Now What? With Carole Zimmer

She's a film director who made a movie called  Desperately Seeking Susan . It's a caper that revolves around mistaken identity starring Rosanna Arquette and a then unknown Madonna. Seidelman went on to direct  She Devil  with Meryl Streep in her first comedic role. But Hollywood is a tough place for women directors. Nora Ephron came on the scene and directed  Sleepless in Seattle  and  You've Got...

Chelsea Devantez is a writer and comedian who has a good time being outrageous. She grew up in a family that moved around a lot when she was a kid. They never had much money. 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 whe...

I started to think a lot about music when I knew I'd be talking to Chuck D, the rapper and frontman of Public Enemy.  Some critics point to the group as a revolutionary voice in hip hop. Chuck D and Flavor Flav formed Public Enemy in 1985. Their songs became known for political messages on albums like  Fear of a Black Planet . But in the decades since becoming a legendary rapper, Chuck D has devel...

Ever since he was a kid, Nick 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. Kristof has also been called the moral conscience of...

Gail Godwin has written 18 books. Many of her novels were best sellers including  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 used to visit her in the middle of the night. Godwin's new book...

Writer Jhumpa 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  Interpreter of Maladies . It was an honor but it also put a lot of pressure on her as a writer. Then Lahiri fell in love with the Italian language and w...

What's it like to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year working as the personal assistant to the billionaire founder of a famous hedge fund? Pretty tough according to writer Carrie Sun. Sun's memoir  Private Equity tells the story of working 24/7, being at the beck and call of a demanding boss and feeling so stressed that she developed an eating disorder. There are also the perks like a $25...

Frank Bruni used to be a restaurant critic for the New York Times. Now, he's a Contributing  Opinion writer for the paper and a Professor of Journalism and Public Policy at Duke University. Bruni has written a book called  The Age of Grievance about what's going on in Trump World and the MAGA Universe. One of his theories is that the people who are the most furious feel they're losing because some...

You may know him from his role as Murray Bauman in  Stranger Things  and as Martin in the BBC comedy  Fleabag.  Brett Gelman has dreamed of being a famous actor since he was a child growing up in Highland Park, Illinois, where he wanted to make the other kids laugh and wound up feeling like an outcast. Gelman has written about his childhood and his neuroses in a book called  The Terrifying Realm o...

Bill Bradley is one of those wildly talented people, a star athlete with a brilliant mind. He went to Princeton University where he was the 1965 NCAA champion of the year. Then it was on to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. But basketball still called to him and he joined the New York Knicks, playing on the dream team which won two NBA championships. After life on the court, Bradley decided to try polit...

As a child, Ed Begley Jr. watched his dad act in films like  Sweet Bird of Youth,  a role that earned him an Oscar. His father's career inspired the younger Begley to go into acting where he has appeared in hundreds of films and TV shows including  Better Call Saul  and  Young Sheldon . In his twenties. Ed Begley, Jr. drank too much and abused drugs. Addiction is now in his past. Begley is also a...

Lucy Sante is a well-known author and critic who has written more than 10 books. Her latest is the memoir l  Heard Her Call My Name. It's the first book she's written under the name Lucy. Lucy started out life with the name Luke. At the age of 67, she decided to fulfill a long-held desire to transition to a woman. It's now been three years since Lucy came out. We talk about the challenges of chang...

Who faces death at the age of 22? Suleika Jaouad did. After Suleika was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer, she had a bone marrow transplant. At the age of 26 Suleika was declared cancer free. Suleika is the author of the best-selling memoir Between Two Kingdoms. She's married to Jon Batiste, the former band leader for the Late Show with Stephen Colbert and a 5-time Grammy award winner. Two years...

No one embodies the concept of change and staying power like Jane Fonda. She started out as the daughter of Hollywood royalty. Her father was the revered actor Henry Fonda. Jane Fonda has appeared in more than 50 films, earning Oscars for Best Actress for her roles in  Klute  and  Coming Home . And she's also famous in political circles for her anti-war activism and demonstrations against climate...

No one embodies the concept of change and durability in one lifetime like Jane Fonda. She started out as what some might call a Nepo Baby, the daughter of Henry Fonda, an actor who was considered Hollywood royalty. During her long career, Jane Fonda has appeared in more than 50 films, earning Oscars for Best Actress for her roles in  Klute  and  Coming Home.  Fonda became as famous for her politic...

In 2023, 83-year old Dr. Anthony Fauci retired as the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a job he'd held for 38 years. Once called "America's Doctor," Dr. Fauci had often been vilified for his role on the White House Coronavirus Task Force under President Donald Trump. In the past year, Dr. Fauci's critics have only gotten louder. In his book on the scientist, P...

Filmmaker Lisa Cortes brought a 1950s rock 'n' roll legend to life again in her rollicking new documentary  Little Richard: I Am Everything.  Richard, who was known for hits like  Long Tall Sally  and  Tutti Frutti , was a complicated personality who felt he never got the kind of recognition that he deserved. But in Cortes' film, celebrated musicians talk about how Richard influenced their work. M...

I was so lucky to have spent a few hours with Norman Lear who recently died at the age of 101. Lear was 95 at the time we talked. In the 1970s he created a television empire with shows that dominated the network ratings like  All in the Family,   Sanford and Son ,  The Jeffersons  and  Maude . These series changed television forever by tackling subjects like racism and social inequality. Lear was...

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  Psycho Beach Party  and  Pardon My Inquisition, or, Kiss the Blood off My Castanets.  Busch also appeared in the TV show  Oz  where he plays a cross- dressing homosexual who smothers his Mafia...

Paulina Porizkova, who was a supermodel in the 80s, has one of those rags to riches stories which she talked with me about on "Now What?" in December 2022. That conversation has just been honored with a Clarion award for Best Podcast given by the Association of Women in Communications. Life has not always been star turns for Paulina who was born in Eastern Europe. She began modeling in Paris at th...

When it comes to the word prolific, Walter Mosley fits right in. He's written about 60 books. His latest is the sci-fi novella  Touched . Mosley's first work of crime fiction,  Devil in a Blue Dress , features the character of a black private detective named Easy Rawlins who lives in the Watts neighborhood of LA. It was made into a film starring Denzel Washington. Mosley was also brought up in LA...

Roz Chast is an award-winning cartoonist who started working for the New Yorker 45 years ago. Her comics examine our everyday neuroses and anxieties. As an only child growing up in Brooklyn, Chast worried that a fire could break out in the wall and burn up her family. Or that she'd suddenly have an appendicitis attack and wind up in the hospital like Madeleine in that children's story. Chast hates...

Avi Loeb is probably the most famous practicing astronomer in the country. He's the founding director of Harvard University's Black Hole Initiative and was the longest-serving chair of Harvard's Department of Astronomy. Now, Loeb is also one of the most controversial astronomers in the country. In 2018, he proposed that an object named Oumuamua that had been detected by a telescope in Maui may hav...

Gay Talese is known for his dapper wardrobe and distinctive writing style. He became famous as a writer who helped to define the New Journalism in the 1960s. He wrote block buster best sellers like  Honor Thy Father  about the Bonanno crime family.  The Voyeur's Motel  focuses on a motel owner who spied on his guests. Talese also calls himself a voyeur. He spent 8 years researching  Thy Neighbor's...

She used to make her living standing in Harvard Square as a statue known as the Eight Foot Bride. Now, Amanda Palmer is the leader of the punk cabaret band  The Dresden Dolls . And she's not afraid to tell you what's on her mind. Her fans are passionate about her. Palmer has 1 million followers on X (formerly Twitter) and 10,000 patrons on Patreon who support her work. She's open, honest and outra...