Terry Gross

Concert halls and music venues around the world have been shuttered due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, but before closing its doors, the Philadelphia Orchestra gave one last performance on March 12 — to an empty concert hall. Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin describes the experience of playing in a vacant hall and hearing silence at the end of each piece. And we listen to a 2019 interview with Yannick.

In his new book, Let the People Pick the President, Jesse Wegman makes a case for abolishing the Electoral College. He notes that the winner-takes-all model means that millions of voters become irrelevant to a presidential election that is often decided by voters in key "battleground" states.

Politico reporter Dan Diamond says infighting at the Department of Health and Human Services and the need to flatter Trump impeded the response to the coronavirus.

RuPaul is the most successful drag queen of all time. His reality competition series for drag queens, RuPaul's Drag Race, is now in its 12th season. He'll talk about how he began his career, broke thru to wider audiences, and how he uses drag to challenge preconceived notions of gender and identity.

James McBride is best known for his memoir, The Color of Water, about being the son of an African American father and a white mother. His new novel, Deacon King Kong, takes place in 1969, in a Brooklyn housing project, similar to the one he grew up in., and involves the wide consequences of a shooting.

Greg Miller of The Washington Post reveals the hidden history of Crypto AG, a Swiss firm that sold encryption technology to 120 countries — but was secretly owned by the CIA for decades.

Erdrich's new novel, The Night Watchman, was inspired by her grandfather, who chaired the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and fought a Congressional initiative to move native people off their land.

In 2014, wilderness explorer Roman Dial experienced every parent's nightmare when he learned that his son, then 27, was missing in a remote Central American rainforest, thousands of miles away.