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Fresh Air Weekend: Mike White, 'Marriage Plot'

<p>Laura Dern and series creator Mike White, shown together on the set of <em>Enlightened,</em> first worked together on White's 2007 film <em>Year of the Dog.</em></p>
Prashant Gupta
/
HBO

Laura Dern and series creator Mike White, shown together on the set of Enlightened, first worked together on White's 2007 film Year of the Dog.

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:

HBO's 'Enlightened' Take On Modern Meditation Laura Dern is Amy Jellicoe, a health and beauty executive who returns from a post-meltdown retreat to pick up the pieces of her broken life in the new HBO series Enlightened. Series creator Mike White talks about the tone of the show, and whether it's possible for people to really change.

A 'Marriage Plot' Full Of Intellectual Angst Jeffrey Eugenides' third novel, The Marriage Plot, charts the lives of three young adults as they finish college, fall in love and navigate the real world after graduating from Brown University in 1982. Eugenides, also a Brown alum, based some of the novel on his own experiences directly after college.

Breathing New Life Into Hank Williams' Lyrics The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams features a number of major country and rock musicians, who craft songs around lyrics that Hank Williams left behind in four notebooks when he died in 1953. Bob Dylan, Alan Jackson, Jack White and Norah Jones are among the artists on the album.

You can listen to the original broadcasts here:

  • Mike White on HBO's 'Enlightened'
  • Jeffrey Eugenides on 'The Marriage Plot'
  • Breathing New Life Into Hank Williams' Lyrics
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