Fresh Air - NPR

In 2013, Snowden showed journalists thousands of top secret documents about U.S. intelligence agencies' surveillance efforts. He's been living in exile in Russia ever since. "People look at me now and they think I'm this crazy guy, I'm this extremist or whatever. Some people have a misconception that [I] set out to burn down the NSA," he says. "But that's not what this was about. In many ways, 2013 wasn't about surveillance at all. What it was about was a violation of the Constitution." Snowden talks about his first hack as a preteen, why he decided to leak the documents, and his 40 days detained in the Moscow airport. His new book is 'Permanent Record.'

Mitchell, the chief foreign affairs correspondent for NBC News and anchor of her own MSNBC show, looks back on her career in journalism. She's receiving a lifetime achievement Emmy later on Sept. 24. "It's very empowering to feel that you can ask questions and try to take on someone who is doing something wrong and betraying the public's trust," Mitchell says. Also, critic John Powers reviews the book 'Heaven, My Home,' by Attica Locke.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Eric Foner talks about how current issues of racial inequality, voter suppression and mass incarceration relate to the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. They were added to the constitution after the Civil War and gave black men the right to vote, gave people equal protection under the laws, and granted citizenship to all people born in the U.S. His new book is 'The Second Founding.' Also, we remember pioneering NPR journalist Cokie Roberts, who died today at 75.

In their new book, 'The Education of Brett Kavanaugh,' 'New York Times' reporters Kate Kelly and Robin Pogrebin investigate the allegations against the Supreme Court justice and what was omitted from the confirmation hearings. They discuss Kavanaugh's behavior at Yale, their interviews with Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez, and why the FBI didn't talk to witnesses Ramirez provided.

Stephen Kinzer's book, 'Poisoner in Chief,' exposes how CIA scientist Sidney Gottlieb worked in the 1950s and early '60s to develop mind control drugs and deadly toxins that could be used against enemies of the U.S. government. Gottlieb believed the key to mind control was LSD, and is credited with bringing the drug to the U.S. He also experimented on unwitting people in prisons and detention centers in Japan, Germany, and the Philippines. Critic Ken Tucker reviews Ken Burns' new 8-part documentary series, 'Country Music.' Tan France says he almost turned down the job of fashion expert in the Netflix series 'Queer Eye.' "The thought of being one of the very first openly gay South Asian men on a major show. ...That pressure was so hard to handle," he says. But then he thought it was an opportunity to change the narrative about his community. His memoir is 'Naturally Tan.'