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Action, espionage and secrets fill the new NBC show American Odyssey.

But Peter Horton, the show's co-creator and executive producer, says it's easiest to describe the show by saying what it's not. "It's not a police show, it's not an FBI show, it's not a CIA show," he tell's NPR's Arun Rath. "It's a modern-day thriller told in three story bubbles, basically, about three very ordinary people."

Those three people all stumble upon the same massive government conspiracy: A lawyer unearths a cover-up, a political activist tries to expose it and, at the center of it all, a soldier, Sgt. Odelle Ballard, struggles to get home from North Africa after her team is wiped out by the U.S. government.

"There's a really human story underneath all this action and tension. For us that's the little dirty secret underneath — that this is a character piece. But the tension on top of it's what drives it."

- Peter Horton

The show takes its name from Homer's epic The Odyssey.

"The thing that stuck with us was the basic theme of someone going through a real journey or an odyssey to get home," Horton says. "There's something achy about that theme, so we just started running with that — but that's the only thing we stole from Homer."

Interview Highlights

On whether the government conspiracy plot points are a product of the post- Edward Snowden era

It's a combination, I think, of the post-Snowden era and the post-Citizens United era ... where suddenly you can give as much money as you have to a candidate to promote your cause. It's post-Snowden in the sense that indeed what we know is the extent to which not only government agencies and, frankly, private industry can invade our private space. It's also the post-Citizens United because this series is ultimately about power: Do we have it as individuals in our country or anywhere in our world? They're three Davids up against the Goliath of money and power.

On portrayals of Muslim terrorists and the potential for criticism

I think especially with the Muslim world, there's such trope, such stereotype out there. And it's not the Muslim world — it's a segment of the Muslim world. So really ... the fun of it is taking on a trope and saying "OK, here it is, yes that does exist in our world," and then suddenly you'll see a character in episode three comes along who is a "terrorist" but has a whole different point of view — and what you start to find is that his point of view is reasonable, you know, he's human. He's not a bad guy.

On the risks of setting a show in the present and incorporating news events like the Greek election

The Greek election was a shock to us because we started working on this three years ago ... way before the Greek election stuff ... it was just at the beginning of Greece's problems and we thought, "Wouldn't it be interesting if there was a candidate who came along and it was a people's candidate who said, 'I'm gonna just toss this debt and we're gonna pull out of the eurozone'? " Well, lo and behold, right around the time our show launches, that's what happens in Greece.

So, so far, for better or worse, world events have cooperated with our story.

Even if you don't know Kate Mulgrew's name, you know her work. She currently plays Red, the formidable prison kitchen manager in the series Orange Is the New Black. And for seven seasons she was Captain Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager.

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Mulgrew starred as Captain Kathryn Janeway, the first woman to command a Federation Starship, in Star Trek: Voyager. CBS Photo Archive/Delivered By Online USA/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption CBS Photo Archive/Delivered By Online USA/Getty Images

Mulgrew starred as Captain Kathryn Janeway, the first woman to command a Federation Starship, in Star Trek: Voyager.

CBS Photo Archive/Delivered By Online USA/Getty Images

"Nothing could be more challenging, more arduous, or more rewarding than that part on that series," Mulgrew tells NPR's Tamara Keith.

But the story behind the actress is more dramatic than anything she's played on screen. In her new memoir Born With Teeth, Mulgrew pulls back the curtain on her own life with an honesty that's raw and refreshing. It's not your typical, "Oh, the people I've known" celebrity story.

At the heart of Mulgrew's story is a choice she made when she was just 22 years old, when her acting career was on the rise.

Interview Highlights

On getting pregnant and putting her baby up for adoption

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I found myself pregnant at the age of 22 while I was playing Mary Ryan on a very popular soap opera called Ryan's Hope. And I immediately called my mother who was still in a passage of grief over the loss of her daughter Tessie, my sister Tess. ... I said to mother, "This is going to be very difficult, Mom, but I have to tell you the truth: I'm pregnant."

And she said, "Well, that's too bad. You've made a big mistake, kitten, and now you're going to have to fix it. And the only way you can fix it is to give the baby up for adoption. So I think you should go over to Catholic charities and find a wonderful social worker who will guide you through this process and you will do the brave thing and you will give up this baby. So, kitten, pull yourself together and do what you know you need to do. You won't be the first and you certainly won't be the last — " I think she said "actress" who's ever given birth to an illegitimate child. So that was that.

On how she went back to work on the set of Ryan's Hope just a few days later

Possibly more harrowing than the birth itself in terms of my sense of loss, my sense of disequilibrium, my understanding that the size of what I had done would never leave me. The dimension of the decision was not only epic but infinite. And whereas my teacher had promised me that the work would lift me up, in this particular case, three days after the birth of that baby, being handed a tiny stunt baby by the studio nurse and told to start a monologue ... and the monologue is a promise of fidelity and endurance, love and maternal care — I just thought I had to tap into something that I didn't even know I had in terms of sheer mettle because, the earth I had known .... disappeared.

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Mulgrew plays Red, a formidable prison chef, in the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black. Ali Goldstein/Netflix/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Ali Goldstein/Netflix/AP

Mulgrew plays Red, a formidable prison chef, in the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black.

Ali Goldstein/Netflix/AP

On coping with the many personal losses she's endured

I have to be very straight with you about this — I've never considered it preponderance of loss. I've met too many people who've lost far more than I've lost. Far, far more! So I don't look at it that way, I just looked at it as my lot. When you are born into a big Irish Catholic family, these are the odds I guess. Somebody's going to leave you. I couldn't have predicted that it would be two sisters and I couldn't have predicted that one of them would be so deeply, deeply, deeply loved by me. But such is life!

And as for my relationships with men, well, I know a lot of women who've had a lot more! ... What I think I tried to call on in the book, is my sense of vulnerability. My sense of being just a middle-class girl from Dubuque, Iowa, being thrown into the world early and having these experiences in such a vivid and big way — I think that's what hits you when you read the book and when you begin to understand my life.

On how her life might be different if her daughter hadn't been adopted

I think about it all the time and did for those 20 years before I met her. ... I'm not one of those who will ever say to you "No regrets." I have serious regrets. And I think most thoughtful people do, if they live a life as I have lived mine with a great deal of abandon and passion.

I regret that I could not have raised her. I regret that I saw that decision as an impossible one. I regret that my mother was in such an agony of grief that she could not help me raise this child. And I regret, of course, the tangential pain, the ancillary pain that caused my daughter's father.

But do I regret her? Not for one second. And this is the thing of life. This is the deep mystery. Not for one second do I regret that girl or giving birth to that girl, who is now a fundamental, integral part of my life and part of my ongoing learning about the vicissitudes of love and loss.

Many Americans have a pre-formed opinion of Hillary Clinton, who is expected to announce her candidacy for president this weekend. Call it a blessing — or causality — of being in the public eye for so long. But Clinton has long implied that the public perception of her is all wrong.

"Well, as someone close to me once said, 'I'm probably the most famous person you don't really know,' " Clinton told NBC in 2007.

Eight years later, Clinton could probably make the same argument. So, here are five things about the frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic nomination that you may not know or just may not remember.

1. She Started Out A Republican.

In high school, Hillary Rodham — who grew up in Illinois and was influenced by her die-hard Republican father and high school history teacher — considered herself a Republican and even became a Goldwater Girl. She wrote about it in her book Living History:

Hillary Clinton in a photo of student council leaders from her high school yearbook. Maine Township High School hide caption

itoggle caption Maine Township High School

I was also an active Young Republican and, later a Goldwater girl right down to my cowgirl outfit and straw cowboy hat emblazoned with the slogan "AuH2O."

My ninth-grade history teacher, Paul Carlson, was, and still is, a dedicated educator and a very conservative Republican. Mr. Carlson encouraged me to read Senator Barry Goldwater's recently published book, The Conscience of a Conservative. That inspired me to write my term paper on the American conservative movement, which I dedicated "To my parents, who have always taught me to be an individual." I liked Senator Goldwater because he was a rugged individualist who swam against the political tide.

She also writes about volunteering to check voter registration lists against addresses to find voter fraud. And during her first year of college, she was even elected president of the Wellesley Young Republicans Club. According to Carl Bernstein's book A Woman In Charge, by the fall of 1966, she identified herself as a Rockefeller Republican. By the spring of 1968, though, she was volunteering for Democrat Eugene McCarthy's presidential campaign.

In 1992, while visiting her old high school in an affluent suburb of Chicago, she joked about her political evolution.

"I know I should answer the question that is on very many of your minds and that is: How did a nice Republican girl from Park Ridge go wrong?" she said to laughs.

2. In 1969, She Became The First Student (Ever) To Deliver A Commencement Address At Wellesley College.

The women's college didn't have a tradition of student commencement speakers. But, by the time the class of 1969 was nearing graduation, an activist-minded student body demanded to have a student speaker to represent them at the ceremony. In Living History, Clinton writes about going to Wellesley College President Ruth M. Adams to discuss it:

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Hillary Clinton in June 1969 at the Rodham family home. She was featured in a Life magazine story called "The Class of '69." Lee Balterman/The LIFE Premium Collection/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Lee Balterman/The LIFE Premium Collection/Getty Images

Hillary Clinton in June 1969 at the Rodham family home. She was featured in a Life magazine story called "The Class of '69."

Lee Balterman/The LIFE Premium Collection/Getty Images

When I asked her, "What is the real objection?" she said, "It's never been done." I said, "Well, we could give it a try." She said, "We don't know whom they are going to ask to speak." I said, "Well, they asked me to speak." She said, "I'll think about it." President Adams finally approved.

My friends' enthusiasm about my speaking worried me because I didn't have a clue about what I could say that could fit our tumultuous four years at Wellesley and be a proper send-off into our unknown futures.

In her introduction, Adams said, "There was no debate so far as I could ascertain as to who their spokesman was to be: Miss Hillary Rodham. Member of this graduating class, she is a major in political science and a candidate for the degree with honors."

Rodham was immediately preceded by Republican Sen. Edward W. Brooke from Massachusetts, and when she came to the microphone, she scrapped some of her prepared speech to respond to him, and said:

We're not in the positions yet of leadership and power, but we do have that indispensable task of criticizing and constructive protest and I find myself reacting just briefly to some of the things that Senator Brooke said. This has to be brief because I do have a little speech to give.

Part of the problem with empathy with professed goals is that empathy doesn't do us anything. We've had lots of empathy; we've had lots of sympathy, but we feel that for too long our leaders have used politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible. What does it mean to hear that 13.3 percent of the people in this country are below the poverty line? That's a percentage. We're not interested in social reconstruction; it's human reconstruction. How can we talk about percentages and trends? The complexities are not lost in our analyses, but perhaps they're just put into what we consider a more human and eventually a more progressive perspective.

Her speech was reprinted in Life magazine and, for a time, Rodham became something of a voice of her generation.

Hillary Clinton holds the steering wheel for the Indy race car of Sarah Fisher in 2008. Clinton says she hasn't gotten behind the wheel herself since 1996. Joe Raedle/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Joe Raedle/Getty Images

3. She Hasn't Driven A Car In Almost 20 Years.

Consider it a casualty of life in a Secret Service-protected bubble. President Obama has complained about it, as did President George W. Bush. Clinton told the National Automobile Dealers Association last year, "The last time I actually drove a car myself was 1996."

It's a reminder that Clinton has been living a very public life, in a closed-off way, for a very long time. No past presidential candidate has quite this sort of life experience. For Clinton's critics, this is just one of many signs (along with her comments about being "dead broke" when the Clintons left the White House) that she can't relate to regular voters. For Clinton's campaign, figuring out how to keep "the bubble" from getting in the way of meaningful interactions and normal experiences with voters presents a challenge.

4. Her Commitment To Women And Girls Goes Way Back.

Talking about so-called women's issues may be trendy these days, but Clinton has been working on these issues essentially her whole life. Some of this passion may have been driven by her own mother's difficult childhood.

When Clinton was in high school, she volunteered with her church youth group to babysit the children of migrant laborers. From there, her resume continues with one item after another aimed at improving the lives of women and children.

Here's an excerpt from her biography from the National First Ladies' Library and Historic Site:

During her second year in law school, Hillary Clinton volunteered at Yale's Child Study Center, learning about new research on early childhood brain development, as well as New Haven Hospital, where she took on cases of child abuse and the city Legal Services, providing free legal service to the poor. Upon graduation from law school, she served as staff attorney for the Children's Defense Fund in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In Arkansas, she co-founded the group Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. And all of this was before she became first lady and secretary of state, both platforms she used to advance women's empowerment and the well-being of children worldwide.

In Living History, Clinton explained how her mother had been abandoned by her grandmother, writing, "I'm still amazed at how my mother emerged from her lonely early life as such an affectionate and level headed woman."

5. She Has Been Dogged By Controversies And Scandals.

OK. You probably know this one already, but Clinton seems to have spent her entire public life fighting scandals.

From her "baking cookies" comment...

"I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was fulfill my profession," she said in 1992.

...to Whitewater, Travel-gate and conspiracies about Vince Foster's suicide.

In the 1994 press conference below, she was asked about a number of the controversies swirling around her at the time. It is somewhat remarkable to watch the breadth of reporter questions, which went on for an hour and could have lasted longer.

Then there's Benghazi, and currently, "Server-gate." Clinton once blamed her (and her husband's) "scandal problem" on a "vast right wing conspiracy." No matter the cause, she has to be prepared for a campaign and possible presidency with more "gates" and "ghazis," because it has been that way for the past 25 years.

2016 Presidential Race

Democrats

Hillary Clinton

"The play is an object," Val (Kristen Stewart) tells actress Maria Enders (Juliette Binoche) in Clouds of Sils Maria while helping her rehearse for a role. "It changes depending how you look at it." One of the many impressive elements of Olivier Assayas' rich, remarkably intelligent film is how it explores every angle of its own story. It won't ever be mistaken for Inception, but Clouds is also a puzzle film, even if that's not evident on the surface. Its plot is relatively straightforward (though not entirely devoid of mystery); you won't need to guess and debate about what happened when and why. But it's nevertheless a work of many moving parts, one to take apart and put back together again repeatedly.

The bulk of the film is devoted to the relationship between Maria and Val, who is Maria's assistant. We meet them just as Maria, a renowned actress who has worked in the theatre as well as in films both prestigious and blockbuster, is on her way to accept a prize in Zurich on behalf of director Wilhelm Melchior. When Maria was a teenager, Melchior made her famous by casting her in Maloja Snake, a play about a young woman who seduces her older boss and drives her to suicide.

Wilhelm dies before the ceremony, however, and the suddenly somber, reflective affair prompts Maria to accept the elder role in a new production of Maloja Snake opposite Jo-Ann Ellis (Chloe Grace Moretz, delightful and cunning in equal measure), an actress known more for her rehab stints and constant tabloid presence than her performances.

From there, Clouds retreats to Wilhelm's now-empty home in Sils Maria, a town nested in the Swiss Alps, where Maria and Val hole up to rehearse. The play within the play explicitly mirrors Maria and Val's relationship in only one of the movie's overtly literal analogies. At other points, the parallels extend beyond the screen into real life, as when Val — played by the star of the oft-mocked Twilight movies — urges Maria to take Jo-Ann seriously as an actress despite the fact that she appears only in seemingly mindless blockbusters.

Assayas, who also wrote Clouds, is interested in such superficialities as initial points of contrast. The play and the real-life comparisons offer an apparent sense of order—a world split into simple contrasts of old and young, high and low culture—that the movie then breaks through. To start, Maria appears as a paragon of classic elegance—her suspicions of the Internet and modern technology reflect her age, but her dress and demeanor at Wilhelm's ceremony suggest a timeless grace and sophistication. It's Val who seems harried and out of control.

That hard opposition begins to crumble when Val leaves Maria alone at the ceremony, at which point her self-assurance diminishes without Val's support. It fades entirely once the two move to Sils Maria.

As powerful as Binoche's performance is, Stewart surpasses her. She best embodies the antitheses of her character, her quiet apathy concealing a turmoil of envy, desire, respect and simmering contempt. Val is also arguably the more difficult role; she's given less opportunity to wield control but required to nonetheless display power. Whereas Binoche expertly manages to display Maria's ever-shifting but rarely concealed emotions without seeming maudlin, Stewart has relatively few chances to offer a similarly direct view of Val's feelings ("I never know if I should believe what little you do tell me," Maria says to Val at one point). On the few occasions Val opens up, she almost immediately retreats back into what seems to be a more submissive role.

The power dynamics here resemble those in All About Eve or Black Swan, with the important difference that Assayas isn't concerned with a protg supplanting her master. In fact, the only wholly unsympathetic character in the movie is an actor who tells Maria that Maloja Snake "tells a simple story" about two completely contrasting women, the younger of whom "squeezes everything she can out of" her older mistress, who is in turn "fascinated by her own downfall." Reality can appear that clear-cut on the surface, but what Clouds reveals with time is a more complicated and seemingly endless series of transmutations.

Assayas may indulge in overt declarations of his themes, but there's no certainty to his approach. He softly and persistently disturbs the ground beneath our feet, never content with a position unless he has considered its opposite. That method pervades every aspect of the movie: Jo-Ann's rowdy public image is in contrast to her quiet behavior in person, with a hint of manipulation in both; Maria's disdain toward younger artists who have a natural knack for PR proves hypocritical, given the deliberately chosen "classy" image that Val helps craft for her.

The movement between opposites is heightened and perfected, though, in Maria and Val's relationship. After disagreeing over a reading of Maloja Snake, Maria tells Val that she can't ever understand a character without embodying her: "Thinking about a play is different than living it." But the reality seems to be the reverse. Maria is all interpretation and thought, while Val is the one who acts throughout, both for herself and for Maria. The shifts in power between them, and later between Maria and Jo-Ann, depend on which quality — consideration or action, aged wisdom or youthful exuberance — matters more. To its final shot, the movie offers no conclusion as to who comes out on top.

It's a quality of great art that it can hold competing ideas aloft and give them equal weight; it's the magic of the best art that it can satisfy while leaving the conflict unresolved. Clouds is outstanding in its individual components—its script, performances, cinematography, and pacing—but more importantly, it's that magical kind of work: a complete, perfectly crafted, fixed object that, upon reflection, remains in perpetual motion.