. I said, you guys can go to bed. So it's midnight. I follow the stranger. We go up to the fourth floor of the building and there's a small window in this room and he tells me that we need to sneak out through the window and then walk by this narrow path on the roof. One misstep and you could fall and I am just nodding and I follow him and it was a really scary way making it up to the rooftop.

And on the rooftop, there's this bell tower, like the clock tower. And that moment just felt surreal. I just thought I had like conquered something. I was breathing in the fresh air. And I was looking down, just seeing some students still up at night or the light was still on in some rooms. And I was thinking maybe they're still trying to finish their essay or just feeling a moment of victory. And I was so scared that I might be, like, kicked out of college for this.

And this happening so soon, so I was terrified that being an advocate for education and then getting in trouble and being kicked out. What do you think it was about that that, like, really set your heart on this independent journey? Like, that it's almost like another near-death experience. I think for me it was just wanting to disobey rules. I thought I had to live up to expectations and be a certain way. I could never get in trouble. I thought if this is something that puts me in the cool kids category or the rebellious kids category, I want to give it a try. I wanted these college years to be that experience that I otherwise would never come across.

You really did experience a lot of things in college that many students do, including getting high. You, your spring year of college, first year at Oxford, you're with friends, you're hanging out as college kids do, and you're offered marijuana, specifically a bong. And you join in with your friends, and as the hours tick on, you have a reaction. You can't walk. Everything goes black. And this, you realize, is a very familiar place. Could I have you read what you wrote about it in the book? Suddenly, I was 15 years old again, lying on my back under a white sheet, a tube running down

my throat, eyes closed. For seven days, as doctors tended to my wounds, I was in a coma. From the outside, I looked to be in a deep sleep, but inside, my mind was awake, and it played a slideshow of recent events. My school bus, a man with a gun, blood everywhere, my body carried through a crowded streets, strangers hunched over me, yelling things I didn't understand, my father rushing toward the stretcher to take my hand. As the images repeated in the same sequence over and over, I raged against them, trying to beat them away. This isn't true, I told myself. The real Malala is the one trapped in this nightmare, not the gull on the stretcher. Just wake up, and it will stop. Wake up. I had tried to for

my eyes open to see something other than this carousel of horrors. Inside, I screamed, outside. My lips stayed closed, motionless. I was awake and buried alive in the coffin of my body. It's hard to read. Yes. It's hard to read it. The Bong incident, you know, just turned out to be an experience, not that I had imagined, I had heard cool things about it. And of course, you know, like it's different for everybody. But I think in my case, there was this unaddressed trauma. The memory, the visuals, everything, I think, had been there. My brain had tried to suppress them because, you know, it's just a moment of fear that you do not want to see again. And when the bong incident happened, my body froze and I was reliving the Taliban

attack. I could see the gunman, I thought, this is happening all over again. I often, you know, say that I received my surgeries and I recovered so quickly from the Taliban attack. But just when this happened, I realized that maybe I actually had not fully recovered. There was this unaddressed part of my recovery, which was mental health, which was the trauma that we did not actually count in the treatment process. There are some dark moments that you experienced after that night. You started to experience these intrusive thoughts that didn't stop, even after the high went away.

You describe being afraid of a kitchen knife, not that someone would hurt you with it, but that you might hurt yourself. And I just kept thinking as I was reading this, for someone the world has called the bravest girl on earth, what was it like to? to suddenly be frightened of your own hands, of your own self? It was frightening. And even now, like, when I think about it, it's just, it's a really frightening place to be in. You feel trapped.

You do not see a way out. That's exactly what I was going through in those days. I was shaking. I was shaking every minute. I could not look at harmful. objects. I could not look at a knife. I could not watch news that said anything about murdering people or, you know, or somebody being killed or shot or wounded. I just felt so disappointed with myself that somebody who actually faced a Taliban gunman was somehow now scared of these small

things. It was all like trivial stuff that it made no sense to me. And I thought that I had lost my courage, that I was not brave enough, the titles I had received my whole life, and I thought I had to live up to them. I felt like an imposter. And then one of my friends suggested that I see a therapist. She said that a lot of students actually get therapy in college, that she herself is seeing a therapist. and I was a bit skeptical. I also thought a therapist would not understand what I'm going through. Right, because she said, I should give it a try, yeah.

Because your parents didn't believe in therapy. I think your father said only a completely non-functioning person needs a therapist. So there was a lot that you needed to get over to actually seek one. Yes, you know, growing up in Pakistan, we had not heard about therapy and mental health that now we are hearing where it's been accepted as a normal conversation. People are opening up about it.

And we don't even have that much support around mental health. Has it helped you? Therapy has definitely helped me. I remember the first session where I told my therapist all my problems, past, present, potential future ones. And I said, okay, like, now give me some medication. How do we fix it? And she took a deep breath and she said, you know, this is not how therapy works.

And she told me that I had PTSD and anxiety. And this was like the first time that I actually heard the word PTSD. You know, people, I had come up, like, I had heard it in a few different contexts. But I thought, you know, okay, I faced a trauma. But I think I don't have PTSD. But seven years later, the PTSD appeared. And, you know, I learned something that when people talk about like a traumatic experience, it's not necessary that PTSD or the mental health issues appear immediately. They could appear seven years later, ten years later.

Like, you never know. And that happened in my case. Let's talk about love. You write that you'd convinced yourself, you'd never date, you'd never marry, that you'd be like a quote, like a nun but Muslim. Once you got past yourself and you and your now husband, Aser fell madly in love, which books can read all about it in this book. But you were resistant to marriage for a long time. Why were you against marriage? I mean, growing up, I had seen many girls lose the opportunity to complete their education and, you know, just their dreams to become a doctor, engineer because they were married off. So, like, marriage, I, that was like the last thing I wanted to think about.

I did not want to get married. It was like, it was not a cool thing. If you wanted to have a future as a girl, you wanted to keep yourself. away from marriage for as long as you could, because even later in your life, it just meant like more compromises for women that, you know, you had to readjust to the husband's family and you just had to pray that the husband turns out to be a nice, respectful person. I remember when I was thinking about marriage for myself, I put myself in my mom's shoes for the first time. I had never thought about anything from her perspective before.

And I, you know, I would always admire my dad and I wanted to, like, follow his footsteps and all of that. But this was the first time I wondered what life would have been like for my mom when she decided to marry. How did she trust this guy? She had not even known and decided to, like, move into his house and be married off and restart a new life. And I asked my mom, actually, what were her dreams when she was a kid? And she said, you know, I just wanted to find a husband who would be respectful and I can go into the city and, like, have nice food and, like, drive around in a car. And I realized that my mom didn't even have a dream for herself, that marriage was a way for her to find some sort of freedom, a little more freedom than she had right now. So it was sort of a fascinating time.

When I saw Asar, I immediately fell in love with him. I knew that I wanted to be with him. And I knew that we had to be married because in our culture, for two people to be together, you have to be married. But then marriage just felt like a very happy topic for me. I even went to read some books. Yes, you read a lot of books about feminism and marriage. Yes, I was like, please Virginia Woolf, help me. Bell Hooks, can you share a few words of wisdom?

Well, you made this list of questions for him before you marry him. I mean, you asked him about fidelity, about whether he'd control what you wear, whether he'd take another wife. These were real considerations that you had to know. You were trying to extract guarantees, though. And he tried to give them to you, but then he said something to you that was really kind of profound. He said, there are no magic words to take away all of your doubts.

why was that the right answer for you to kind of come to the realization that this was the step that you should take? Yeah, I mean, like, poor Aser, I was asking him every possible question about every horrible things that I had seen or heard about like, you know, a husband doesn't allow his wife to work. A husband has a problem that the wife earns more money. The husband is of this view that he can marry like more wives or things like. that and he is, you know, okay with, like, telling the wife off or, like, that she has to live by his rules and all of that. So I said, who knows? Like, I know he's a nice guy, but who knows? I think it's better to get a verbal confirmation. It's just the fear, the fear that we all carry. I knew that I was a very independent person. I did not need a husband. Literally, I did

not need him. But I wanted him, and I wanted to make sure that this was, like, worth my time. But when he said that, you know, no answers would clear all my doubts, I think he was right. It was true because even when he was answering, I still had that little hesitation in my heart. But what I really loved was just the way he was answering those questions. He was very patient. He gave me time. You know, this marriage conversation started like a while ago. But he allowed me to go and do my research.

and talk to people and just like take my time off. My guest today is Malala Yusufzai. We're talking about her new memoir, Finding My Way. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley and this is fresh air. Malala, I want to talk to you a bit about your parents. Many of us know your father's story. He's an educator who raised you to speak up.

Your mother is quieter in the public narrative. And in this book, though, she's complex. She once saved a girl from forced marriage. So she did have that understanding that whatever power she had, she also was, in a way, would you call her a silent activist, not as vocal and open as your father, but still believing nonetheless. My mom is more an action-driven person. My mom has helped so many women and girls.

I remember this girl in Pakistan when we were living there who was raped and she became pregnant and my mom saved her life. My mom saved her life. She took her for an abortion and at the time I did not understand any of that. But like now when I reflect on it, I think my mom took such a brave step that it's, you know, if I ask her about her opinions on certain things, like she may not give us, she may not give an answer that truly reflects her actions, but for her it is about the safety and the protection of girls and how we can help them and protect them from the harm that they face.

Both of them, both of your parents have been fiercely brave, but you also describe them as what will people think people? And I found that to be such an interesting way to describe it. I think a lot of people can connect to that. How do you hold both of those truths about your parents, being fiercely brave but also very concerned with the opinions of others? My mom had a very different childhood than mine. She never went to school. Her female friends never went to school.

It was actually normal and expected for a girl not to be educated. The best that she dreamed for herself was to be married into a family where, the husband is a bit kind and just lets her have her favorite food or just takes her to one of her favorite places to visit, that's all that she hoped for and that it doesn't turn out to be a horrible, abusive kind of in-laws family or a husband. And when I think about it, I'm like, you know, my mom's journey was not easy. She always says that she's so lucky that she found my dad because he is, you know, already known globally for his advocacy, feminism, for standing up for women's rights and more importantly for letting his daughter speak. I always tell people that there's nothing unique in my story of activism from Swat Valley. The only thing that's unique or different is that my father did not stop me. If more men are brave enough to allow the girls to do what they want or to not stop. stop them, then we will hear different stories. We will hear more women and girls get the

opportunities that they deserve. I know both of them are very kind and caring parents, but they are not just thinking as parents, but I think they're also thinking as representatives of the bigger community in Pakistan or relatives. And sometimes I feel like there are just too many voices that are speaking when they are speaking. And it affects everything, like even a decision like what I was packing for college. My mom was packing all the traditional Pakistani clothes for me. I just wanted to wear jeans and jumpers or sweaters. And I did not want to stand out at all.

So I remember packing all of these, like, more normal college clothes. I remember going on Google and looking up Selena Gomez casual 2017. Because I was like, you know, what is like a cool outfit, a casual outfit that everybody's wearing? There's this moment in college when you wore jeans to rowing practice. And a picture was taken of you wearing these jeans. Pakistani media went into an uproar. Your father wanted you to issue a clarification. And I'll just say there's something almost comical in the way that you write about that.

What did he say to you? What did he want you to say? You know, both my mom and dad were really upset when they saw the whole backlash in Pakistan. I remember, like, on phone with both mom and my dad and just being so mad at them because I said, like, I am here at college, not for some pilgrimage or some, like, religious ceremony. This is, this is my college life. And I want to be like every other student. What am I even going to say in a clarification statement, like apologies, I'm not going to wear jeans tomorrow? or, okay, let me defend jeans and say, you know, there are like Muslim people who wear jeans.

There's no fixed dress code for Muslims or, you know, like, it's, I was like, this is going to be a whole another debate. Can women and girls just wear what they want? So my dad in the end agreed. My mom was still arguing with me, but in there, and she sort of accepted it. But I told them, I said, you know, you just never know. jeans was like the last thing that I was worried about. To be honest, I was more worried about people taking photos if I were seen like with my friends at a party where we were maybe like dancing together. I thought like all of these things could be taken out of context. I was

super aware of that. But when it happened with jeans, I was like, okay, you know what? I'm just going to I'm just going to go for everything now because people could criticize anything. Like people could even criticize you for your existence. Where do you draw the line? Let's take a short break, Malala. If you're just joining us, my guest is Malala Yusuf Zai. She's the youngest ever Nobel Peace Prize laureate and co-founder of Malala Fund, which advocates for girls' education worldwide. Her new memoir is Finding My Way.

We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is fresh air. The only panic attacks you still experience you wrote in the book are about Afghanistan. Is that still true? Yes, and I remember when I was in South Africa, I was giving a speech at the Nelson Mandela lecture, and I wanted to support the Afghan women's campaign of gender apartheid. So they're calling leaders to recognize what's happening in the country

as a gender apartheid because it is actually systemic oppression, and they wanted to be considered as an international crime, and the Taliban should be held accountable for it. So I gave my speech, I did my interviews, you know, we had conversation with South African female activists and allies and everything went really well. And then on the last night, like in the middle of my sleep, I just suddenly woke up and I was shaking and sweating and I had like this terrible panic attack where I thought, you know, I could just, I could die.

I was sort of screaming and, and yeah, it was terrifying. But this time my husband was with me and he was holding my hand and he helped me and supported me. So it was just a reminder that the fear is there and the fear is for what other Afghan women and girls are experiencing right now. It is terrifying. It is truly terrifying. And yet at the same time, when you're scrolling, on your phone, you make yourself stop to watch the videos of Afghan women being beaten and assaulted. And so in many ways, you're choosing to re-traumatize yourself. Why is it important to be a witness? You know, I have lived through those experiences. I have seen them. And

when we were going through the Taliban's brutal time in our hometown in Swat Valley in the north of Pakistan. We wanted the world to see it because this is a reality that women are actually living. These are not things that, you know, sort of have happened in the past and they have stopped, no, like these terrible things are happening each and every day. Only a few stories actually make it to social media. So when we see something horrible happening to others, I think even just stopping for a moment and just seeing it, witnessing it so that they know that, you know, that you saw and you were there with them and that you feel anger, you feel the frustration.

So I think it's when, even when we share emotions, it is a message of solidarity. But, you know, I'm, I want Afghan women to know that they are not alone. I think they need more support. And that's the work that I am supporting through Malala Fund. I'm supporting Afghan activists in the country, outside the country. And I hope that that things change for them. I want to ask you about the United States. Having observed our political landscape, maybe what has surprised you most about the state of women's rights here in the United States? I think women's rights are a very fragile conversation in many parts of the world, including the United States.

And in moments like these, I think women and girls and advocates of women's rights should. take a moment to reflect on how, you know, how much progress we have actually achieved. I know people often ask that, you know, are we shocked to see these setbacks? And I say, yes, I am shocked to see the setbacks everywhere. Most importantly in Afghanistan, because, like, imagine girls' education being banned. Like, that's a reality girls in Afghanistan have to live under. Or women being banned from work, that's a reality women have to live under. So it's also a reminder that the activism that we are doing for women's rights is more important than ever because of how fragile these accomplishments had been, that they are taken away from us the next moment.

So we need to do more to protect women's rights and, like, systematically protect them. So one of the campaigns that Afghan women are leading is to recognize what's happening in Afghanistan as a gender apartheid and to make gender. apartheid, a part of the crime against humanity treaty. And I know it sounds like too much, too many jargons, but what this basically means is that, you know, currently we do not have anything in the international law that can recognize the level of systemic oppression that the Taliban imposed. Like, the scale of it is just so big and so intense that they're like getting away with it. So if it becomes an international crime, then countries are obliged to react. Countries should not be normalizing relationships with them

and it just helps us have a better accountability system. The challenges, you know, I think about the United States role in this. I know the Trump administration's cuts to international aid and the reinstatement of policies like this expanded global gag rule. It directly impacts women's access to education and health care worldwide. And I was wondering, given your work, have you seen U.S. policy changes impact girls and women in countries where you work? Yes. So a lot of the activists that Malala Fund supports also receive grants from USAID. And yes, because of the cuts, their organizations were affected, including one organization in Afghanistan as well. And it, you know, for an organization like Malala Fund.

we don't receive government grants, but we knew that these activists who are working in these important, tough areas of the countries where girls need help with education, need or support more than ever. So we are helping them get like fundraising in other ways, and we are also providing them with the funding that they need. So, yes, it's reaching to the work for girls' education. It has affected that. there's this thing that this sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom says that freedom she feels is a responsibility her belief is that the more responsible she is to others the freer she is and I feel like this is what I'm hearing from you in a way I was wondering does that idea resonate with you

you know I don't necessarily think about it in the sense of freedom but I think about it as a purpose of life I just reflect on this the time when I could not be in school. I was only 11 years old and the Taliban had banned girls from learning. It has been my life's mission since then that no other girl faces that. I remember recovering from the Taliban bullet and processing this moment that somebody could like hurt a child. And since then it has now become my life's goal that no other child takes a bullet, no other child is punishing, no other child. No other child is punishing. is punished for daring to be in school. So when you face violence, harm, and trauma yourself,

you understand how terrible and horrible it is that you can no longer see it even happening to anybody else. You know, people often ask me like, how I felt. I'm like, you know, yes, you know, it was all horrible, but I just cannot see it happening to anyone, right now, whether it's girls being banned from school in Afghanistan or girls, schools being bombed in Gaza or children being forced into labor or girls being married off and, you know, they have to like live under these constant wars and violence. All of these things, like it's just

scary. It's, uh, but I, I just hope that we can create a world without any, war and terror and harm for children where they can have a childhood of joy and learning and they can have a safe life. Malala Yousafzai, thank you so much. Oh, thank you so much. Nice talking to you. Malala Yusuf Sai's new memoir is called Finding My Way. Our interview was recorded in October. Coming up, our critic at large John Powers talks about some movies, television shows, and books of the year, which he really liked but didn't have time to review. But the year's not over yet. He'll tell us all about them after this break. This is fresh air. Our critic at large, John Powers, spends his time reading, watching, and listening.

And every year at this time, he offers a list of things he liked that he wished he had gotten a chance to review. This year's version wanders from Italian movie sets to southern football stadiums to a galaxy far, far away. The great blessing of being a critic at large is that one gets to be an omnivore. The abiding curse is that there's too much of everything. Every December I look back at scads of good things I didn't manage to talk about. This year-end list is my last chance to share a few favorites with you. First off is La Grazie, the new movie by Paolo Sorrentino, the Italian director who won an Oscar for the Great Beauty.

Scaling back his trademark flamboyance, he tells a reflective story that offers a refuge from our enraged American politics. In a quietly radical move, Sorrentino portrays something we seldom see in movies, an honorable politician. In this case, a respected Italian president who, as he heads toward retirement, finds himself dealing with personal grief and grappling with profound moral issues, like who deserves a pardon. Alive with enjoyable characters, a wise African pope, a sassy woman art critic, an unrepentant murderous, La Garazia revolves around a majestic performance by Tony's Servillo, an actor so thrillingly versatile that if he starred in an anti-acid commercial, I'd rush to see it. The battle against tyranny is the theme of Andor, the best television series I saw this year. I've never been much of a Star Wars guy, and I scoff when I scoff what.

and grown men proudly show me their action figures of Chewbacca and Darth Vader. Yet the second season of Tony Gilroy's prequel to the movie Rogue One is so politically sophisticated that it makes the rest of Star Wars feel naive. From Diego Luna's reluctant hero Cassian, to the ruthless rebel mastermind played by Stellan Scarsguard, to fame Marcy's heart-roken rebel raider. The show captures both the courage and painful cost of rising against an empire capable of anything, even genocide.

Here, a young rebel worries about an upcoming action, and Cassian gives her a pep talk. If I die tonight, was it worth it? You've done this before. You must have thought about it. This makes it worth it. This. Right now.

Being with you, being here, at the moment you step into the circle. Look at me. You made this decision long ago. The empire cannot win. You'll never feel right unless you're doing what you can to stop them. You're coming home to yourself.

The stakes are less galactic and far funnier in Eli Kraner's rollicking mystery novel, Mississippi Blue 42. the perfect whoopee cushion for those like me who were psyched for the upcoming college football playoffs. Sat at a fictional pigskin-mad Mississippi University, it follows Ray Johnson, a newbie FBI agent, and coach's daughter, who's investigating corruption in the football program.

This tough cookie soon finds herself swimming in a swamp of sexual favors, crooked politics, racial exploitation, self-serving religiosity, and, of course, runaway greed. Kraner was himself a college quarterback, but he's no true believer. In his gleeful skewering of the football industrial complex, he's in the tradition not of Pop Warner, but Carl Hyacson. You get another doughty heroine in the enjoyable Italian TV series, Ima Tatarani, Deputy Prosecutor.

My current top choice from the Smorgasbord of Great International Programs on MHZ, one of the rare streamers I think worth the money. Now in season four, the show stars an amusingly overwrought Vanessa Scalera as IMA, a righteous investigator with exploding orange hair, popping eyes, and a wryly twisted mouth, who sees murder where other people see only deaths. Naturally, she won't let up until she solves them. Based in the picturesque city of Matera and steeped in Italiana, real estate shenanigans, mafia influence, arguments about food,

the show's heart lies in Emma's loving, relationship with her kind beleaguered husband Pietro, and in her chaste yearning for Caliguri, the handsome young protege who worships her. We linger in Italy for the Silver Book, the seductive new novel by English writer Olivia Lang. The book starts off in Patricia Highsmith's territory. A young gay man flees in 1974 London for mysterious reasons. He winds up in Venice, where he becomes the lover of Delo Donati, a real-life costume and production designer, who gets him involved in the making of actual movies by Federico Fellini, who we see being shockingly cruel to Donald Sutherland, and Pierre

Paolo Pasolini, a cultural lightning rod and sexual renegade. The Silver Book is at once a love story, an insightful portrait of the artistic process, a look into Rome's famous Chinatita studios, and an oblique snapshot of the politically violent era in Italy known as the Years of Lead. Crystalline in style, yet shadowed by menace, it captures a bygone era when making movies became a kind of religion. Cinema was literally that for film director Martin Scorsese, who made his first great movie Mean Streets in 1973,

and is still making them today. In her enthralling Apple TV documentary series, Mr. Scorsese, Rebecca Miller charts his epic career, tracking how this tiny asthmatic child from New York's Little Italy went from hoping to become a priest to finding his salvation making movies like taxi driver and raging bull. Brilliant, but driven by dark energies.

Cocaine nearly killed him. Scorsesias become the Pope of American movies. Hollywood always genuflex before him, while ignoring his righteous ideas about cinema. Certainly, we're a long, long way from the days when taxi driver had people lining up to see it. This year's biggest screen sensation has been K-pop demon hunters,

Netflix's breezy, animated musical, about a ramen-eating girdle band that, well, battles demons. Now, I can't pretend that this is high art. It makes Buffy look like Anna Karenina, but it's a genuinely good family movie that plays like a lighter on its feet version of Wicked. Indeed, I'd wager that no movie this year

sparked more joy. It even won over to hardened critic like me with its catchy musical numbers, which is why, in a 2025 that spawned so many demons, I'd like to ring in the new year with the movie's anthem, Golden, an Oscars-bound song full of hope and empowerment, that had audiences giddly singing along in movie theaters. John Powell be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be. You know that it's a lot of being that's going to be. You know that it's a time no place no place that soon we're part of me. is fresh air's critic at large. On tomorrow's show, we'll continue our retrospective of favorite

interviews of 2025 with actor Richard Kind. You've seen him on countless TV shows and films in his 40-year career. Only murders in the building, curb your enthusiasm, Spin City, mad about you, a serious man, and inside out. Just to name a few, I hope you can join us. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Baldinado, Heidi Saman, Lauren Crenzel, Teresa Madden,

Monique Nazareth, Anna Bauman, Thea Challoner, Susan Yacundi, and Nico Gonzalez Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly C.B. Nesper. Roberta Shorak directs the show. With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.