Podcast

Climate Change, Past, Present and Future

The current climate crisis isn’t the first time human beings have faced global climate change. Extreme weather, ice sheets melting into the Arctic ocean, and mega-droughts lasting a century or more: it all happened before, between the tenth and the fifteenth centuries. The global warming of the Middle Ages changed civilization, bringing both great disorder and great opportunity.

The audio for this episode is available upon request for a donation of $4.99 to Writers Voice. Contact writersvoice [at] wmua.org.

Continue reading →

Podcast

Jill Bolte Taylor’s Stroke of Insight

Jill Bolte Taylor

Neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor talks about her memoir, MY STROKE OF INSIGHT: A BRAIN SCIENTIST’S PERSONAL JOURNEY.

The audio for this episode is available upon request for a donation of $4.99 to Writers Voice. Contact writersvoice [at] wmua.org.

Continue reading →

Podcast

Wind Energy Island, Milk-N-Honey, and Families of the Vine

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

We talk with Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker about her recent article, “The Island in the Wind”. And Ellen Beckerman tells us about her new play, MILK AND HONEY. And finally, a clip from an archived interview with Michael Sanders about FAMILIES OF THE VINE: Seasons Among the Winemakers of Southwest France.

Podcast

Melody Petersen

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Maxine Kumin
Maxine Kumin
Melody Petersen
Melody Petersen

Host Francesca Rheannon talks with reporter and author Melody Petersen about OUR DAILY MEDS. It’s about how the pharmaceutical industry has put marketing above medicine and corrupted our health care system in the process. Also, Maxine Kumin. talks about her poem “Nurture”. Continue reading →

Podcast

New Fiction from Margot Livesy and Ellen Cooney

We talk with novelists Margot Livesey ( THE HOUSE ON FORTUNE STREET) and Ellen Cooney (Lambrusco).

Livesey’s stunning new novel is about love, loss and the ambiguities of existence. Told from the point of view of four narrators, it explores how they try to make sense of their world when their lives are upended by the unexpected—and how their human frailties lead them to make choices that they long regret. Continue reading →

Podcast

Margot Livesey, HOUSE ON FORTUNE STREET

We talk with Margot Livesey about THE HOUSE ON FORTUNE STREET, her stunning new novel about love, loss and the ambiguities of existence. Told from the point of view of four narrators, it explores how they try to make sense of their world when their lives are upended by the unexpected–and how their human frailties lead them to make choices that they long regret. Along the way, the reader is challenged to examine his or her own sense of right and wrong — and the power of forgiveness.

Podcast

Ta-Nehisi Coates, THE BEAUTIFUL STRUGGLE

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

[amazon-product align=”right”]0385527462[/amazon-product]

Ta-Nehisi Coates
Ta-Nehisi Coates

Host Francesca Rheannon talks with Ta-Nehisi Coates about his memoir, [amazon-product text=”The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood” type=”text”]0385527462[/amazon-product].

[Note: the original show episode has been replaced by the unedited, full interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates.] Continue reading →

Podcast

Poet Frannie Lindsey, LAMB

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Frannie Lindsey won the 2006 Perugia Press Award for her second poetry volume, LAMB. It was also the runner-up for the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Lindsey’s poems take up the themes of trauma and healing. Ellen Bass, author of The Courage to Heal, writes: Continue reading →

Podcast

Anthony Lewis on the First Amendment

Host Francesca Rheannon talks with two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anthony Lewis about his pithy and thought-provoking “biography” of the First Amendment, FREEDOM FOR THE THOUGHT WE HATE.

Podcast

Louise Erdrich’s THE PLAGUE OF DOVES and more…

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Louise Erdrich
Louise Erdrich

Louise Erdrich says she worked on her latest work of fiction, [amazon-product text=”A PLAGUE OF DOVES” type=”text”]0060515139[/amazon-product] for nineteen years before publication. It was worth the wait. This week Francesca talks with Louise Erdrich and journalist Jeremy Scahill about his book, [amazon-product text=”BLACKWATER: The Rise of the Worlds Most Powerful Mercenary Army” type=”text”]156858394X[/amazon-product]. Continue reading →

Podcast

THE HAKAWATI and SO WRONG FOR SO LONG

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

[amazon-product align=”right”]0307386279[/amazon-product]

Rabih Alameddine
Rabih Alameddine

We talk with Lebanese writer Rabih Alameddine about his new novel, [amazon-product text=”THE HAKAWATI” type=”text”]0307386279[/amazon-product]. Framed around the story of a family in modern-day Lebanon, the novel weaves fiction, fable and epic into a wonderful tapestry.

And journalist and editor Greg Mitchell tells us about how the press and the punditocracy failed the public on Iraq. His book is [amazon-product text=”SO WRONG FOR SO LONG: How the Press, the Pundits and the President Failed on Iraq” type=”text”]1402756577[/amazon-product].

The audio for this episode is available upon request for a donation of $4.99 to Writers Voice. Contact writersvoice [at] wmua.org.

Podcast

OLIVE KITTREDGE and THE END OF THE JEWS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Adam Mansbach
Adam Mansbach
Elizabeth Strout
Elizabeth Strout

Francesca interviews novelist Elizabeth Strout about her Pulitzer Prize winning book, OLIVE KITTERIDGE, which uses a collection of short stories to create a novel about the inhabitants of a coastal town in Maine. And Adam Mansbach talks about his new novel, THE END OF JEWS.
Continue reading →

Web Extras

Web Extra: Elizabeth Strout reads from OLIVE KITTREDGE

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Elizabeth Strout
Elizabeth Strout

Elizabeth Strout reads from her latest novel, [amazon-product text=”OLIVE KITTERIDGE” type=”text”]0812971833[/amazon-product].

We talked with novelist Elizabeth Strout about her new book, OLIVE KITTERIDGE. She uses a collection of short stories to create a novel about the inhabitants of a coastal town in Maine.

Listen to the full interview here.

Podcast

Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet. Bush’s Law.

The news today about a possible war impending between Georgia and Russia is prefigured in our first interview: host Francesca Rheannon talks with energy security expert Michael Klare about the dangerous new global order of energy politics — winners and losers, flashpoints of conflict, and what it means for democracy and the environment. His book is RISING POWERS, SHRINKING PLANET: The New Geopolitics of Energy. In our conversation Klare notes that Georgia could the the flashpoint not only of war between Russia and Georgia–but between Russia and the United States.

Also, New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau broke the story on warrantless domestic spying. His book is BUSH’S LAW: The Remaking of American Justice.

Podcast

Nicholson Baker’s HUMAN SMOKE and more…

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Nicholson Baker
Nicholson Baker

Host Francesca Rheannon talks with Nicholson Baker about his acclaimed new book, [amazon-product text=”HUMAN SMOKE: The Beginnings of World War II; The End of Civilization” type=”text”]1416567844[/amazon-product].

[amazon-product align=”right”]1416567844[/amazon-product]

In a departure from his usual genre, fiction, Baker turns his eye for telling detail to an examination of the cavalier disregard for the human consequences of war by leaders on all sides of the conflict. We hear about how Churchill’s warmongering and Roosevelt’s anti-Semitism exacerbated the war’s civilian toll. We also hear of the courage of a few who dared to speak against the headlong rush to battle.

Also, we air an excerpt from our 2006 interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Maxine Kumin.