Fresh Air with Terry Gross

Comic Roy Wood Jr. is now a correspondent for The Daily Show, but he got his start performing in comedy clubs in the South and Midwest — sometimes in places where he felt unsafe as a black man.

"I did a lot of shows in a lot of strange places," he says. "I've been called the n-word from the stage by somebody in the crowd and the club owner did nothing to defend me."

For years, religion scholar Bart Ehrman wanted to write a book about the early spread of Christianity, but he shied away from it because the topic seemed too big.

Eventually, Ehrman decided that the massive scope is what made the project so compelling: "The entire history of the West was transformed by the fact that Christianity took over the Roman Empire and then became the dominant religious and political and cultural force in our civilization," he says.

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:

Actor Danny Trejo came of age in the California prison system, doing time in a juvenile detention center as well as in San Quentin, Folsom and Soledad, on charges relating to drugs. He says that background prepared him well for acting.

"Standing on the yard in San Quentin, knowing that there's a riot coming, you're absolutely scared to death with every fiber of your body," Trejo says. "[But] you have to pretend you're not. You have to stand there and make everybody think you like it."

For more than a year now, journalists Michael Isikoff and David Corn have been devoted to covering the Trump campaign's ties to Russia.

Both of the books I'm recommending today are each, in their own ways, about cold cases.

After all, what could be colder than the mysteries surrounding the life of that pre-eminent Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie? Christie, by some calculations, is the second best-selling author of all time (beaten by a hair by Shakespeare). She was a resolutely private person and, so, has teased the legion of biographers who have been chipping away at her sphinxlike silence ever since she died in 1976.

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:

John Oliver Finds Humor In The News No One Wants To Hear About: On Last Week Tonight, Oliver dives into often obscure stories, like NRA TV and the laws that govern televangelism. He describes the show's style as "the slowest improv you've ever seen."

As the investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election continues, more and more attention has focused on the infamous Russia dossier on Donald Trump compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele.

Growing up with a Mexican father and an American mother, author Luis Alberto Urrea often felt like there was a border wall running through his family's San Diego apartment.

"The kitchen was the United States; the living room was Mexico," Urrea says. "One side was struggling with all her might to make me an American boy, and the other side, with all of his might, was trying to keep me a Mexican boy."

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:

Nick Kroll And John Mulaney Relive Raging Hormones And First Kisses In 'Big Mouth': The comic actors channel the indignities of puberty in their animated Netflix comedy series. Looking back on his own adolescence, Mulaney says: "I was always mystified."