Wendell Pierce is a proud journeyman actor

Sometimes about really big things, but most times, the little mysteries are the best.

“Our lost and found is currently filled with pants. I don't know what I've never seen this happen.”

This is true. This is true. Mysteries of every size each week, this American life. Wherever you get your podcasts. This is fresh air. I'm Tanya Mosley.

My guest today, actor Wendell Pierce, is taking on a part he's wanted to play for years. Shakespeare's Othello, one of the most demanding roles ever written for the stage. The classic is a story of a celebrated military leader who is slowly manipulated into doubting his own wife, until jealousy and deception consume him. Pierce is known to many as Detective Moreland on the wire and Antoine but teased on HBO's Tremet.

On Broadway, he became the first black actor to play Willie Loman in death of a salesman,

earning a 2023 Tony nomination for the role. His range these days runs just as wide. A police captain on CBS's Ellsbith, a CIA officer and Jack Ryan Ghostwar, and a villain in Raising Canaan on Stars. He plays a fellow at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., until June 28.

Wendell Pierce, welcome to fresh air. Thank you for having me, Tanya. Okay, so we are talking just a few hours before you go and stage their in D.C. as Othello.

“And what is your head like a few hours before you take on this role?”

Oh, it's really rest in relaxation because I have a couple of hours. And I have to prepare for, but I try to relax and warm up and my body and spirit prepare for the journey.

You know, I always think of these roles, you know, these iconic roles and large roles.

Like the beginning of a hike up Mount Everest. So I'm at base camp at this time of the day. That's a good analogy or metaphor, whatever you want to call it. Because I mean, this role you've said has challenged you like you ever have. What is it about Othello?

Well, first of all, just the playwright himself, Mr. William Shakespeare, is a great challenge. You know, I try to do the trifecta as I call it to do television and film and theater every year. You know, the great trifecta and all of the different mediums. But I think I'm going to expand that to quartet because I would like to do a Shakespeare every year if I can.

And because first of all, the detective work I call it, of mining the text for all of its understanding and everything that Shakespeare was,

is telling you not only about the characters, but how to portray them and what's happening. And that's with the in the verse in the I am big contaminated, but it's also in the on a monopia of the words sounding like what they are. Monosilabic words, denoting a slower pace and the opposite being true multi-syllabic words, it's faster pace. That's just the technical aspect of doing the classical text like that.

“And then you have the emotional work that you have to do in the connection with the other actors and characters and the love that I have for Desdemona.”

And actually the discovery and this role is the love that I have for Iyaga, which has been key for opening up a fellow for me. Normally he has just seen as the villain and manipulated by Iyaga, but actually he is that is a part of the love story too. He is in my interpretation. He is the person that I've known and loved and trusted all of my life because I'm orphaned. I am an outsider and I'm orphaned since a small child. And so you build that up and then you have to have the physical and then the vocal strength for three hour production.

So the challenge is physical, it's intellectual and it's emotional. You mentioned a little bit ago that you do a trifecta every year, but is that an intentional thing that you're making for yourself? This year I'm going to make sure I'm doing one of these three things now, the fourth one, making sure that you do a Shakespeare play.

And then also just as an actor you want to be as diverse as possible. And that's been the reason I've been able to have a 40 year career working in New York and Los Angeles and doing television, doing film, doing theater.

“There's many different places I've produced a play and Uganda. I've been in a composite Uganda at the National Theatre there. I tried to make it as diverse as possible and it's a great challenge and that's what the journey is all about.”

I'm here in the words you're saying window, but I saw all the things that you're doing right now and I thought, whoa, I mean, this is like these you're doing more in a year than many people do.

And five years, it seems like as you get older you're almost riding yourself even harder. Well, you know, that ticking clock of mortality kind of helps you want to build a body of work you want to. You know, subconsciously that probably is a part of it, but also it's not all at the same time. You know, I've right now Jack Ryan Ghost Wars out, but that was last summer and spring when we shot that into buy and London. And then Elizabeth just ended this season. We do that during the course of the regular television season from September to March. And now while I'm doing that, I was planning out of the load for as soon as we got finished to do that to come to Washington DC and do a fellow here.

And then raise in Canaan, we had already shot that prior to last year. It was been in the can for like a year. So it's all fortunate that they're all coming out at the same time.

“So it seems like I'm doing them at the same time, but I break, but you know, all these jobs and actors life is and.”

Well, I've discovered their kind of in the quarters of the year, you know, for a second, third, fourth quarter. And that's how I think of my planning because we work in three month periods, you know, play in three months, you know, full season of television. It's maybe six months. And a film is three months. So you're constantly planning and it's constantly changing, but I'm a journeyman actor. And some people say I shouldn't say that, but I actually embrace that that's something that. I'm is aware with pride. I love to call myself a journeyman. Is there a state, much to being a journeyman actor? Some people think so. This whole window, you shouldn't say that, man. You know, you've established yourself in industry as someone significant, you know, I guess people are thinking of some star system or whatever.

And I said, you know, there's, there's the joke that we have as actors, as of the five stages of your career. There's who is window peers.

“Get me one window peers. Get me someone like window peers. Get me a younger window peers. And then the last and final and fifth stages. Who is window peers?”

So you're racing against not being who is with you. Is that safe, right? Yes. Do you have a favorite scene from Othello? Oh, no. I have favorite, oh, it's too many. It's so rich. You know, what's interesting is does the Mona and Othello don't have any love scenes. They literally do not have any love scenes. And it's one of the things that I really love about our production. That in the midst of scenes of strife, of conflict, of war, I, we find the moments to show our love for each other.

But, you know, the first time is like, they're going to war and I have to say, this is why I married her. This is what the intention is. I talk about my love for her.

And then I get to war. I say, get to Cyprus and I realize that she's there. And I go, thank God, you know, I've made it through it. But what is normally a rousing speech of, on the, on the battlefront, I, I make it into a declaration of love to Desdemona because she's there and present.

It stops me here. It is too much of joy. And I'm only talking about her, right? And it's normally played as, you know, I made it through the battle and I made it here.

“And all you guys are here and I happen to have my wife too and it's a really wonderful thing. We've done it. The war is done, you know, and I'm like, no, it's a love scene.”

Wendell, I'm noticing a theme in your work. You're drawn to roles that take you somewhere dark and deep. And of course, a fellow does that.

And so did Willie Loman, which you played back in 2022 when you became the first black actor to play him in death of a salesman on Broadway.

He is an aging, traveling salesman chasing success. He really wants to be well liked. How did you find your way into Willie Loman? The first man I thought of was my father. My father was had a great work ethic.

He was a man very, very simple laborer. And who had wanderlust loved to travel. He kind of instilled that in us.

He said you can be whatever you want to be. And he also warned us that they're going to be people who will do everything possible that you won't succeed. And so it was always there that I started to think of Willie Loman. And what is so tragic about Willie Loman is, for men like that, the American dream was still something that was denied them at every step of the way. We achieved a part of the American dream. But it was through an extreme difficulty.

And that can break people. That can destroy people's psyche and destroy their heart, destroy their mental facility.

“And I think that's what happened with Willie Loman, right? Because he was a black man in America. That love the country, that love the economic ethos and idea of the American dream.”

But then that dream was a nightmare for him. He was placed in his expectations far outlasted and grew far past what was available to him. And out of that desperation, he destroyed himself and destroyed his family. You know, that's what's so powerful about you playing this character. Because I think that the whole premise, the idea of death of a salesman, it is something that everyone can sort of connect to, especially as an American here and then there. But there's another layer there when you add on you and your identity as a black man in America.

I mean, because what happens is there are people that came to the play that thought we rewrote the play. They said, "You can't change that a producer actually came to me with great concern. Like, wait, you can't say there's the scene where Willie Loman has caught an infidelity with a woman in the hotel by his son. It is the moment that broke all of their lives. And a teller had listened, "Go into the bathroom." You know, and be quiet, there may be a law against this.

“Right? And in our production, I'm having an affair with a white woman. It is 1937, and I think it was.”

And we're in this hotel. And she is, you know, scantily clothed. And there's a knocking on the door, and I'm thinking it's someone that can expose our infidelity. And I say, you know, there may be a law against this. And I'm thinking of the laws that were of the time.

And then there was the time that so many black men were lynched because they were called with a white woman.

“It's one of the most dangerous things that can ever happen.”

It was the time to discuss for our boys. It was the time of, you know, of danger. And, and actually, the producer thought we put it in there. Right? And I said, no, that's in the play. Because actually, the law at the time was no unmarried couple could be in a hotel together.

And that's the law that they were thinking of, that embossing at this time, you know,

because you're not supposed to be in a hotel together unless you married, you know, there may be a law against this.

“And that's that simple line, rang out like something you had had never heard before.”

It felt different, right? Yep. The last time that I spoke with you, we were in the pandemic, and you were spending a lot of time with your dad during that time. It was like 2021. And since then, he has passed away, and I just want to offer my condolences for staff. No, thank you. Thank you. I have my dad for he was two months away from his 99th birthday.

I literally, he passed in, in my hands, you know, we were holding hands. I was there with him.

“And so I, I had, I had my father for a long time in those last years.”

I spent, I got closer to my father than the last 10 years of his life.

Then, I had never had before. My mother passed and when I heard dying wishes was window-take care of your father.

Right? She knew. And, you know, while I was working in Budapest, if I got four days off, I would go home to New Orleans. Right? And spent time with him. I was a blessing. I was traveling the world and being an actor and at the same time, my home base is New Orleans and here I would have my father with me. For all those years. And he was, he was fuel to my fire. You know, he was reminded me of everything that he taught me. And as I, as I attacked these challenges of these great roles and the different roles that I play, you know, he is very much in my process.

This is a man who fought in Saipan and World War II. You know, he came back and was not his voting rights weren't even protected. And here he was risking his life in the W.V. campaign and the Black community victory abroad and victory at home. So he very much believed in that. There's actually a moving speech that you gave the opening night of death of a salesman, where you're paying tribute to your father. And he was actually in the audience at the time. And I want to, I want to play some of it. Let's listen to a little bit.

When this play was written, a young man came from New Orleans to be a photographer. He decided to go home and raise his rewards in the woods. One of which is me. He fought for this country and loved it when it didn't love him back. But he gave me the most precious thing ever. Love and time. That was my guess, Windle Pierce, on opening night of death of a salesman.

And at that moment when you say he gave me time, you hold up a timepiece and you walk off the stage and you present it to your dad. And that was the timepiece pocket watch from the play that you see Willie Loman received from his brother. It is, uh, and I presented it to him. And, uh, and I knew in that moment, uh, it's probably the last time he would ever see me on stage. And, uh, I just wanted to honor him. Our guest today is actor Windle Pierce. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tony Mosley, and this is fresh air.

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And how does this new movie compare to others in the franchise? We get into it on NPR's top culture happy hour. Listen via the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. You know, I'm thinking about how you say that you got into the character Willy Loman by really thinking about the journey of your father. And that story you told in your speech just then for opening night, that was a revelation to you that your father was a young photographer. Right around the time death of a salesman was going out into the world because your dad, for the longest time, you thought he didn't want this life of a creator for you.

You thought he wanted you to be kind of a traditional man, a lawyer or a doctor, something safe.

He was a man. I went to a very good school, a very great college preparatory school, Ben Franklin, it's the number one high school in Louisiana. And it's, you know, all these great national merit scholars and people with scholarships and going to the Ivy leagues and great careers. And he just, and when I decided early on in the middle of that, I wanted to be an actor at 14 going to this other great school, the New Wellness Center for Creative Arts. I had the best of both worlds. Oh, he was so adamantly against it. He's like, let your mom take it all that stuff. I'm not, I'm not going to do it, but he stuck to his guns. His principle was you do what you want to do, but give a hundred percent.

“And so he, he was adamantly against it. And, but then my brother made me remember that my father was a photographer.”

And he said, I want daddy's pictures, you know, if anything ever happens, I want daddy's pictures. I say what pictures any showed me these pictures from an art exhibit my father had done when he had studied as a photographer. And he went to New York. I knew he had gone to New York to study photography because that was a trade back in the day. We didn't have our phones and instrumented cameras. You went to a photography studio and got your pictures taken. So when the instrumented camera came out, actually, an entire industry went away because a photographer was like your, like a grosser or a dry cleaner, you know, the family got together.

They went to the photography studio and they took pictures.

“And that's what he was expecting to do. And that's what I thought he was training to do when I realized he had an artistic vocation of being a photographer like Roy de Caravar or James Vandaze.”

And all of these wonderful photographers when I saw these from his exhibit. So it was a dream deferred for him. So a part of his pushback on my wanting to be an actor was his desire as a father, not to see his son go through the hurt and the disappointment that he had gone through. And so that's why he tried to steer me away from being an actor early on when I was in high school. You went on to study at Juilliard, which you have said is kind of the most terrifying experience of your life. You made it through there. You can make it through anywhere.

But you, there's this other story you tell that you've told many times what we got to hear it here. You're most memorable audition. You just graduated from Juilliard. And you're in front of Bob Vossy. Oh, yeah, that audition I considered one of the highlights of my career. And it was for the big deal on Broadway. And I went in and I had come up with they were already started.

All right, this is it. I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm taking my life back. And so he explodes in the middle of in this one scene.

“And so I was going into audition. They had already started rehearsal. And on the break, I was going to go in and do my audition.”

So as the doors open and they're coming out for a break, I run into the room and I said, all right, listen up everybody. This is what's going to happen. I'm taking my life back and I go into the scene. Everybody stops like, who is this crazy guy? They say, okay, okay, all right. Everybody go on break. Bob Vossy clears the room. He says, okay, now do it. The stage manager is fumbling trying to find the scene. I saw right everybody. This is it. I'm taking my life back. He goes, stop, stop, stop. The stage manager was lost. He says he turns to the pianist and he goes, give me an FVAP.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Then he says, give me the script. And he says, okay, start. That's it. All right, everybody. This is how I was going to go. I'm taking my life back. And he reads the scene with me.

No, you are. I'm going to do what we say. I said, no, it's going to go this way. Boom, boom. And he circles me and we read the scene together and that the end goes, oh, you're good.

But you're too young. You're too young. Oh, man, but I want to work with you. He calls my agent. My agent calls me and says, what did you do today? Bob Vossy called and said he's going to work with you this year.

“That's it. Oh, my God. That's great. But you're too young for this. But he's going to find something. He's going to work with you this year.”

Later that year, I'm in a hotel room and I see Bob Vossy's picture comes up and they say, ladies and gentlemen, Bob Vossy died today. And I was like, oh, man, I was going to work with him. I was going to work with him. And then I had the epiphany. I did work with him. I did.

We did a scene together, had the music behind it. We read it. It was great. We had an audience of one.

But I did work with Bob Vossy. And that's when I realized an audition is an opportunity to share your work. You're not asking for a job. You're saying this is what I would do with this role. This is what this play is about. This is what this film is about. And just going to the work. It's opening and closing night. And that's it. And if something comes out of it, the job itself or whatever, then that's then you get to continue to do the work. That's my Bob Vossy story.

“What a confident young man you were. I'm taking my life back. Yes.”

If you're just joining us, my guest is actor Wendell Pierce. He starring as the title character and Shakespeare's Othello. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is fresh air. For instant clarity on world events in just five minutes, listen to NPR news now. New episodes drop every hour with the latest on US politics, international news, the economy, health, science, technology and more. Five minutes is all it takes to get fully caught up with NPR news now. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get podcasts.

This week on Wayway. Don't tell me we talked to best selling author Caro Clare Burke about how it feels to write the book of the summer. I've been very dissociative. So that's a problem for my future therapist. Yeah, I say. Let's talk about the fact you're not in therapy. That's fascinating. Don't miss our full conversation in the rest of our games.

Listen to the week wait. Don't tell me podcast in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. You know, window, so many of the men you play are holding on to dignity within systems who don't fully see them. It seems to be kind of like the through line that I see with so many of the characters you play. And I want to talk for just a moment about Bunt Morlin from The Wire in a lot of ways anyone who see the show knows it. I mean, he was the conscience of the show. He took so much pride in his job even inside of this department that made it kind of hard.

And I want to play a scene that comes after a shootout. It's where one of the women in Omar's crew has been shot dead in the street.

And bunk is investigating that killing. And he pulls Omar aside to this quiet deserted spot. And they have this moment that we're about to play. Let's listen.

“I was a few years ahead of you at Edmerson, but I know you remember the neighborhood how it was.”

We had some bad boys for real. Wasn't about guns. So much as no one would to do with your hands. Those boys could really rack.

My father had me on the street, but like any young man I wanted to be hard to.

So I would turn up at all the house parties with a tough boys home. Yeah, they knew I wasn't one of them. In my case it would come up to me and say go home school boy, you don't belong here. Didn't realize at the time what they were doing for me. It's rough as that neighborhood could be. We had us a community, nobody no victim who didn't matter. And now all we got is bodies and predatory like you. And I would have grow fell. I saw kids acting like Omar calling you by name, glorifying your (bleep)

Makes me sick how far we don't feel. I just want to listen to the rest of the show right now. That was my guest window pierced in the wire.

“Is it true that there was actually a turning point during the height of the success of this show when you thought about leaving it?”

Yes, yes. They came up point. Someone doing the course of the wire, people were challenged us all the time. You are only demonstrating the thugry and the crime and you perpetuating this idea that the stereotype that black folks are criminally inclined and violent in all. I remember a woman on the train in Challenger, a African American woman who worked on Wall Street. And I said, I accept your criticism.

We should never lose the ability to be offended, never lose that ability. So I welcome the challenge and that's an end to criticism.

So I can make sure that we don't fall victims of that criticism. I said, but we have judges, the mayor, the president of the city council, the city council members, police officers, lawyers, doctors, teachers who are all African American. But you're only seeing the criminals. Imagine how tough it is for a little kid in those neighborhoods. They don't see the lawyers or the doctors. If you don't see them as an educated woman, a professional, and you can only see the thugry.

“Imagine how susceptible those young kids are to it. And that's what we're trying to tell and the story we're trying to tell.”

And the fourth season, I almost quit because our rap party, a young lady comes up to me. She said, oh, Mr. Pierce, I was on the show this year. I really wanted to work with you. I didn't get, we didn't have anything together. I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy your work and all. And this is my only time being on the wire and I'm going to brown. I think she was going to on a full scholarship. And I said, who did you play? She says, I look younger than I am. So I was one of the kids in the middle school. And I said, oh, and then she described it character that she played was this out of control young woman who slashes another girl's face.

Oh, I know something trivial. And I said, wait a minute, you played that. She said, yes. And I said, and what do you do in life? Where are you going? She was like, I'm going to brown university on the full scholarship. And I thought to myself, why are we not telling your story? Why are we not telling your story? And I thought about the criticism. And I said, that woman was right. And I said, I should leave the show because we're perpetuating a stereotype. And then the episode came on for the fourth season. And it was so impactful. And we see exactly where we lose our kids. And we see that inflection point where we can save them and put them on the right track.

And then I said, okay, it's not arbitrary. That's the role we're playing on the wire. We are the cautionary tale. We are as Shakespeare said, holding a mirror up to nature and calling our dysfunction out in our society that creates the criminality that doesn't celebrate the education of this young woman going to school and all.

“So it wasn't arbitrary. And then that's the only thing that made me come back.”

Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is actor Wendell Pierce. He's starring in the title role of Shakespeare's Othello at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. We'll be right back after a break. This is fresh air. You know, every day on up first NPR's Golden Globe nominated morning news podcast, we bring you three essential stories at the heart of each story. Our questions. What really happened? What really mattered? What happens next?

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This week on Wait wait don't tell me we asked comedy legend Robert Smigel about the moment he first knew he was funny. When I was like four or five, I could draw really well. So I could draw Fred Flintstone and Snoopy. And then probably a couple of years later, I started drawing them having sex. Listen to the Wait wait don't tell me podcast and the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

“You know, I think anybody who knows you or even knows just a little bit about you knows that you are from New Orleans. You rep it very hard.”

And you grew up in Pantutrain Park in New Orleans.

It sounds so idyllic. You had a pretty idyllic childhood. It sounds like. It was. I called, I call Pantutrain Park the Black Mayberry, you know. It grew out of the civil rights movement when there was so many prohibitions and where blacks could not participate in the expansion of Pulse World War II. You know, suburbia and there was a movement to make sure that black folks had access to homes and all and Pantutrain Park came out of sort of an appeasement. It was separate but equal adjacent to Gentile Woods, which was a white neighborhood with the covenant of blacks couldn't move in.

And they set aside another 200 acres and replicated that neighborhood in Pantutrain Park. But right in the middle of it, Joseph buttholomew designed a golf course, a little municipal golf course. And Joseph buttholomew was an African-American landscape architect who designed most of the courses in New Orleans at the time and but couldn't play on them. So it was it was the young and young of fighting the ignorance of Jim Crow segregated New Orleans. But at the same time creating I pockets of idyllic communities in Pantutrain Park was one of them.

And lawyers and doctors and teachers and janitors and the glass man Mr. Wagner was a glass man and Mr. Greenwood was the dry cleaner. So it was economic development and everybody's mother and father and playground there and had Southern University at New Orleans. That a black historic black college by the neighborhood. So it was really, really idyllic. Yeah, so many memories with you and your mom and your dad, your mom who was a school teacher, your siblings. And she talked to two blocks from two blocks from our home at Calca Elementary School where I went to elementary school.

And for years I was just known as Mrs. Pierce's son because she was so beloved in the neighborhood and she was a part of a community.

“What was that like for you? What was that like for you though to be a child of a school teacher?”

Well, it was it was all of our teachers living in the neighborhood too. So the worst part about it is, you know, I would come home from school or come home from the playground.

My mother sitting there with my second grade teacher and my third grade teacher and my fourth grade teacher.

You can get away with my mom. I couldn't get away with anything. But it was great, you know, it was great.

“The community and totally destroyed by Katrina, one of the deepest parts of the flooding.”

And I knew how it was first built.

The civic advocacy that constructed Punch a train park in the civil rights movement led by AP Turo, one of the great civil rights lawyers of New Orleans and my parents generation. So I put out a clarion called to our generation after Katrina saying, we owe it to them. You know, we owe it to them to rebuild it. And so we have rebuilt it. Our neighborhood, brick by brick, block by block house by house in Punch a train park is back. I laid it led and effort.

“And we rebuilt 40 homes. And that's where I live to this day. I'm still there in Punch a train park.”

You wrote this book out of that devastation, the wind and the reads in 2015.

I mean, it's a memoir, but it also is this love letter to New Orleans. It's so descriptive about your childhood, but then just about the city and the history. And there's a particular moment, you say, decades from now, little kids will ask, Mr. Pierce, what did you know about New Orleans, New Orleans, darkest hour? You will tell them. And that got me thinking about this quote that I'm kind of obsessed with right now from Brian Stevenson,

where he said that basically our ancestors fought for freedom, our parents fought for civil rights.

And our generation struggle is a narrative one, the honest accounting of what actually happened. And reading your book, I just felt echoes of that. I wonder what you feel about that idea because you're just so intentional and making sure that this story, particularly about New Orleans and Katrina, stays alive.

“It is the most important thing we have right now in our time, in our generation.”

People are actively trying to erase who we are as a people. I am only minutes away from the Pentagon, as I speak right now. And I remember my father admiring General Chappy James, Benjamin Chappy James, and to know that they just removed his painting from the Pentagon. And whatever reason they come up with, we all know the reason. It's just racism. The idea of trying to eliminate any sort of contributions that African-American community has made to this country in the year that we tried to celebrate 250.

It is so insulting, it is so aggressively. It feels like a visceral attack. My brother was purged out of his job here in Washington, D.C. I know so many people, and it's so many black women in particular. This attack on minorities and women in a world where we are trying to, where people are trying to erase them. We realize that that is our call to duty of our generation, which is we know now that we have to mock our passing on the tree and declare who we are, who we were, what our accomplishments are, and have been, and what we have created and exercise our right of self-determination and declaration of accomplishment.

We owe that to our ancestors. We owe that to the generations yet to come, because they're those who do not have our best interest at heart. Wendell Pierce, this has been such a pleasure, thank you so much for your time. Thank you, I really appreciate it. Wendell Pierce stars in Othello at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, the rise of masculineism, how the movement, which is now mainstream, aims to fight feminism and restore the primacy of men.

To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air.

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Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, and Marie Boldenado, Lauren Krimzel, Theresa Madden, Monique Nazareth,

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With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.

This week on Newsmakers, the new boss at American Vogue, we are at a moment where people want to trust.

“Can the iconic fashion brand honor its past and meet the moment?”

I do think that you can find ways to be challenged and excited by things that might not be navigating the straight of her moves. Chloe Mel, this week on NPR's Newsmakers, listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Recently, cyber security researchers discovered a striking computer virus. Seemingly related to the conflict between the US and Iran over Iran's nuclear program. Everything about this thing screams special.

A cunning cyber weapon meant to gaslight nuclear scientists. Listen to Planet Money on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.