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Fresh Air Weekend: Coppola, The Muppets

November 26, 2011
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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:

The Muppet Fans Who Made 'The Muppets' Movie The filmmakers behind Forgetting Sarah Marshall have teamed up to create the first Muppet movie in over a decade. "We set out to make a Muppet movie that harkened back to the late 70s [and] early 80s Muppets that we grew up with," says Jason Segel.

The History Of Hillbilly Boogie's Earliest Days Boogie-woogie was a piano style that began sometime in the early 20th century — and, by the 1930s, became a huge pop-music fad. Rock historian Ed Ward explains how the genre re-emerged in country music after WWII, when it was an important precursor to rock 'n' roll.

Francis Ford Coppola Reflects On His Film Career: The director shares stories from his early film making career and from some of his most famous movies, including The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. He spoke at the Toronto International Film Festival to the festival's co-director.

You can listen to the original broadcasts here:

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Arts & Culture

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Dan Brown: 'Inferno' Is 'The Book That I Would Want To Read'

Dan Brown, author of the blockbuster The Da Vinci Code, is back with his first novel in four years. Inferno follows academic hero Robert Langdon on a chase through Italy as he attempts to avert a biological catastrophe.

Food

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'Picture Cook': Drawings Are The Key Ingredients In These Recipes

Designer Katie Shelly's upcoming cookbook offers 50 illustrated recipe "blueprints" for basic meals — from simple snacks to more hefty dishes like eggplant Parmesan. She hopes they'll inspire any level of cook to improvise in the kitchen.

Politics

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What A Week: White House Rattled By Controversy

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Technology

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Book News: Amazon May Be Called Before Parliament Over Taxes

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