Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
We talk with T.J. English about his latest book, The Corporation. It’s an epic story of the Cuban American Underworld and what that story tells us about the American political economy. We also air a clip from our 2008 interview with T.J. English about his book about the Mafia and the Cuban Revolution, Havana Nocturne.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
We talk with Steven Levitsky, co-author of How Democracies Die. Then, political cartoonist Ted Rall and author Harmon Leon tell us about their book, Meet The Deplorables: Infiltrating Trump America. Continue reading
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
This week, we commemorate two momentous June 6 anniversaries. First, we explore the life of Bobby Kennedy, a life cut short on June 6, 1968. We talk with Larry Tye about his superb biography of Robert F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon.
Then, we honor D-Day (June 6, 1944) by talking with Stephen Kiernan about his novel The Baker’s Secret. It tells the story of a remarkable young woman who keeps her neighbors alive until the D-Day invasion liberates their Normandy town from Nazi Occupation.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Lauren Markham talks about The Far Away Brothers (Crown 2017), her spellbinding story of two young migrants from El Salvador and the life they are making in America. Then, we hear poet Eduardo Corral read his poem, In Colorado, My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes. And finally, we talk with singer-songwriter Don Arbor about his welcome song to immigrants Everyone Comes From Somewhere. Continue reading
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
We talk with Chloe Benjamin about her bestselling novel, The Immortalists. (Penguin Random House.) It’s about four siblings who, in childhood, learn the dates of their death. Or do they? Then, could there be people among us whose lifespan is nearly a millennium? Matt Haig talks about his latest novel, How To Stop Time (Penguin Random House.) And finally, we talk with the great environmental philosopher and advocate Vandana Shiva. A new book of interviews with her, Creative Civil Disobedience, is out from Actes Sud.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
We talk with Sarah Zaske about what the Germans can teach us about raising kids. Her book is Achtung Baby: An American Mom on the German Art of Raising Self-Reliant Children.
Then, what’s the impact of adverse childhood experiences on health across the lifetime? Dr. Nadine Burke-Harris discusses her book The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz tells us about her new book, Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment.
Then we talk with journalist Gregg Levine about his special investigation for The Nation Magazine into the deaths and illnesses afflicting US sailors exposed to radiation from the Fukushima Daichi meltdown. It’s titled “Seven Years on, Sailors Exposed to Fukushima Radiation Seek Their Day in Court.”
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Tara Whitsitt talks about her book Fermentation on Wheels. It’s the story –with recipes — of how she’s been spreading the word about the wonders of fermented foods by traveling around the country on a bus.
Then we re-air our interview with Katherine Harvey about her book, The Bare Bones Broth Cookbook. Continue reading
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg talks about his shocking new book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. Then we talk with peace and security analyst Michael Klare about his recent article in the Nation, “Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review: Back to Armageddon.” Continue reading
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Author and activist Ashley Dawson talks about his groundbreaking book, Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change (Verso.) It examines the foundation on which climate chaos is playing out in the urban landscape: predatory capitalism and its most glaring feature, extreme inequality. [Note: this is the extended interview.]
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
We air part of our 2014 interview with Rob Okun about his book, Voice Male: The Untold Story of the Pro-Feminist Men’s Movement, which is out in a new edition. But first we talk with Okun about #MeToo and #TimesUp — and how men can support that movement.
Then the pioneering science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin died on January 23. We air our 2012 interview with her about her anthology The Unreal And The Real. Continue reading
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Our theme this episode is gentrification. We talk with Brian Platzer about his novel Bed-Stuy is Burning (Simon and Schuster). It’s about what happens when tensions between gentrifiers and the gentrified explode.
Then we re-air our interview from 2017 with Peter Moskowitz about his book, How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood. Continue reading
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
We talk with Katherine Paterson, the best selling author of The Bridge to Terabithia, about her new YA novel, My Brigadista Year. It’s about the 1961 Cuban Literacy Campaign and its teenage heroes.
Then, Jessica Yu talks about her book Garden of the Lost and Abandoned: The Extraordinary Story of One Ordinary Woman and the Children She Saves. It’s about a courageous and compassionate Ugandan journalist who rescues children who have become lost or cast out from home. Continue reading
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
John Michael Greer talks about his latest book The Retro Future: Looking to the Past to Reinvent the Future (New Society Publishers.) Then, climate scientist Peter Kalmus weighs in on the personal choices we can all make to protect the climate. He tells us about his book, Being The Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution (New Society Publishers.) Continue reading
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Celebrated author Sy Montgomery talks with us about the essays she and Elizabeth Marshall Thomas have written and collected in a wonderful new book, Tamed and Untamed: Close Encounters of the Animal Kind. Then we hear part of our 2011 interview with Elizabeth Tova Bailey about her book The Sound of A Wild Snail Eating. Continue reading