MPR News with Kerri Miller: Recent Episodes
Minnesota Public Radio
A pair of best friends determine to leave behind their conservative families and societal expectations, and live by a new motto: By Myself, For Myself.
What happens when one of those friends marries, and the other friend sees the new husband as a betrayal of their values?
That’s the premise behind British-Nigerian author Ore Agbaje-Williams debut novel, “The Three of Us.” The story plays out on a single wine- and whiskey-soaked afternoon, when the wife, husband and best friend Temi toy with the fine line between compromise and betrayal when it comes to themselves and the people they love.
On this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, Agbaje-Williams joins MPR News host Kerri Miller to discuss the power of female friendships, why her story had to unfold in a single afternoon, and how love and loyalty can shape our lives.
Guest:
- Ore Agbaje-Williams is a British-Nigerian writer. “The Three of Us” is her debut novel.
Use the audio player above to listen to the podcast version of the conversation.
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Christian Cooper’s visibility as a lifelong birder exploded after a woman in Central Park refused to leash her dog and reported, wrongly, that she was being threatened.
Three years later, Cooper is out with a powerful new memoir and a National Geographic TV show he hopes will attract more people of color to the world of bird-watching.
Don’t miss this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, when Cooper talks with host Kerri Miller about how a self-described nerdy gay kid from Long Island fell in love with our feathered friends and how the incident that pushed him into the national spotlight distracts from what he sees as the bigger issues.
He also shares stories about his work as a Marvel comics writer and has a few tips for want-to-be birders.
Guest:
- Christian Cooper is a science and comics writer and the host and consulting producer of Extraordinary Birder on National Geographic. His memoir is “Better Living Through Birding.”
Use the audio player above to listen to the podcast version of the conversation.
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J. Ryan Stradal knows supper club culture.
Growing up in Hastings, Minn., his family milestones were marked by dressing up, sitting in a leather booth at the Wiederholt's Supper Club, picking at a relish tray and watching the grown-ups enjoy a brandy Old Fashioned.
He even worked at a supper club across the river, in Prescott, Wisc., where he went behind the double-swinging doors and had his views about restaurant work forever changed.
So it is with a deep sense of fondness, with a side of realism, that his latest novel centers around a supper club in the fictitious northern Minnesota town of Bear Jaw.
Main character Mariel has inherited the Lakeside Club from her grandparents and is wrestling with its future — and her own. Meanwhile, her husband stands to take on his own family’s restaurant legacy, a growing chain of family diners. Which future will they pursue? And will old family wounds deepen in the process, or be healed?
This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Stradal joined host Kerri Miller in the studio to trade stories about their own experiences with the supper club scene. They also talked about the purpose and value of nostalgia and how Stradal works to balance sentimentality with reality in his writing.
Guest:
- J. Ryan Stradal is a native Minnesotan and a New York Times bestselling author. His latest novel is “Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club.”
Use the audio player above to listen to the podcast version of the conversation.
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Until writer Luis Alberto Urrea inherited his mother’s journals, he knew very little about what she’d seen and done in World War II. He knew she served on a team of Donut Dollies, women who volunteered with the Red Cross to provide mobile food, entertainment and comfort to U.S. servicemen station on many European battlefronts.
But he didn’t know she’d been on the front lines in one of the most ferocious battles, or that the nightmares she suffered her whole life stemmed from her experiences there. Like many people who’ve lived through extreme trauma, his mother mostly avoided the topic while she was alive.
As Urrea combed through her journals and scrapbooks after her death, he encountered a woman who was marked by her time serving as a Donut Dolly in the war. His new novel, “Good Night, Irene” is not a biography of his mother, but it is inspired by her courage and experiences.
This Friday, on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Urrea joined MPR News host Kerri Miller to tell stories about his mother and her fellow Donut Dollies. It’s a conversation about the power of friendship, the trauma of war, and why laughter might be the most important human quality.
Guest:
- Luis Alberto Urrea is the critically acclaimed and best-selling author of 19 books. His latest novel is “Good Night, Irene.”
Use the audio player above to listen to the podcast version of the conversation.
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Shy, the teenage boy at the heart of Max Porter’s latest novel, defies classification.
He is moody and violent, traits which heartbreak his mother and get him sent to the Last Chance boarding school.
He is also sensitive and vulnerable, a boy who seems to be missing a layer of skin to protect himself from the world’s hypocrisy and starkness.
This paradox is at the heart of “Shy” — and in fact, the heart of most teenagers. Porter took pains to not describe Shy’s inner world but to transcribe it. His novel is a collection of jumbled thoughts, inner speak, lyrics and beats from the night Shy attempts to escape the boarding school.
Like a cut, “Shy” stings and reminds us we are alive.
Don’t miss this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, when host Kerri Miller talks with Porter. It’s a conversation that ranges from parenting teenage boys to junglist music, to the importance of literacy and the essentialness of trees.
Guest:
- Max Porter is a novelist. His latest book “Shy.”
Use the audio player above to listen to the podcast version of the conversation.
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When Ruby Ishimaru and her family are sent away from Hawaii to a mainland internment camp in 1942, Ruby packs her treasures — photographs, seashells and the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder. She finds comfort in Laura’s adventures even as she and her family are thrust into the frightening unknown.
On the other side of the world, the unknown is also baring down on Japan, where young Koji Matsuo watches the country rally for war from his home in Hiroshima.
When Ruby and Koji eventually meet in California, their love story begins. But can their traumas be overcome?
It’s a question familiar to author Kent Matsumoto, who together with his wife, Constance, mined his own family history to tell the stories of Ruby and Koji. Their new novel, “Of White Ashes,” tells a fictionalized version of his parents experiences in World War II. Destined to become a classic in the classroom, it artfully depicts the frustration of American citizens being incarcerated by their own country and the horrors of the atomic bomb.
MPR News host Kerri Miller was joined by the Matsumotos on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, to talk about how they did their research, their realizations and their hopes for “Of White Ashes.”
Guests:
- Constance and Kent Matsumoto’s novel is “Of White Ashes.”
Use the audio player above to listen to the podcast version of the conversation.
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“Cancer took my mother. But religion would take my life.”
So writes journalist Rachel Louise Snyder in her new memoir, “Women We Buried, Women We Burned.”
It recounts with brutal honesty how the death of her mother upended her previously peaceful world, launching her father into a new marriage within the confines of a strict, fundamentalist Christianity. Violence and rage became her new norm, until she was kicked out at age 16 for refusing the obey the many rules her father imposed.
But that dark moment turned out to be a gift. Snyder found support in unlikely places and forged a new path, one where light and dark coexist and where forgiveness is not synonymous with exoneration.
This week, on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Snyder joins MPR host Kerri Miller to talk about her journeys. They discuss how the prosperity gospel dismantles human agency, how her work investigating violence led her to think about her own, and how travel can heal past wounds and open up new vistas.
Guest:
- Rachel Louise Snyder is a journalist and a professor of creative writing and journalism at American University. Her memoir is “Women We Buried, Women We Burned.”
Use the audio player above to listen to the podcast version of the conversation.
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The latest book from journalist and bestselling author David Grann details the true story of a 1741 shipwreck that he believes has “surprising resonance … with our own contemporary, turbulent times.”
When a squadron of ships left England in the fall of 1740, with secret hopes of capturing a Spanish galleon filled with gold, they had little idea what might befall them. They were overloaded with men, many who were old and infirmed.
They were equipped with rudimentary navigation tools. And none of them had ever sailed around Cape Horn, the southernmost tip of South America, which we now know is one of the most treacherous seas on the planet.
The disastrous voyage ended with a shipwreck off the coast of Patagonia. But the story only deepens there. The cadre of men who survived faced starvation, murder and mutiny while trying to find a way home. And once they get there, the competing stories of what really happened on the island transfixed a nation.
As he did in his previous best sellers, “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “The Lost City of Z,” Grann recounts this true story with vivid detail. On this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, he tells host Kerri Miller that far from being just a swashbuckling tale, the story of The Wager echoes themes we grapple with today, like the dangers of imperialism and the war over truth.
Guest:
- David Grann is a New York Times bestselling author and an award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. His latest book is “The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Murder and Mutiny.”
Use the audio player above to listen to the conversation.
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Jeannette Wells’ 2009 memoir “The Glass Castle” has been a New York Times bestseller for more than eight years. The movie adaptation starring Brie Larson, Woody Harrelson and Naomi Watts also won awards.
Her much-anticipated new book, “Hang the Moon,” is worth the wait. Set in 1920s rural Virginia, it centers on young Sallie Kincaid whose daddy runs the county where they live. Sallie wants to go into the family business, which includes running moonshine. But is she ready to fight through the conflict that awaits her?
This week, on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Wells joins MPR News host Kerri Miller to talk about the relative morality of Prohibition in America.
“In my neck of the woods, rural Virginia, whiskey making had long been a tradition,” says Wells. ”What Prohibition did was turn this money-making operation, that for many was the only cash crop they had, into something illegal. It turned law-abiding folk into outlaws.”
Wells also talks with Miller about how the era mirrors the tumultuousness of America today.
Guest:
- Jeannette Walls is the author of “The Glass Castle” and “The Silver Star.” She lives in rural Virginia with her husband, writer John Taylor.
Use the audio player above to listen to the conversation.
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Joe Milan Jr.’s debut novel, “The All-American,” is about immigration — but it’s not a story about what it means to leave a foreign land and start over in America. Instead, it’s about what it means to leave America, unwillingly, and start over in a foreign land.
Milan’s protagonist, 17-year-old Bucky Yi, knows nothing about his birth country of South Korea. Raised in rural Washington, he has only one goal — to become a college football player.
But when he tangles with local law enforcement, and his adoptive mom can’t produce proof of U.S. citizenship, Bucky is deported to a country where he knows no one and can’t speak the language.
He has to tap into his inner running back to deal with situations both extreme and familiar to any young person on the cusp of adulthood. Is he Korean, or American? Is he Bucky, or Beyonghak? Is he a boy, or a man? Does he want to go home? Or has he made a new home?
This Friday, on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Milan joins MPR News host Kerri Miller to talk about his book, his own identity conundrum, what it means to embody American values and how football ties it all together.
Guest:
- Joe Milan Jr. is a second-generation Korean American and an assistant professor of creative writing at Waldorf University. “The All-American” is his first novel.
Use the audio player above to listen to the conversation.
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Thirty years ago, David Treuer was a young writer, taking classes at Princeton University, far from his home on the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. He was eager to polish his craft — and maybe a little brash. In 1995, a few months before he turned 25, Graywolf Press published his first novel.
Now, decades later, Graywolf is rereleasing that book, “Little.” In the introduction, Treuer — now a widely respected, award-winning author — reflects on his writing roots and how both he and his work have changed over the years.
This Friday, on Big Books and Bold Ideas, MPR News host Kerri Miller chats with Treuer about what he’s learned. What does he know now that he didn’t know when “Little” was first released? What does he think about his younger self? And how does he view the burgeoning field of Native writers and books today?
Guest:
- David Treuer is the award-winning author of seven books. His first novel, “Little” was rereleased this month by Graywolf Press. He is Ojibwe from the Leech Lake Reservation and teaches at the University of Southern California.
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This month, Graywolf Press republished author David Treuer’s first novel, “Little.” Originally printed in 1995, when Treuer wasn’t yet 30, “Little” tells the story of a Native American family struggling with loss, poverty and prejudice.
What does Treuer think about his debut novel now, 27 years after it was published? MPR news host Kerri Miller will talk with him about that on this Friday’s Big Books and Bold Ideas.
In the meantime, enjoy this 2019 conversation from Miller and Treuer about his award-winning book, “The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee.” Treuer wrote it as a response to Native American history too often being told through a tragic lens.
Instead, in “The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee,” Treuer traces Native American history, from the Battle of Wounded Knee to the present, with a focus on transformation in each new era.
Guest:
- David Treuer is Ojibwe, from the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. He is a celebrated author of many books, including “The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee” and “Little.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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When “The House of Fortune” opens, Nella Brandt is 37. Almost 20 years have passed since we first met her in “The Miniaturist,” Jessie Burton’s wildly popular first book. But not much has changed. Nella still lives in the house she inherited from her dead husband. Many of the same characters inhabit her world — with one addition. Her niece, Thea, is grown and turning 18. And Nella has pinned all her hopes on Thea marrying well.
The irony is thick, although Nella doesn’t see it. Nella herself was married off at age 18, leading to the scandal that enthralled readers in “The Miniaturist.” What will happen this time? Will Nella revisit that sin on her headstrong niece? Or will Thea’s own secrets collide with the family’s?
It’s a delicious return to austere but wealthy 18th century Amsterdam, told through Burton’s sensual lens. This Friday on Big Books and Bold Ideas, host Kerri Miller sat down with Burton and talked about what it’s like to write a sequel and how looking back is often the key to moving forward.
Guest:
- Jessie Burton is an award-winning novelist of four books, including “The Miniaturist” and its new companion novel, “The House of Fortune.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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Jessie Burton's first book, "The Miniaturist," was an international best-seller and set her on the road to continued success with novels “The Muse” and “The Confession.”
Her latest book, “The House of Fortune,” is a companion novel to “The Miniaturist.” This Friday on Big Books and Bold Ideas, host Kerri Miller will talk with Burton about that book.
In the meantime, enjoy this 2014 conversation from the archives, when the pair discuss “The Miniaturist,” and Burton’s meteoric rise to book stardom.
Guest:
- Jessie Burton is an award-winning novelist of four books, including “The Miniaturist” and its new companion novel, “The House of Fortune.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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Poet Ross Gay believes in joy.
But he pays careful attention to how one defines that word.
It is not simply happiness or delight, he says in his new book “Inciting Joy.” Rather, it is what grows from the fertile soil of breaking and belonging. It is the light that emanates from us when we help each other carry our sorrows.
In his book, Gay writes, “What if joy is not only entangled with pain, or suffering, or sorrow, but is also what emerges from how we care for each other through those things?'“
Gay was in St. Paul for the finale of the 2022 Talking Volumes season, and you’ll hear a portion of his boisterous conversation with host Kerri Miller this Friday at 11 a.m. on Big Books and Bold Ideas, along with music from Minneapolis artist MAYYADDA.
Guest:
- Ross Gay is a poet, an essayist, a gardener and a professor. His new book is “Inciting Joy.”
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Tracy K. Smith is aware of the stereotypes about poetry. You’re probably aware of them too — that poems are precious, sometimes pretentious and removed from the grit of our daily lives.
But the 2017 U.S. poet laureate also knows that poems can be an escape, a mirror or a vehicle for understanding some of the most complicated parts of our shared humanity.
Speaking on stage at the Fitzgerald Theater in 2019, Smith put it this way:
“A poem isn’t merely a perfect, decorative object. It’s something you can call upon in case of an emergency. It’s something that speaks to the real, the painful, the beautiful and the deliriously joyful. Poems have language for that and I think they give us a better vocabulary for talking about our lives.”
Enjoy this Talking Volumes discussion from our archives as you anticipate this Friday’s Big Books and Bold Ideas conversation with poet Ross Gay talking about his new book, “Inciting Joy.”
Guest:
- Tracy K. Smith is a professor of English and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. She was the U.S. poet laureate in 2017.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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Dani Shapiro knows a thing or two about family secrets.
Her early novels center around identity and family history. Her 2019 memoir, “Inheritance,” beautifully chronicles what happened after she discovered, at age 54, that the man she considers her dad was not her biological father.
That discovery spawned a popular podcast that just kicked off its eighth season, “Family Secrets,” which features guests who’ve also stumbled across a family secret.
So it naturally flows that her new novel, “Signal Fires,” returns the to same theme.
This time, a secret both bonds and cripples an entire family. Shapiro skillfully follows the Wilf’s outward success and inward disintegration as she hops through time, playing with ideas of change, shame, grief and interconnectedness.
Those same themes anchor the discussion she and MPR News host Kerri Miller had at Talking Volumes. Shapiro was on stage at the Fitzgerald Theater on Oct. 28 for a thoughtful and insightful conversation about regret, shame, seasons of life — and how she has become a beacon for secrets of all kinds.
Also on stage for this third Talking Volumes event: musical guest Jourdan Myers.
Guest:
- Dani Shapiro is a bestselling novelist and memoirist and host of the podcast Family Secrets. Her new novel, “Signal Fires,” was released Oct. 18.
To listen to a lightly edited version of the Talking Volumes conversation, use the audio player above. You can also watch the full event via the embedded video, or look for it on YouTube.
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Dani Shapiro uses her memoir, "Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage" as a way to explore the motivations behind marriage.
"When I was writing 'Hourglass' I thought of it as an inquiry," Shapiro said to MPR host Kerri Miller during a 2017 conversation.
Shapiro was thoughtful in her characterization of her marriage, but not dishonest. Her husband is also a writer, and she reported that she would read him pages of her manuscript every day.
One day, he said to her, "I'm an OK guy, but you're not being hard enough on me."
And she knew exactly what he meant.
"I knew he was right. I was being too careful. I was being circumspect, and circumspect does not make for good literature ever," said Shapiro.
Enjoy this throwback conversation between Shapiro and Miller as you prepare for this Friday’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, which will feature Shapiro on stage for Talking Volumes, discussing her new novel, “Signal Fires.”
Guest:
- Dani Shapiro is a bestselling novelist and memoirist and host of the podcast Family Secrets.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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Celeste Ng’s “Little Fires Everywhere” was a best-selling novel, even before it became a hit series for Hulu. Her new novel, “Our Missing Hearts,” is also receiving critical acclaim. It delves into the power of intellectual freedom in an authoritarian world and the strong bonds of family in a society steeped in fear.
This week, on Big Books and Bold Ideas, you’ll hear Ng on stage at the Fitzgerald Theater with host Kerri Miller for the second Talking Volumes event of 2022. They were joined by musical guest, Meghan Kreidler.
In 2020, author Sarah Broom joined the pandemic season of Talking Volumes by talking via Zoom with host Kerri Miller about her book “The Yellow House.” The memoir, which speaks poignantly of the pull of home and family against the backdrop of a shotgun house in New Orleans East, was hailed as both brilliant and haunting.
Enjoy this interview as you get ready for this coming Friday’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, which will feature novelist Celeste Ng on stage at the Fitzgerald Theater for the latest Talking Volumes conversation.
Guest:
- Sarah M. Broom is the New York Times best-selling author of “The Yellow House,” which published in 2019.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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In January 1942, a young Black man from Kansas wrote a letter to the editor of the Pittsburgh Courier, the nation’s largest Black newspaper at the time. He poignantly asked the questions that many Black men also asked while serving in a segregated military during World War II.
“Should I sacrifice my life to live half American?” wrote James G. Thompson. “Will things be better for the next generation in the peace to follow? Would it be demanding too much to demand full citizenship rights in exchange for the sacrificing of my life? Is the kind of America I know worth defending?”
That letter echoed in the mind of historian Matthew Delmont. The title of his new book, “Half American” was inspired by Thompson’s letter. In it, he painfully recounts what Black service members of the day faced as they fought in a segregated military.
During World War II, Black Americans were inspired by the idea of a double victory — to defeat not only the fascism abroad, but also racism at home. But the idea of equality was dismissed by many in leadership, who saw the cry as radical and even seditious.
Friday, on Big Books and Bold Ideas, host Kerri Miller spoke with Delmont about how Black men and women fought for that double victory, why Black Americans saw World War II coming before white Americans did, and how what we acknowledge — or ignore — in history shapes our world today.
Guest:
- Matthew Delmont is the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor of History at Dartmouth College and an expert on African American history and the history of civil rights. His new book is “Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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Who decides history? What gets passed on, and what gets passed over?
That is the question that historians are always plumbing. On this week’s special edition of Big Books and Bold Ideas, host Kerri Miller replayed portions of conversation she’s had with writers who’ve drawn indelible portraits of American history.
You’ll hear Stacy Schiff, whose 2015 book “The Witches” delves into what really happened during the Salem Witch Trials. There’s also David Wright Faladé, who novelized the true story of an all-Black brigade during the Civil War that was commanded by a formerly enslaved man.
And finally, the incomparable Ron Chernow, who was at Talking Volumes in 2017 to talk about his book, “Grant” — but Miller couldn’t resist asking about “Hamilton,” his book that inspired Lin Manuel Miranda’s hit musical.
Guests:
- Stacy Schiff is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of many books, including “Cleopatra” and “The Witches.”
- David Wright Faladé teaches at the University of Illinois and is the author of “Black Cloud Rising.”
- Ron Chernow is the prize-winning author of six books, including “Hamilton.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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Writers come to the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul from all over the world for Talking Volumes. The experience is always intimate and energetic. But hometown authors might have the most fun.
For this special edition of Big Books and Bold Ideas, host Kerri Miller takes a look back at some of her favorite on-stage conversations with Minnesota writers. They include Dessa, who appeared at Talking Volumes in 2018 to talk about her memoir, “My Own Devices,” William Kent Krueger, who was the finale guest in 2021, and Kate DiCamillo, who also appeared in 2021 and brought the house down several times with her witty banter.
You can still get tickets to the 2022 season of Talking Volumes. Karen Armstrong kicked it off in September. Coming up later this month and in November: Celeste Ng, Dani Shapiro and Ross Gay.
Guests:
- Dessa is a singer, rapper and writer based in Minneapolis. Her memoir, “My Own Devices,” was published in 2018.
- William Kent Krueger is an novelist and crime writer, best known for his series of novels featuring Cork O'Connor, which are set mainly in Minnesota.
- Kate DiCamillo is an award-winning storyteller for both children and adults. She lives in Minneapolis.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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Boyah J. Farah spent his earliest years in Somalia, surrounded by family and feeling free. War shattered that idyllic state, and forced his mother to walk her children to safety at a refugee camp in Kenya and eventually, to a new life in a suburb outside of Boston.
It was traumatic, but Farah was grateful for the respite. Since a young boy, he had been infatuated with America, and now he was here, where the grass seemed to be miraculously short without the intervention of goats, and the houses were equipped with both cold and hot water. His family assimilated. He didn’t think much about his skin color. As an immigrant and English-language learner, he already knew he was different.
He experienced freedom again once he started to drive. But that transition also revealed America’s racist underbelly. In his new, poetic memoir, "America Made Me a Black Man,” Farah recounts his frustration at learning that in America, Black people are never really free.
On this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, Farah joins MPR News host Kerri Miller to share stories about his nomadic journey, why he continues to both adore and be vexed by America, and how his mother’s belief in the power of words shaped his life.
Guest:
- Boyah J. Farah is a writer. His new memoir and first book is “America Made Me a Black Man.”
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As a child, Emily Bernard worried she was not black enough. As an adult, she wonders whether she's too black for America today.
Her new book is built on that kind of nuance. "Black is the Body" is a collection of first-person essays that explore vast themes like race, identity and trauma — through the personal details of her own life. She was born in the South, lives now in the Northeast, and is married to a white man.
"Blackness is an art, not a science," writes Bernard. "It is a paradox: intangible and visceral; a situation and a story." She believes that approaching these volatile topics through stories, not lectures, will create a safe place that nurtures vulnerability — and vulnerability is needed for true understanding.
MPR News host Kerri Miller spoke with Bernard in 2019 about the complexity of being black in America today. It’s a fitting prelude to this week’s upcoming Big Books and Bold Ideas conversation with Boyah J. Farah about his journey from a refugee camp in Somalia to the United States, which he details in “America Made Me a Black Man.”
Guest:
- Emily Bernard is professor of English at the University of Vermont and the author of several books, including “Black is the Body.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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Lucrezia de’ Medici was only 13 when she was forced to marry Alfonso II d’Estej, the Duke of Ferrara; just 15 when she joined the court of her new husband. By age 16, she was dead. Only her officials portraits survive her.
Many years later, Robert Browning wrote a poem based on one of those paintings, which loosely fictionalizes the short marriage of Lucrezia and the possibility that she was murdered by her husband. Maggie O’Farrell goes one step further, and imagines the young girl’s whole life, including the short time she spent as a wife in 16th century Italy.
In O’Farrell’s new novel, “The Marriage Portrait,” Lucrezia knows her sole job is to produce an heir for the duke. But when no heir is forthcoming, and the duke grows increasingly unsatisfied, she worries that he might kill her to make way for someone more fertile. Could she be right? Or is her bored and quick mind simply connecting dots that aren’t there?
“The Marriage Portrait” deftly tells Lucrezia’s story through her own lens and perspective. This week, on Big Books and Bold Ideas, MPR News host Kerri Miller spoke with O’Farrell about what inspired her to write the novel, why even her villains are complex, and how she intends to give women silenced by history their voice back.
Guest:
- Maggie O’Farrell is the author of many novels, including the much-lauded “Hamnet” and the freshly released “The Marriage Portrait.” She lives in Edinburgh.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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Maggie O’Farrell’s last novel, “Hamnet,” the fictional story of William Shakespeare’s son who died at age 11, was an international best-seller.
Her new novel, “The Marriage Portrait” also delves into history. O’Farrell was struck by Robert Browning’s poem, “My Last Duchess,” which itself was inspired by a painting of a young Italian woman who died in 1561, at the age of 16, just a year after she was married to the Duke of Ferrara. But did she die? Or was she poisoned?
“The Marriage Portrait” reminded us of Lauren Groff’s 2021 hit, “Matrix,” set in medieval France. So for this week’s deep track, we thought we’d bring you the Talking Volumes interview MPR News host Kerri Miller did with Groff on the stage of the Fitzgerald Theater last year, where Groff describes the history, the art and the music that inspired her writing.
Guest:
- Lauren Groff is the author of six books. “Matrix” is her most recent, released in 2021.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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John Bargaard — the central character of Peter Geye’s new novel — possesses powerful muscle memory from his days as a ski jumper. He remembers the intensity of focus, the feeling of flying through the air, the shattered glass moment of landing.
But he’s just been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s, and he faces the real prospect that his memories — and the secrets he harbors — will dim with his future.
That’s the launching point of “The Ski Jumpers,” Geye’s latest book. Like many of his earlier works, this one is set in Minnesota, with winter as a backdrop to many pivotal scenes. But unlike books like “Wintering” and “Northernmost,” this one is personal.
MPR News host Kerri Miller talks with Geye about what makes “The Ski Jumpers” so intimate to him on a special Big Books and Bold Ideas. Hear why this book took decades for Geye to write, how his own history of ski jumping inspired him and why the central questions of this book are the gateway to Geye’s truest religion.
Guest:
- Peter Geye writes and lives in Minneapolis and is the author of many books. His latest novel is “The Ski Jumpers.”
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America is a land divided between those who dwell in cities — diverse, educated and growing economically — and those who live in the country — white, uneducated and dependent on dying industries.
Or so the narrative goes.
But research shows the so-called urban-rural divide is mostly a myth that is hurting the country as a whole.
Monday, on a special Minnesota Now, MPR News host Kerri Miller and two guests — both of whom have deep roots in rural America — debunked some myths and shed some light on the realities of rural America.
Guests:
- Lisa Pruitt is professor of law at UC Davis School of Law where she specializes in rural issues. She will be at the Westminster Town Hall Forum on October 25 to host a session called “Mending the Rural-Urban Rift.”
- Loka Ashwood is a sociologist and an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky, where she focuses on rural communities and their participation in democracy.
For more on Kerri Miller’s series of town halls throughout Minnesota focusing on the rewards and challenges of making a home in rural America, check out Rural Voice.
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Talking Volumes returned to the Fitzgerald Theater in person on Sept. 14 to kick off the 2022 season. MPR News host Kerri Miller was joined by scholar and writer Karen Armstrong to discuss her new book, “Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World.”
In this uncharacteristically short but powerful book, Armstrong pierces the modern veil of busyness and technology and lures us back to a sense of wonder with the world around us. Drawing on her vast knowledge of the world’s religious traditions, she vividly describes nature’s central place in spirituality across the centuries. In doing so, Armstrong shows modern readers how to rediscover nature’s potency and form a connection to something greater than ourselves.
Guest:
- Karen Armstrong is a scholar and the author of numerous books on religion, including “The Case for God,” “A History of God,” “Islam,” and “Buddha.” Her new book, released Sept. 2022, is “Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World.”
To listen to a lightly edited version of the Talking Volumes conversation, use the audio player above. You can also watch the full event via the embedded video, or look for it on YouTube.
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Karen Armstrong entered a convent when she was 17.
When she was last on stage at the Fitzgerald Theater, in 2019, she said she treated getting into heaven like getting into the University of Oxford.
“My early experience of religion — both before I became a nun and during it — was all about me,” said Armstrong.
“[It was] about my feelings about the Lord, my meditations and my progress, and was I going to be a good nun or was I going to get into heaven? Lots of times I doubted that.”
Armstrong and her peers were told not to focus on the outside world, but to look inward instead.
She laughed while remembering one notable exception, during the Cuban missile crisis. They were warned about the threat of war, but were never told that the threat was over.
“For three weeks, we were sort of scanning the horizon for mushroom clouds until eventually one of us had the courage to say, ‘What happened about Cuba?’”
She left the convent decades ago, but has spent several years closely examining religion.
In 2019, she published “The Lost Art of Scripture: Rescuing the Sacred Texts,” in which she examined what value holy texts can have for us today. Her new book is “Sacred Nature: Restoring our Ancient Bond with the Natural World,” and she’ll discuss that with host Kerri Miller Wednesday, Sept. 14, at 7 p.m. on stage at the Fitz.
Can’t make it to the show? Look for an edited version of their conversation on Big Books and Bold Ideas on Friday.
Guest:
- Karen Armstrong is the author of numerous books on religious affairs, including “The Case for God,” “A History of God,” “The Lost Art of Scripture” and many others.
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All animals use their senses to perceive the world, humans included. But not every animal senses the same thing. In Pulitzer prize-winning science journalist Ed Yong’s new book, he explores the way each species sees the world through its own sensory viewpoint and explains why that should both delight and humble us.
“Senses always come at a cost,” Yong writes. “No animal can sense everything well.”
In “An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us,” Yong invites us to break out of our human sensory bubbles to consider the unique ways that dogs, dolphins, spiders, bats, octopus and countless other animals experience their surroundings.
On this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, Yong joined MPR News host Kerri Miller to share stories about why jumping spiders have eight eyes, how octopus arms operate without the brain, why Morpho butterflies have ears on their wings — and why we should gently resist the tendency to view other animals’ senses through the limited view of our own.
Guest:
- Ed Yong is an award-winning science journalist for The Atlantic where he did exceptional reporting on the pandemic. His new book is “An Immense World.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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Americans love their pets. In 2018, we spent more than $72 billion feeding them, grooming them, training them, medicating them and — much to the pets’ regret — clothing them. Dog owners, in particular, are quick to say dogs are special — not only because they are smart and social creatures, but because dogs love us back.
But do they really? Or are they just happy to see us because we hold the keys to the food? One animal behaviorist says he’s done the research and he’s convinced that dogs do form emotional attachments with their owners.
Enjoy this fun and enlightening conversation from 2020 between MPR News host Kerri Miller and Clive Wynne — both certified dog lovers — as they talk about Wynne’s research on canine love.
And let it whet your appetite for this Friday’s Big Book and Bold Ideas show, when Miller will talk with science journalist Ed Yong about his new book: “An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us.”
Guest:
- Clive Wynne, animal behaviorist, founding director of the Canine Science Collaboratory at Arizona State University and author of the book “Dog is Love.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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It’s a music extravaganza on MPR Day at the Minnesota State Fair.
On Friday, MPR News host Kerri Miller hosted a special live program of music and music trivia at Dan Patch Stage in front of the Grandstand.
Kerri talked with members of The Family Stone, who are performing Friday and Saturday at the Leinie Lodge Bandshell at the State Fair. In 1966, saxophonist Jerry Martini and Sly Stone co-founded Sly and the Family Stone, one of the first major interracial and mixed gender bands in the country.
The California band reflected the counterculture of the 1960s and laid a foundation for the street funk, soul and disco music of the 1970s. Martini and a new lineup are continuing the legacy with classics, like “Dance to the Music” and “Hot Fun in the Summertime.”
Guests:
- Sean McPherson is the music director and afternoon host of Jazz88-KBEM and a former host on 89.3 The Current. He’s also co-owner of Trivia Mafia and bassist for Heiruspecs.
- Sarah Alfano is a bass player and backup vocalist for the Minneapolis band Hot Freaks.
- Jerry Martini is a saxophonist and co-founder of the Sly and the Family Stone.
- Phunne Stone is Sly Stone’s daughter and vocalist for The Family Stone.
- Russell “Swang” Stewart is lead singer for The Family Stone.
It’s a music extravaganza on MPR Day at the Minnesota State Fair.
At 10 a.m. on Friday, join MPR News host Kerri Miller as she hosts a special live program of music and music trivia at Dan Patch Stage in front of the Grandstand.
Are you a nerd who knows the most obscure facts about record labels, one-hit wonders and star singers? Are you someone who grew up listening to the Trashmen, the Underbeats and the Escapades? This is your chance to show how much you know about Minnesota music history and win some cool prizes.
Plus, Kerri will talk with members of The Family Stone, who are performing Friday and Saturday evening at the Leinie Lodge Bandshell at the State Fair. In 1966, saxophonist Jerry Martini and Sly Stone co-founded Sly and the Family Stone, one of the first interracial and mixed gender major bands in the country.
The California band reflected the counterculture of the 1960s and laid a foundation for the street funk, soul and disco music of the 1970s. Martini and a new line up are continuing the legacy with classics, like “Dance to the Music” and “Hot Fun in the Summertime.”
If you’re on your way to the State Fair, drop in at the Dan Patch Stage and hang out with us. Or listen at 10 a.m.
Guests:
- Sean McPherson is the music director and afternoon host of Jazz88-KBEM and a former host on 89.3 The Current. He’s also co-owner of Trivia Mafia and bassist for Heiruspecs.
- Sarah Alfano is a bass player and backup vocalist for the Minneapolis band Hot Freaks.
- Jerry Martini is a saxophonist and co-founder of the Sly and the Family Stone.
- Phunne Stone is Sly Stone’s daughter and vocalist for The Family Stone.
- Russell “Swang” Stewart is lead singer for The Family Stone.
If someone asks you how old you are, you’ll probably answer with the number that reflects the birth date on your driver’s license.
But scientists are learning that chronological age is not the same as your biological age. Technology has given researchers the tools to measure countless metrics and cross-reference them to get a better picture of your true age.
One of those researchers is Morgan Levine. This Friday, on Big Books and Bold Ideas, she’ll talk with host Kerri Miller about how your biological age can give you a glimpse into the future, but one that you have the power to alter.
“Your biological age on any given day is not your destiny,” she writes in her new book, “True Age: Cutting-Edge Research to Help Turn Back the Clock.”
Guest:
- Morgan Levine is a aging researcher, an adjunct professor of pathology at Yale and the founding investigator at Altos Labs, a biotech firm that aims to develop life extension therapies. Her new book is “True Age: Cutting-Edge Research to Help Turn Back the Clock.”
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Dan Buettner's specialty is Blue Zones — communities where people live the longest, healthiest lives on the planet. He researched and wrote about these communities in his book, "The Blue Zones Solution.” He also helped create new Blue Zones in places like Iowa, New York and Minnesota.
His work mirrors that of Yale researcher Morgan Levine. She studies aging and longevity, and she’ll talk about the latest science with host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas.
Until then, be inspired by this 2015 discussion Miller had with Buettner at the Minneapolis Foundation’s Face Forward Conference.
Guest:
- Dan Buettner is an explorer, National Geographic Fellow, award-winning journalist and
producer, and New York Times bestselling author. He’s written several books about Blue Zones.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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When Oscar Hokeah set out to write a multi-generational novel about a Kiowa and Cherokee family in Oklahoma, he was writing what he knew.
Hokeah grew up in Tahlequah, Okla., a member of both Cherokee Nation and the Kiowa Tribe. He saw the intertribal dynamics that play out when 39 different tribes live in close proximity. He knew the generational trauma caused by colonization and forced migration. He felt the defiance of encountering injustice and watching youth struggle to find a path of honor, even on a road littered with hardships.
So his novel, “Calling for a Blanket Dance,” follows the life of a young Native man, Ever Geimausaddle, as he walks many of the same paths. But because Hokeah also knows the way of redemption lies through community, he tells Ever’s story through 12 different perspectives, ranging from his grandmother to his adopted son. The result is a coming-of-age story that is uniquely Kiowa and Cherokee, and that celebrates connection, family and honor.
This Friday, on Big Books and Bold Ideas, host Kerri Miller will talk with Hokeah about how his own history informed his writing and how Native communities across the U.S. are healing past traumas by celebrating and preserving their cultures.
Guest:
- Oscar Hokeah is a citizen of Cherokee Nation and the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma. His debut novel is “Calling for a Blanket Dance.”
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N. Scott Momaday draws inspiration from his Native American heritage, the grandeur of the New Mexico landscape and his world travels.
Novelist Oscar Hokeah shares the sentiment. He calls on the collective wisdom and voices of his Kiowa and Cherokee community in Oklahoma to bring to life a multi-generational family drama in his new book, “Calling for a Blanket Dance.”
You’ll hear Hokeah’s conversation with Miller on this Friday’s Big Books and Bold Ideas show. In the meantime, enjoy Miller’s similarly themed discussion with Momaday, from the special 2021 Talking Volumes series that centered on race.
Guest:
- N. Scott Momaday is an internationally renowned poet, novelist, artist, teacher, and storyteller whose works celebrate and preserve Native American heritage.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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Many Americans don’t know that the histories of the United States and Mexico are inseparably intertwined. But historian Kelly Lytle Hernández says you cannot fully understand one without the other.
We fought wars over the same territories, influenced each other’s politics, and remain deeply connected economically. Our stories circle around each other, shaping immigration policies and policing. And if we don’t know how we got here, says Hernández, we won’t know how to move forward.
Her new book, “Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, And Revolution In The Borderlands” tells the true story of a Mexican band of rebels, the magonistas, who helped launch the Mexican Revolution in 1910 and whose actions still affect the borderlands today. She talked about what she learned while researching her book and why she believes the U.S. ignores its history with Mexico at its own peril with host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas.
Guest:
- Kelly Lytle Hernández is a professor of history, African-American studies and urban planning at UCLA. Her latest book is “Bad Mexicans.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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Many Americans don’t know that the histories of the United States and Mexico are inseparably intertwined. But historian Kelly Lytle Hernández says you cannot fully understand one without the other.
We fought wars over the same territories, influenced each other’s politics, and remain deeply connected economically. Our stories circle around each other, shaping immigration policies and policing. And if we don’t know how we got here, says Hernández, we won’t know how to move forward.
Her new book, “Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, And Revolution In The Borderlands” tells the true story of a Mexican band of rebels, the magonistas, who helped launch the Mexican Revolution in 1910 and whose actions still affect the borderlands today. She’ll talk about what she learned while researching her book and why she believes the U.S. ignores its history with Mexico at its own peril with host Kerri Miller on Friday’s Big Books and Bold Ideas.
Guest:
- Kelly Lytle Hernández is a professor of history, African-American studies and urban planning at UCLA. Her latest book is “Bad Mexicans.”
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Minnesota Public Radio
Indivisible Radio examined America in transition, during President Donald Trump's first 100 days in office.
This week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas features a conversation with historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez about her new book, “Bad Mexicans.” It tells the dramatic and often overlooked story of the magonistas, the migrant rebels who sparked the 1910 Mexican Revolution from the United States, and how their escapades threatened to undo the rise of Anglo-American power, on both sides of the border, and created the world of fraught immigration we live in today.
To prepare for that discussion, here’s a selection from the archives — a 2017 “Indivisible” conversation Miller had with Eboo Patel and Tamar Jacoby that examines how America’s history as a land of immigrants can be maintained under then President Trump’s divisive immigration policies.
Guests:
- Eboo Patel is the founder and president of Interfaith America (formerly Interfaith Youth Core) and the author of several books, including “We Need to Build: Field Notes for Diverse Democracy.”
- Tamar Jacoby is currently the president of Opportunity America. At the time of this recording, she was president and CEO of ImmigrationWorks USA. She is also the author of several books, including “Reinventing the Melting Pot: The New Immigrants and What It Means To Be American.”
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For more than 170 years, Caleb Wilde’s family has served their Pennsylvania community by facilitating funerals. He has walked beside countless grieving people as they say goodbye, memorialize and weep. He’s attended thousands of funeral services, filled with comforting messages about heaven and future reunions.
But despite that — or maybe because of it — Wilde says he’s skeptical about life after death.
“I have become a fundamentalist of doubt,” he writes eloquently in his new book. “Death is so sudden and so final that in order for humans to cope with mortality, they make up a place that is immortal and eternal — the afterlife.’
That book, “All the Ways Our Dead Still Speak,” is a thoughtful reflection of Wilde’s experiences as a funeral director. He no longer believes in heaven or hell — at least not in the traditional sense. But he also cannot dismiss the experiences and even conversations some grieving families have with their dead loved ones.
This Friday, on Big Books and Bold Ideas, host Kerri Miller will talk with Wilde about what he’s learned from having a front-row seat to death since he was a small boy. Do our dead still speak?
Guest:
- Caleb Wilde is a sixth-generation funeral director (for now), a theology student and the author of the award-winning “Confessions of a Funeral Director.” His new book is “All the Ways Our Dead Still Speak.”
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Fifty-seven years ago this week, on Aug. 6, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the landmark Voting Rights Act, with Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders looking on. It was a turning point in American history. At the time, President Johnson called it “a victory of freedom for the nation.”
Thursday at 9 a.m., in a special edition of Big Books and Bold Ideas, host Kerri Miller will examine whether the commitment of that milestone legislation still holds all these years later, particularly as the Supreme Court takes on one case that could upend state election laws and another that challenges a key section of the Voting Rights Act. Her guide is Professor Carol Anderson, one of the nation’s foremost scholars on equity and voting and the author of “One Person, No Vote.”
Guest:
- Carol Anderson is a professor of African-American studies at Emory University and an accomplished author.
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Even though Americans are living longer — the share of the U.S. population 65 and older has more than tripled over the last century — we are still profoundly uncomfortable with dying. In fact, the end of life is so medicalized, death is often viewed as a failure, rather than accepted as a fundamental stage of life.
Sunita Puri wants to change that. Her book, "That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour," is a masterful memoir of helping people to die — and live — well. It chronicles her journey of becoming a palliative care doctor near the end of her medical school training after she realized medicine had little to say about patients' suffering and mortality.
It mirrors thoughts shared by author and sixth-generation funeral director Caleb Wilde in his new book, “All the Ways Our Dead Still Speak.” Wilde’s tender and personal reflections on what it’s like to grieve loved ones and grapple with death will be the conversation on this Friday’s installment of Big Books and Bold Ideas.
Until then, enjoy this throwback from 2019 with Puri about how we need to rethink death so we can truly live well.
Guest:
- Sunita Puri is a practicing palliative medicine physician and the author of “That Good Night.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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Twins Mun and Chuluun are 23 years old when Quan Barry’s new novel opens, but in almost every other way, their lives are the opposite. Chuluun lives and studies at a Buddhist monastery in the countryside of Mongolia. Mun wears Western clothes and lives in the capital city, where he enjoys technology, tattoos and women.
But the brothers share a constant connection — a sort of mental telepathy that means they share thoughts with the other in a running stream. And each twin wants the other out of his head.
They come together when they are tasked with traveling the country to find a tulku, the reincarnation of a great spiritual leader. So they set off on a road trip, a quest that will take them to vistas both inner and outer, on a journey to find the elusive real.
Barry was inspired to write the book after her own travels to Mongolia, she tells MPR News host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. Listen to the conversation for more about this road novel with a supernatural twist.
Guest:
- Quan Barry is a poet, playwright, novelist and English professor. Her latest book is “When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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Quan Barry is a poet, a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a published author. But she finds that travel is just as important as writing when it comes to her work.
Courtesy of Random House
'She Weeps Each Time You're Born' by Quan Berry
Her 2014 novel, “She Weeps Each Time You’re Born,” was inspired by time spent in Vietnam, the land of her birth. Similarly, her new novel, “When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East,” explores Mongolia, as telepathic twin brothers travel the country, seeking the reincarnation of a Buddhist master.
MPR News host Kerri Miller talks with Barry about her latest book on this Friday’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. While you wait, enjoy their 2015 conversation about “She Weeps Each Time You’re Born.”
Guest:
- Quan Barry is a writer and professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her latest book is “When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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When Ann Hood was a flight attendant in the late 1970s, airlines were only a few years past using blatant sex appeal to sell tickets.
But the recent college graduate didn’t see that at the time. She just saw the glamour and freedom that could be hers, if she could complete the training, follow the rules and maintain her original weight.
In her new memoir, “Fly Girl,” the novelist writes, “I worked in one of the most demanding, sexist, exciting, glorious jobs a person can have. I was a flight attendant.”
This week, Hood joined MPR News host Kerri Miller on Big Books and Bold Ideas for a conversation about her years traveling the world in a small silver tube, and why she didn’t recognize the sexism of the industry when she was in it.
Guest:
- Ann Hood is the New York Times best-selling author of several novels. Her newest book, “Fly Girl,” is a memoir about her years as a flight attendant.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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You can't flip through a magazine or scroll social media today without being confronted with a list: "10 places to see before you die!", "15 secret vacation destinations," "5 beaches that will blow your mind."
But what's in a list?
In 2015. Christine Sarkis, a Smarter Travel staff writer, said she’d rather ditch the bucket list.
"A travel list isn't like a grocery list, it's not a 'sit down and get it done' thing," Sarkis told MPR News host Kerri Miller. "It's a constant, evolving process."
Seth Kugel, travel columnist for The New York Times, agreed.
"The idea of having a list is great, but what goes on that list, maybe we should change that: It should be experiences instead of places," Kugel said.
This is a encouraging and fun deep track from our archives, which will hopefully put you in the mood for this Friday’s Big Books and Bold Ideas show. It’s a conversation with novelist Ann Hood about her new memoir, “Fly Girl,” which chronicles her experiences as a flight attendant during a more glamorous, and sexist, era.
Guests:
- A longtime travel writer and editor, Christine Sarkis is the executive editor and cofounder of Family Vacationist.
- Seth Kugel is a columnist for the travel desk of The New York Times.
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From a young age, Frederick Joseph recognized that violence is often demanded of men.
“We collectively teach our boys that winning, surviving, things of that nature, always demands beating someone,” he told host Kerri Miller, “whether that means beating them in competition, beating them mentally, beating them emotionally, beating them physically.”
But an exchange he had at a young friend’s funeral pointed to a different path.
As he stood in his grief, his friend’s mother hugged him and said: “A bunch of angry boys who don’t know how to cry are the reason my son is dead. Cry for my son. You both deserve it.”
Joseph realized he didn’t know how to cry, how to be tender, how to allow himself to be fully alive in a world built by patriarchy and white supremacy. So he began a journey.
He shares that journey with the world in his new book, “Patriarchy Blues.” On this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, Miller and Joseph talk about this his reflections on the culture of modern masculinity through the lens of a Black man.
Guest:
- Frederick Joseph is an author, activist and philanthropist. He is the other of several books, including “The Black Friend” and “Patriarchy Blues.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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This Friday, MPR News host Kerri Miller will talk with activist and author Frederick Joseph about his new book, “Patriarchy Blues.” It examines the culture of masculinity through the lens of a Black man.
Ashley C. Ford’s debut memoir, “Somebody’s Daughter,” also looks at the racial divides in America, by telling her own story of growing up as a Black girl in Indiana with a single mother, an absent father and a heavy family secret.
Ford joined Miller in July 2021 to talk about her book and the complexities of childhood, forgiveness and healing. Enjoy this interview from the archive as an appetizer for the upcoming conversation with Joseph.
Guest:
- Ashley C. Ford is a writer, host and educator who lives in Indianapolis with her husband and their chocolate lab Astro Renegade Ford-Stacy. “Somebody’s Daughter” is her debut memoir.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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Seventeen-year-old Kiara shoulders too much responsibility. Her father recently died after being released from prison. Her mother is in a halfway house. Her brother avoids obligation, preferring to seek fame as a star rapper. And then there’s Trevor, the nine-year-old boy who lives next door, who’s been abandoned by his crack-addicted mother — but not Kiara.
Leila Mottley’s debut novel, “Nightcrawling,” deftly portrays the swirl of poverty and trauma Kiara faces in her Oakland apartment, which has a pool filled with putrid water and dog excrement at its center. Written when Mottley herself was only 17, it’s a story that riffs off real-life events of police corruption and sexual abuse.
Oprah chose “Nightcrawling” as her latest Book Club pick, catapulting Mottley’s novel to the top of the best-seller charts. On Friday, MPR host Kerri Miller talked with Mottley about what she learned while writing “Nightcrawling” in her spare time between high school classes and the heavy and often unseen burdens young Black girls carry in America.
Guest:
- Leila Mottley is the author of “Nightcrawling,” an Oprah’s Book Club selection and a New York Times best seller. This is her first novel.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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Reginald Dwayne Betts animates the ideals of justice, integrity and equity in his work as both an attorney and a poet.
Betts is also the founding director of Freedom Reads, which aims to establish freedom libraries in prisons across the country. He said it exposes people to the various ways that poetry, fiction, memoir and other literature operate.
“Prison is a brutal place, but I don't want to act like prison is just a brutal place. A man I didn't know heard me ask for a book and slid me ‘The Black Poets’ because he thought it might matter to me. It profoundly changed my life,” Betts said.
Their conversation was the first of four included in MPR and the Star Tribune’s Talking Volumes series in 2021 centered around race in America.
Guest:
- Reginald Dwayne Betts is the founder and director of Freedom Reads, a first-of-its-kind organization that empowers people through literature to confront what prison does to the spirit.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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Statistics about income inequality are stark. For example, two-thirds of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
But numbers are inadequate when trying to convey the desperation of living on the sharpest edge of poverty.
New author Jakob Guanzon aims to paint a more gritty and throbbing story with his debut novel, “Abundance.”
With lessons partly gleaned from working on a landscaping crew when he was a Minnesota college student, Guanzon writes about a single father, Henry, and his son, Junior, who have less than $100 to their name.
It is Junior’s birthday, and Henry decides to splurge on a meal at McDonald’s. While the boy plays on the indoor playground, Henry stuffs ketchup packets in his pockets for later.
That first chapter is titled, $89.34 — which is all the money Henry has. Each subsequent chapter begins with the updated amount of money Henry has left, which is both a striking literary tool and a heartbreaking reality check.
On this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, host Kerri Miller talks with Guanzon about the grim truth of poverty, the quiet despair of parenting without money and, how his years growing up in Minnesota influenced his writing.
Guest:
- Jakob Guanzon is a writer who grew up in Minnesota and now lives in New York City. “Abundance” is his first novel.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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Now that the right to an abortion has been overturned, America enters a new phase. Some states, like Minnesota, will continue to offer abortion care. Many others will prevent all access. Some will even criminalize anyone who helps a pregnant person get an abortion in a state that makes it legal.
Writer and activist Robin Marty saw this day coming — but she admits she didn’t think it would happen so quickly. In 2019, she wrote “Handbook for a Post-Roe America,” as she watched laws severely restricting abortion sweep many regions of the country. This spring, she released an updated version. And now, with the Supreme Court overturning Roe, it’s become a handbook for women reeling from the decision and wondering what to do next.
Wednesday, on a special edition of Big Books and Bold Ideas, host Kerri Miller spoke with Marty, who recently moved from Minnesota to Alabama to become the operations director for the West Alabama’s Women’s Center. They discussed her book, what she thinks will happen next, and how the hopscotched nature of abortion rights going forward will impact pregnant people, especially women of color.
Guest:
- Robin Marty is the operations director for the West Alabama Women's Center, and the author of “A Handbook for a Post-Roe America.”
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Statistics about income inequality are stark. For example, two-thirds of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
But numbers are inadequate when trying to convey the desperation of living on the sharpest edge of poverty.
New author Jakob Guanzon aims to paint a more gritty and throbbing story with his debut novel, “Abundance.”
With lessons partly gleaned from working on a landscaping crew when he was a Minnesota college student, Guanzon writes about a single father, Henry, and his son, Junior, who have less than $100 to their name.
It is Junior’s birthday, and Henry decides to splurge on a meal at McDonald’s. While the boy plays on the indoor playground, Henry stuffs ketchup packets in his pockets for later.
That first chapter is titled, $89.34 — which is all the money Henry has. Each subsequent chapter begins with the updated amount of money Henry has left, which is both a striking literary tool and a heartbreaking reality check.
This Friday at noon, join host Kerri Miller and she talks with Guanzon about the grim truth of poverty, the quiet despair of parenting without money and, how his years growing up in Minnesota influenced his writing.
Guest:
- Jakob Guanzon is a writer who grew up in Minnesota and now lives in New York City. “Abundance” is his first novel.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or RSS.
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Shocking fact: The average American home has more than 300,000 items in it. And that was before the pandemic, when many of us used Amazon as retail therapy.
While Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus certainly understand the impulse, they encourage a different path. When they were kids growing up in poverty in Ohio, they equated stuff with success. But as they got older and were able to acquire more, they discovered that material goods didn’t grow their happiness.
That’s when The Minimalists was born. Both Millburn and Nicodemus embarked on a journey to get rid of clutter. To their surprise, they found that decluttering their space led to a decluttering of their minds — and that gave them the mental and emotional space to reorder their relationships.
Since that time, they’ve launched a website, a podcast, two Netflix documentaries (“Minimalism” and “Less is Now”) and now a book that details their passion for finding more in less.
In July of 2021, they talked with host Kerri Miller about their written blueprint, “Love People, Use Things.” Use it to whet your appetite for this Friday’s show with novelist Jakob Guanzon, whose book also touches on lessons gleaned from poverty amidst abundance.
Guests:
- Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus are lifelong friends, authors and speakers. Together, they are The Minimalists. Their new book is “Love People, Use Things: Because the Opposite Never Works.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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Writer and journalist Kathryn Schulz met the woman she would marry just 18 months before her cherished father died. Both events were seismic shifts in her life, and as she writes in her new memoir, “Lost and Found,” the loss made the joy somehow sweeter.
“In quick succession, I found one foundational love and lost another,” she writes. “Ever since, both the wonder and the fragility of life have been exceptionally present to me.”
This Friday on Big Books and Bold Ideas, host Kerri Miller talks with Schulz about the way death and life intertwine and how love inevitably brings with it the prospect of pain. But ultimately, it’s worth the risk.
Guest:
- Kathryn Schulz is an award-winning author and journalist. Her new memoir is “Lost and Found.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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Families are intricate, made up of interwoven and multilayered relationships. Sue Miller’s “Monogamy” examines these complex ties amidst a family who loses their beloved and gregarious father, Graham. After his death, his second wife Annie, discovers Graham wasn’t always faithful during their 30-year marriage. The resulting grief, anger, reassessing and, ultimately, acceptance is the work of being human.
Sue Miller’s own life informed her novel, as she tells host Kerri Miller. But her book also taught her how to embrace the broken and beautiful bits of her own life.
Enjoy this conversation from the 2020 archives as we anticipate Friday’s Big Books and Bold Ideas show with Kathryn Schulz about her new memoir, “Lost and Found.”
Guest:
- Sue Miller, author of many novels including the new book “Monogamy”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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Are you ready to dive into some summer reading? MPR News host Kerri Miller has nine titles you should put on your list.
On this week’s show, a “Take it to the Lake” special, she asked three people who spend a lot of time recommending books to devoted readers what titles they would put in your hands this season. She also talked to them about what makes a good summer read. Here’s what she heard.
Glory Edim is the founder of Well-Read Black Girl , a podcast and digital literacy platform that celebrates the uniqueness of Black literature and sisterhood.
Courtesy of Tiffany A. Bloomfield
Glory Edim.
“In the summer, I pick a book that lets me follow the plot. I’m in love with the voice; I’m a very voice-driven writer and editor. So if I can find a story that has a really sensational and powerful voice, I tend to save those reads for the summer, because that’s my fun time. That’s my let’s-get-lost-in-a-story time.”
Summer book picks:
“Post-Traumatic” by Chantel V. Johnson
“The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer” by Janelle Monáe
“Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop” by Danyel Smith
Dionne Sims is the founder and owner of Black Garnet Books , the only Black-owned bookstore in Minnesota.
Courtesy of Trista Marie McGovern
Dionne Sims.
“It’s starting to warm up here in Minnesota, finally. I’m feeling that urge to get back into the things that I love — one of which is reading. And I just want to pretend like I have a summer vacation again. I want to carve out the time to travel and make sure I have a couple of books on hand.”
Summer book picks:
“Memphis” by Tara M. Stringfellow
“All We Can Save: Truth, Courage and Solutions for the Climate Crisis” a collection of essays edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson
“Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband?” by Lizzie Damilola Blackburn
Matt Keliher is the general manager and buyer for Subtext Books , an independent bookstore in St. Paul.
Courtesy of Sam Ziegler
Matt Keliher.
“I work with my colleagues to make decisions about what books we carry and stock. A lot of our displays do showcase things that people are expecting to see when they show up. But we also have a giant display of our favorite books. Personally, as the buyer, I try not to exert my will or interest on the curation. But at the same time, that’s what keeps it interesting for me.”
Summer book picks:
“Trust” by Hernan Diaz
“The Anomaly” by Hervé Le Tellier
“The Sea of Tranquility” by Emily St. John Mandel
Bonus pick from Kerri:
“The Long-Shining Waters” by Danielle Sosin
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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Why do we sweat? The science behind this primal bodily function is complicated, fascinating and often just plain weird.
In her delightful book, “The Joy of Sweat,” science journalist Sarah Everts makes the case that it’s time our species finds “serenity instead of shame” in perspiration.
She traveled the world in pursuit of sweat’s history and sociological value — from saunas in Scandinavia to dating events in Russia where potential partners sniff each other’s sweat to determine attraction.
What she found is that sweat is more than our body trying to stay cool. Trace amounts of drugs and disease can appear in our sweat. Perspiration can reveal what we eat. Even something as basic as our fingerprints are really just “sweat prints.”
Enjoy this conversation from the sweltering July of 2021 when host Kerri Miller talked to Everts about the fascinating world of sweat. And let it build your anticipation for summer reading, with “Take it to the Lake” book recommendations coming on this Friday’s Big Books and Bold Ideas show.
Guest:
- Sarah Everts is a science journalist and the author of the new book "The Joy of Sweat: The Strange Science of Perspiration."
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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It began as a challenge: Could columnist Tamar Haspel and her husband eat one meal a day using food they grew or gathered themselves for an entire year?
Haspel was intrigued by the experiment. Her husband — normally a “why not” guy — was less enthused. It was winter in Cape Cod, after all.
But they embarked on the journey anyway, just a few months after exchanging their condo in Manhattan for a shack on a two-acre lot in Massachusetts. They learned to clam. They built hoop houses. They grew tomatoes — in raised beds, after futile attempts to cultivate their own sandy soil. They took on chickens.
And they learned. They discovered new ways to eat, a new appreciation for food. They found it’s not as hard as the experts often make it out to be.
This Friday at 11 a.m., MPR News host Kerri Miller talks with Haspel about the grand adventure documented in her new book, “To Boldly Grow.” Filled with humor, practical advice and hard-won wisdom, both the book and the conversation will inspire a new respect for what we eat and the soil and resilience that nurture us.
Guest:
- Tamar Haspel writes the James Beard Award-winning “Washington Post” column “Unearthed,” which covers the intersection of food and science. Her new book is “To Boldly Grow: Finding Joy, Adventure and Dinner in Your Own Backyard.”
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Rebecca Winn became a landscape designer by instinct.
She knew that something about the flowers, the soil, the cycle and the discovery fed her soul.
When her life fell apart, it was her garden that taught her how to heal.
In her book, “One Hundred Daffodils,” she shares those lessons with us.
MPR News host Kerri Miller spoke with Winn in March 2020, just as the pandemic was shutting the country down. The timing made for an especially beautiful conversation, and it remains poignant as we continue to process grief. Let it also serve as an appetizer for this Friday’s conversation between Miller and author Tamar Haspel when they talk about Haspel’s quest to grow her own food for a year.
Guest:
- Rebecca Winn, landscape designer, creator of Whimsical Gardens and author of the book “One Hundred Daffodils: Finding Beauty, Grace and Meaning When Things Fall Apart.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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It took years for Marie Myung-Ok Lee to collect the pieces and do the research necessary to accurately write her new novel, “The Evening Hero.”
It tells the story of a Korean-born obstetrician who is shocked to discover that the northern Minnesota hospital where he’s delivered babies for decades is being closed, with only a week’s notice. It disrupts his previously quiet and dutiful life and forces him to contend with his past, which he would rather keep buried.
As Lee tells MPR News host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, “The Evening Hero” isn’t biographical, but it does mirror her own story. Lee grew up in Hibbing, watching her anesthetist father be both a community leader and an outsider. Her parents wanted to be distinctly American, but they couldn’t deny their histories and immigration journey.
“The Evening Hero” combines scathing commentary on the state of health care in America with a portrait of a restrained marriage and the trauma of war. Listen to Miller and Lee’s wide-ranging conversation about her new book using the audio player above.
Guest:
- Marie Myung-Ok Lee is a Korean-American author. She teaches writing at Columbia University and is the founder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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In the fall of 2012, Kerri Miller finally welcomed Dr. Abraham Verghese to the stage of the Fitzgerald Theater. She had wanted to talk to him for years, at last securing him for a Talking Volumes discussion about his novel, “Cutting for Stone.”
He was worth the wait. Dr. Verghese told Miller that his work as an internist at Stanford only adds to his writing sensibilities, quoting the author Dorothy Allison: “Fiction is the great lie that tells the truth about how the world lives."
He added, "I think I succeeded in this novel in telling a kind of truth that resonates for readers."
The conversation was shared on the radio in 2013. As we anticipate this Friday’s Big Books and Bold Ideas discussion with Marie Myung Ok-Lee about her novel set in northern Minnesota that follows a physician grappling with changes to rural medicine, please enjoy one of Miller’s favorite conversations of all time.
Guest:
- Dr. Abraham Verghese is a physician and a best-selling author.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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It’s an astonishing number: Six out of ten Americans live with at least one chronic illness, many of which are poorly understood and difficult to diagnose. Now, with long COVID emerging, even more people are grappling with what it means to live with a condition that isn’t easily cured and often doesn’t go away.
Meghan O’Rourke lived this journey. She started experiencing random symptoms in college that didn’t garner a simple diagnosis. Doctors didn’t know how to help her, and as she writes in her book, “The Invisible Kingdom,” American health care doesn’t have a clear path for people like her.
So she set out to be her own medical detective, keeping files and finding new doctors in an attempt to get someone to see her suffering.
“Above all, I wanted recognition of the reality of my experience,” she writes, “a sense that others saw it.”
On this week’s Big Book and Bold Ideas, MPR News host Kerri Miller talked with O’Rourke about what she learned as she fought to get a diagnosis and how America needs to change its practice of medicine and its view of chronic illness so that those struggling with this kind of sickness don’t feel invisible.
Guest:
- Meghan O’Rourke is a writer. Her new book is “The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness.”
Use the audio player above to hear a slightly longer version of today’s show.
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Medical technology has advanced exponentially. So why are patient-physician relationships stuck in the past? That’s the heart of the question in Dr. Danielle Ofri’s book, “What Patients Say, What Doctors Hear.” Enjoy this archive offering from 2017 as you get ready for Friday’s conversation between Kerri Miller and author Megan O’Rourke about the difficulty of getting doctors to take chronic illnesses seriously.
All kids are readers. Some just haven’t discovered it yet.
Courtesy of Orange Coast Magazine
Kitty Felde is the host and executive producer of Book Club for Kids.
That’s the belief of Kitty Felde, former NPR correspondent and current host and executive producer of the podcast “Book Club for Kids.”
In May, she joined Kerri Miller for a Friday episode of Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about how to get kids reading over their summer break. Here are a few of her top tips.
If you have a reluctant reader, any book is a good book.
Felde recommends parents or caregivers take kids to a library or a bookstore and let them choose any book they show interest in.
“Don’t censor them,” she cautions. “They are going to go and [choose] the dumbest thing you’ve ever seen in your entire life. But I don’t care! They will be reading words, and that’s what you want them to do.”
Stop looking down on graphic novels.
Felde believes the new crop of graphic novels is some of the most wonderful literature around. They aren’t lesser reading experiences. She recommends kids and adults alike check out Jerry Craft’s “New Kid” for a story that is both beautiful and compelling.
She also points to the many books now being re-released as graphic novels. Rick Riordan’s “Percy Jackson” series, the popular books about a modern boy who finds out he is a Greek demigod, is coming out in graphic form. So are the original “Baby-Sitters Club” books. (Attention Millennial parents.)
Find a series to keep their interest.
“Kids like to spend more time with the characters they’ve invested in so much emotionally,” advises Felde. “If you can help them find a good series they enjoy, that will keep them reading.”
Consider a daily 20-minute quiet time where everyone reads.
That includes parents, says Felde.
“This is really the secret sauce. Whether kids admit it or not, they do want to emulate the good side of you. And if the good side of you is reading, then it makes reading less onerous.”
Read out loud.
“We all like to be read to,” Felde says, “that’s why we get audio books.”
Use their beloved devices in your favor.
Artwork by Emma Steinkellner
Book Club for Kids is a podcast dedicated to middle graders talking about the books they love.
“Kids are going to use screens,” Felde admits. “They just are. But we can use those screens to get them to start enjoying books.”
Audio books are one way, she says.
But podcasts for kids about books — like Book Club for Kids — are also powerful tools. They let kids hear other kids talk about what they like to read and why.
“That’s one way to use a device for good,” Felde says.
Tap librarians to help kids find a book they connect with.
If you have a child that hasn’t found a book that’s connected with them, “librarians are like gold,” says Felde. “Or the person who works in the children’s department at your favorite indie bookstore.”
“I’ve watched them work. They will interview a kid. They will say, ‘Well, what do you like?’
‘Oh, I hate books.’
’That’s fine, but what do you like?’
‘Oh, well, I like fishing.’
‘OK, then let’s go look at the fishing section.’
Or: ‘I only like video games.’
‘Great! Let me show you this fabulous Minecraft series.’”
Let the experts find a sneaky way in that might tempt kids to read.
Start a book club for kids.
Take a tip from social media, and use books as a social tool. Felde says there are great examples of this all over the country, especially in the summer.
“If a kid won’t read by themselves, get a few of their friends over. Serve some cookies. Set it up like a grown-up book club — without the alcohol — but you start with a book and let the conversation go.“
And again, try not to be judgmental about what they want to read.
Don’t forget about nonfiction.
There are two kids of people in the world,” says Felde, “fiction readers and nonfiction readers.”
Don’t neglect the Dewey decimal side of the library.
To listen to the full conversation between Kerri Miller and Kitty Felde, you can use the audio player above.
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Kitty’s Book Suggestions Graphic novel favorites:
Dog Man series by Dav Pilkey
Check out the Baby-Sitters Club graphic novel series
If your child likes gaming, look for the Minecraft series by Sfé R. Monster
Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson books are also being released as graphic novels
Anything by Raina Telgemeier, but especially “Sisters,” “Guts,” and “Smile”
New graphic novels:
“New Kid” by Jerry Craft
“Amulet” by Kazu Kibuishi
For younger kids who just graduated from “Captain Underpants”:
“The Wild Robot” by Peter Brown
“Stella Diaz Has Something to Say” by Angela Dominguez
Fairy tales:
Anything by Gail Carson Levine
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
“The Girl Who Drank the Moon” by Kelly Barnhill
“Rooftoppers” by Katherine Rundell
“Red Queen” by Victoria Aveyard
For kids who will miss school over the summer:
“Because of Mr. Terupt” by Rob Buyea
“Ungifted” by Gordon Korman
“Lupe Wong Won’t Dance” by Donna Barba Higuera
For kids who are asking about the war in Ukraine:
“Good Night, Mr. Tom” by Michelle Magorian
“The War That Saved My Life” by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
“Code Talker” by Joseph Bruchac
“Chains” by Laurie Halse Anderson
“The Night Diary” by Veera Hiranandani
“Other Words for Home” by Jasmine Warga
“The Book Thief” by Marcus Zusak
Spooky/Sci Fi books:
“Ghost Boys” by Jewell Parker Rhodes
“Hoodoo” by Ronald L. Smith
“When You Reach Me” by Rebecca Stead
“Orleans” by Sherri L. Smith
“A Wish in the Dark” by Christina Soontornvat
Mythology:
“The Storm Runner” by J.C. Cervantes
“Peasprout Chen: Future Legend of Skate and Sword” by Henry Lien
“The Hound of Rowan” by Henry Neff
“The Jumbies” by Tracey Baptiste
Just plain good writing:
“The Crossover” by Kwame Alexander
“Dead End in Norvelt” by Jack Gantos
“Skelig” by David Almond
“Loving vs. Virginia: A Documentary Novel of the Landmark Civil Rights Case” by Patricia Hruby Powell
“Orbiting Jupiter” by Gary D. Schmidt
“The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street” by Karina Yan Glaser
Spies:
“Spy School” by Stuart Gibbs
“Stormbreaker” by Anthony Horowitz
“Milo Speck, Accidental Agent” by Linda Urban
“Spy Mice” by Heather Vogel Frederick
Fairy tales are deceptively simple — “once upon a time” stories, filled with adventure and righteous moral power.
But many believe they shouldn’t be relegated to the kids’ shelf. Writer Neil Gaiman famously said, “Fairy tales are more than true. Not because they tell us that dragons exist. But because they tell us dragons can be beaten.”
Novelist Kelly Barnhill knows her way around fairy tales. Her book, “The Girl Who Drank the Moon,” won the prestigious Newberry Medal in 2017. She’s out with a new book for middle grade kids, this one also filled with fantastical creatures and children trying to navigate a changing world.
But as she writes in the opening, it’s about more than that. “This book stated out as a fairy tale, but revealed itself to be a story that asks a specific question: What is a neighbor?’
On Friday’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, Barnhill joined MPR News host Kerri Miller to talk about her new book, the secrets of fairy tales and how her new novel, “The Ogress and the Orphans,” can speak to kids who are on the cusp of leaving childhood.
Guest:
- Kelly Barnhill is the writer of many books. Her new novel for middle grade students is “The Ogress and the Orphans.” She lives in Minneapolis.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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On Friday’s show, it’s all about books for kids. MPR News host Kerri Miller talks with Minnesota author Kelly Barnhill about her new book, “The Ogress and the Orphans,” and Kitty Felde, host of the podcast Book Club for Kids, about what young readers should dive into this summer.
To whet your appetite, we thought you would enjoy this fun 2019 interview Miller did with another Minnesota author, Drew Brockington, who sent cats to space in his kids' lit series "CatStronauts."
The author and illustrator shared how his love of space fueled this series, and what humans can learn from an intrepid crew of CatStronauts named Waffles, PomPom, Blanket and Major Meowser.
Guests:
- Drew Brockington is the author of the “CatStronauts” series and several other books for kids. He lives in Minneapolis.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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How to use science to help us manage life’s toughest moments is the theme of this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas.
Here, we revisit three discussions MPR News host Kerri Miller had with authors this past year and learn what they’ve discovered about grief, heartbreak and talking with people with whom we fundamentally disagree.
Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe kicks us off with a conversation about how we can find common ground when talking about climate change.
Then we turn to Florence Williams, and her personal and clinical look at what science now knows happens in our bodies when we are dealing with heartbreak.
Last, we hear from grief researcher Mary-Frances O’Connor about what loss looks like in the human brain.
Guests:
- Katharine Hayhoe is a climate scientist, the chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy and the author of “Saving Us: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World.”
- Florence Williams is a journalist, author and podcaster. Her new book is “Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey.”
- Mary-Frances O’Connor is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Arizona and director of the Grief, Loss and Social Stress Lab, which investigates the effects of grief on the brain and the body. Her new book is "The Grieving Brain."
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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The roots of ecologist Suzanne Simard’s love of forests are multiple generations deep.
Her family relied on forestry for their livelihood, and she was one of the early groups of women to carve out space within the logging industry.
But her experience didn’t mirror her family’s. As the scale of the industry’s business grew, Simard’s concern about the implications for the ecosystem around it eventually evolved into a new career path.
Simard is now a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia and is working to reframe conversations about conservation.
In her book “Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest” she writes, “This is not a book about how we can save the trees. This is a book about how the trees might save us.”
In June 2021, Simard talked with MPR News host Kerri Miller about what humans can learn from the way trees cooperate and communicate with other plants. Let this conversation whet your appetite for more science-based conversation coming this Friday.
Guest:
- Suzanne Simard is a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia. Her book is called “Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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If you stand in the Sistine Chapel and look up at Michelangelo’s depiction of God, you’ll see the archetype. God is white, old, and male. Always male.
Theologian and activist Christena Cleveland believes that image is limiting and even harmful. Her new book, “God is a Black Woman,” seeks to recover the sacred, Black feminine, thanks to a pilgrimage she undertook in 2018 to visit some of the 450 Black Madonnas scattered throughout Europe.
Christena Cleveland
Three photos of Black Madonnas taken by Christena during her pilgrimage.
Ancient and revered, the Black Madonnas are sources of strength and miracles. Joan of Arc prayed before the Black Madonna of Moulin. At the Black Madonna of Vichy, thousands of sick came to pray and be comforted.
Cleveland. herself, found strength and healing during her pilgrimage. She writes in her book, “Imagination is theology. We can only believe what we can imagine. And our cultural landscape hasn’t given us many tools to imagine a non-white, non-male God.”
On this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas show, MPR News host Kerri Miller talked with Cleveland about her book, her pilgrimage and why the white, male depiction of God is both constricting and corrosive to seeing the divine in everyone.
Guest:
- Christena Cleveland is a social psychologist, public theologian and the founder and director of the Center for Justice + Renewal. Her new book “God Is a Black Woman.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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For centuries, the white American church enabled and even embraced racism.
Many Christians say that's in the past. Jemar Tisby doesn't agree.
MPR News host Kerri Miller talked to the theologian and author in 2019 about his book, "The Color of Compromise," and again in 2021, in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder.
This week, as we look ahead to a conversation with Christena Cleveland, about how her Christian faith changed when she viewed it through the lens of being a Black woman, we are listening to Miller’s 2021 program with Tisby. Here, they discuss his book “How to Fight Racism” and talk about how the white evangelical church in America could do more to heal the wounds it caused.
Guest:
- Jemar Tisby is a historian of race and religion. He recently released a young reader’s edition of “How to Fight Racism.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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In classic literature, a hero goes forth to find great adventure and calamitous tragedy. But at the end of their journey, they often turn toward home.
Don Winslow uses Greek and Roman literature as his muse as he launches his new trilogy with the book, “City of Fire.” Set in Rhode Island in the late 1980s, it chronicles the clashes of two crime families, one Italian and one Irish, who control the state and have led a relatively peaceful coexistence — until a woman, reminiscent of Helen of Troy, fractures the truce and kicks off a brutal war.
His protagonist is Danny Ryan, an Aeneas-like character whose loyalty is both his greatest strength and his tragic flaw. Ryan is forced to grow from a street soldier into a ruthless leader in order to protect the people and the home he loves.
Winslow himself went home to write this novel. As he tells MPR News host Kerri Miller, he was eager to leave Rhode Island as a young man, and he’s happily exiled himself in San Diego for years. But to write “City of Fire,” he returned to the small fishing village where he was raised. That’s where their conversation begins. Listen to the whole thing by clicking the link above.
Guest:
- Don Winslow is a celebrated novelist. His new book is “City on Fire.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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Novelist Don Winslow has written hundreds of pages about America's war on drugs. He's taken readers into the labyrinth of Mexican cartels, revealed the cynical calculations made in the highest echelons of governments and laid bare the violence and the damage that flow from America's greed for drugs.
This Friday, MPR Hews host Kerri Miller will talk to Winslow about his new book, “City on Fire,” which is the first in what promises to be an epic saga about the Irish and Italian crime syndicates in America.
To whet your appetite, here’s Miller’s last conversation with Winslow from 2019, when they discussed “The Border,” the final chapter in his trilogy about the war on drugs.
Guest:
- Don Winslow is a best-selling author of 21 books and countless articles and short stories. His new novel, coming April 2022, is “City on Fire.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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In 2014, after years of writing in relative obscurity, Emily St. John Mandel published a breakaway novel. “Station Eleven” was a huge hit, selling more than 1.5 million copies and receiving critical acclaim. It was even made into a television series by HBO Max.
Eerily enough, “Station Eleven” was set in a world confronting a global pandemic. Her new novel, “Sea of Tranquility,” is also set in the future — and the past — thanks to a time-traveling narrative the weaves together five centuries across space and time.
This Friday, as part of the Big Books and Bold Ideas conversation, MPR News host Kerri Miller stepped into the void with Mandel. They talk about the folly of time travel, how hinge moments are often recognized only in hindsight, and the constant contingency of living. Who would we be if we weren’t ourselves?
Guest:
- Emily St. John Mandel is the best-selling author of five novels, including “Station Eleven” and “The Glass Hotel.” Her new book is “Sea of Tranquility.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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More than 60 million years ago, an object the size of a small city barreled into planet Earth, traveling at more than 22,000 miles per hour.
That meteoroid, many scientists believe, triggered a set of cataclysmic climate changes and natural disasters that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. But what triggered the meteoroid?
Lisa Randall, a particle physicist and bestselling author, tackles this question in her book, "Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe."
Randall theorizes that the meteoroid was a comet that was dislodged from its orbit when the solar system passed through a disc of dark matter.
If you're now wondering, "what's dark matter?", you're not alone. Dark matter is one of the great mysteries of modern science.
Dark matter acts like matter, Randall said, "but what distinguishes it is that light just goes right through it. ... I wouldn't call it dark — I would call it transparent."
"Billions of dark matter particles are going through us every second, but we don't know it because they're not interacting with us."
In 2015, Randall joined MPR News host Kerri Miller to talk about her dark matter research and other mysteries of the universe. Let it whet your appetite for the conversation with novelist Emily St. John Mandel coming this Friday, which explores time travel in a futuristic world.
Guest:
- Lisa Randall is a best-selling author and Harvard astrophysicist.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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When someone we deeply love dies, the grief can be overwhelming. But it also reveals a dichotomy in our brains.
Neuroscience has learned that we are wired to keep two streams of information running simultaneously about those we love. One stream deals with the day-to-day reality, the memories. The other stream encodes the relationship into the brain with an abiding belief that our loved one will always be there for us.
Until they are not. Then our brain struggles to reconcile the two conflicting maps. It’s why someone walking through grief might say, “Technically, I know they died last year. But part of me keeps waiting for them to walk in the door.”
Mary-Frances O’Connor studies what happens in the brain while we are grieving, as she directs the Grief, Loss and Social Stress Lab at the University of Arizona. Her new book, “The Grieving Brain,” details what brain imaging tells us about the process of saying a forever goodbye to those we love.
This week, she joined MPR News host Kerri Miller to talk about her book and the lessons she’s learned about the grieving brain.
Guest:
- Mary-Frances O’Connor is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Arizona and director of the Grief, Loss and Social Stress Lab, which investigates the effects of grief on the brain and the body. Her new book is "The Grieving Brain."
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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Max Porter's debut novel, "Grief is the Thing with Feathers," packs an emotional landslide into its slim 100 pages. The book features a grief-stricken father and his two young sons, unmoored by a great loss.
Then Crow comes to the door. Not just a crow, but Crow.
Sarcastic, wise and ripped from the pages of folklore, Crow tells the father that he will be there as long as he is needed.
The imaginary bird watches over the ravaged family, negotiating a path through their trauma.
Grief, Porter said, "is completely unique, and it's as unique as the human brain. There is not a template for thinking about it or dealing with it."
His observation echoes the scientific discoveries detailed in Mary-Frances O’Connor’s new book, “The Grieving Brain.” This Friday at 11 a.m., MPR News host Kerri Miller will talk with her about what grief does to the human brain.
As a preview, enjoy Miller’s 2016 conversation with Porter, as they discuss his novel, the ubiquitous of grief and the origins of Crow.
Guest:
- Max Porter is an author who is best known for his debut novel, “Grief is the Thing with Feathers.” He’s also the novelist behind “Lanny” and “The Death of Frances Bacon.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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It feels like the COVID-19 pandemic launched a thousand conspiracies. From microchips in the vaccines, to using bleach to treat the virus, to a shadowy cabal controlling it all, vast swaths of America fell prey to false thinking.
But it has also enflamed a conspiracy theory that has nothing to do with viruses and vaccines.
Journalist Kelly Weill has covered flat-Earthers for years. In her new book, “Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything,” she says the flat Earth movement is a microcosm of how and why conspiracy theories thrive and spread.
On this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, Weill and MPR News host Kerri Miller had a fascinating discussion about the culture of conspiracy, why flat-Earthers believe what they do, and why presenting the facts to true believers doesn’t usually change their minds.
Guest:
- Kelly Weill is a journalist at the “Daily Beast,” where she covers extremism, disinformation, and the internet. Her new book is “Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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Conspiracy theories are spreading faster than ever, thanks to social media. This Friday at 11 a.m., MPR News host Kerri Miller will talk about why people are susceptible to conspiracy theories with reporter Kelly Weill.
In the meantime, enjoy this conversation from our recent archives. Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe knows a thing or two about dealing with people who don’t believe climate change is real. She also knows the science about the planet’s warming temperatures is factual and often grim.
But Hayhoe insists all is not lost. In her book, “Saving Us: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World,” Hayhoe argues that collective action is still possible when it comes to climate change. She offers practical and thoughtful ideas on how to pull the debate from the quagmire of politics and division in this conversation from October 2021.
Guest:
- Katharine Hayhoe is a climate scientist and the chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy.
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When news happens along the U.S.-Mexico border, stories about the region are often filled with statistics about crime or the consequences of policies that fail to address migration from the south to the north.
But fiction often tells a more nuanced truth than straightforward reporting, and that’s what writer Mesha Maren does in her new novel, “Perpetual West.”
It examines the misinformation and misperceptions that endure about the borderlands, even as it pulls readers in with a mysterious disappearance. Newlyweds Alex and Elena have just moved to El Paso, Texas — a city that is economically, socially and politically entwined with its twin on the other side of the border, Ciudad Juarez. As Alex explores his roots in Mexico, he becomes deeply enamored with Mateo, a masked luchador who competes in the world of lucha libre, Mexican professional wrestling. And then Alex goes missing.
To write the book, Maren mined her own history of living in El Paso and discovering a more complicated story about the region than the one she initially believed. She also took professional wrestling lessons, in order to accurately convey the culture and rituals of lucha libre. (Spoiler alert: she wasn’t a natural.)
This week, MPR host Kerri Miller talked with Maren about how our identities can be bound up in a place, what Maren realized while teaching prison inmates to write and what she learned during those infamous wrestling lessons.
Guest:
- Mesha Maren is the author of two novels - “Sugar Run” and her latest, “Perpetual West.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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This Friday, you’ll hear MPR host Kerri Miller’s conversation with novelist Mesha Maren. Her new book, “Perpetual West,” is set along the U.S.-Mexico border and explores the art, activism and identity of a divided community.
It harkens back to a discussion Miller had in 2020 with Yaa Gyasi. Both Gyasi’s acclaimed debut novel, “Homecoming,” and her second release, “Transcendent Kingdom,” tackle themes of identity and culture in a new land.
Guest:
- Yaa Gyasi is a Ghanaian American novelist, author of “Homecoming” and “Transcendent Kingdom,” and recipient of the National Book Foundation's 2016 "5 Under 35" Award.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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A new historical fiction book follows an all-Black brigade as they fight in the Civil War. Join host Kerri Miller and author David Wright Faladé on Friday for their conversation about his book, what he learned from his historical research and how Etheridge’s complicated backstory previews race relations today.
Kerri Miller’s Friday conversation is about a novel set in the waning days of the Civil War. It tells the story of a group of slaves turned soldiers, who must grapple with resistance in a country that’s changing.
Scholar Eric Foner spent decades researching that era of American history. In his 2019 book, “The Second Founding,” he writes about how the war and the reconstruction that followed forever altered our constitution. Enjoy this 2019 discussion between Miller and Foner, as an appetizer to the coming show.
Use the audio player above to listen to the conversation.
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Wajahat Ali grew up in the Bay Area in the 1980s — a shy, chubby, awkward kid who was decidedly American but not always in the right way.
His journey to becoming a writer, public speaker and post-9/11 activist is the thread that weaves together his new book, “Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American.”
A few things you need to know about Ali: He’s bracingly honest, disarmingly funny and despite all that he and his family have gone through, he remains defiantly hopeful. He knows America loves the concept of diversity more than the reality. But he also saw people who hate his politics offer to become liver donors after his toddler daughter was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.
Don’t miss this week’s witty, wise and personal Big Books and Bold Ideas conversation between Ali and host Kerri Miller.
Guest:
- Wajahat Ali is a writer, columnist and self-proclaimed “robot who doesn’t cry.” His new book is “Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American.”
Use the audio player above to listen to the author interview.
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If we knew then what we know now, would we jump into the pool of matrimony quite so quickly? A new book takes a look at the joys and irritations of being with the same person for a long time. Host Kerri Miller talks to its author, advice columnist and essayist Heather Havrilesky
What happens to a marriage when two people are forced to live apart?
In Tayari Jones' 2018 novel, "An American Marriage," a relationship is set on edge when one of the characters is sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit. The novel is filled with conflict around questions of memory, loyalty, race, fatherhood, ambition and justice.
We’re revisiting MPR News host Kerri Miller’s conversation with Jones from February 2018.
Dina Nayeri fled the Iran revolution with her family when she was 8. We’re revisiting Nayeri’s 2019 book, "The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You,” and the conversation host Kerri Miller had with her about it in February 2020.
Marlon James once described his 2019 novel “Black Leopard, Red Wolf” as an African “Game of Thrones” — grimdark fantasy fiction that was widely praised. This week, he released the second installment in his “Dark Sky” trilogy, “Moon Witch, Spider King,” and if anything, it’s getting even more acclaim.
Like its predecessor, it’s set in a harsh imaginary region littered with competing city-states. There are monsters, witches, sorcerers, scheming leaders whose lives intertwine and twist into tightly wound stories that are often impossible to parse. There’s explicit action, ruthlessness, violence and sex. This time, the protagonist is Sogolon, the Moon Witch, with many lives and a brutal backstory who wields her power as a weapon of revenge.
James tells host Kerri Miller that the books of his trilogy do not have to be read in order, since each tell similar stories, only from different and competing viewpoints. “Who’s telling the truth?” he says. “Does it matter?”
In a warm and fascinating conversation, James and Miller talk about how witches are often just women with power, how James learned to write women realistically and what the finale of his trilogy will, or won’t, do.
Guest:
- Marlon James is an award-winning author. His latest novel is “Moon Witch, Spider King.”
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Novelist Marlon James is out with the second novel in his fantastical trilogy. It’s called “Moon Witch, Spider King,” and host Kerri Miller will talk to him about it at noon Friday as part of Big Books and Bold Ideas.
In the meantime, we thought you might be intrigued to listen to their 2019 conversation at the Fitzgerald Theater.
They talked about “Black Leopard, Red Wolf,” and he described what it meant to set the series in pre-colonial Africa, immerse himself in African lore and mythology, and draw from his own childhood in Jamaica.
Use the audio player above to listen to the conversation.
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Like the protagonist of his new, breakaway novel, author Brendan Slocumb is a Black violinist. He knows the monotony of daily practice punctuated by the occasional thrill of performance. He’s experienced the racism that’s often inherent in the classical world. But unlike Ray McMillian, the lead character of “The Violin Conspiracy,” Slocumb does not own a Stradivarius.
The fact that McMillian’s passed-down, family fiddle turns out to be a priceless Stradivarius is at the center of Slocumb’s debut novel. The discovery catapults McMillian into superstardom in the world of classical music. Then, just before he goes to the Tchaikovsky Competition, the Olympics of classical music, the Stradivarius is stolen. Who took it? Will he get it back?
Slocumb talked to host Kerri Miller guest for this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas show.
Guest:
- Brendan Slocumb is a musician, music educator, guest conductor and first-time novelist. His new book is “The Violin Conspiracy.”
Use the audio player above to listen to the conversation.
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After her husband of 25 years left her, Florence Williams channeled her pain into a new book that looks at how broken hearts affect us, body and soul.
The adage, “absolute power corrupts absolutely,” feels relevant today. Authoritarian leaders are on the rise worldwide. Democracy is on the decline, even here in the United States. Does power twist otherwise good people? Or will bad people always take power by the reigns?
That is the question at the heart of former Minnesotan and political scientist Brian Klaas’ new book. In “Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us,” he explores why we have so many awful leaders, from political dictators to corporate bosses to the local neighborhood association bully.
He joined host Kerri Miller for another conversation featuring Big Books and Bold Ideas. This week, she and Klaas discuss why power changes people and if there’s anything that can be done to ensure that leaders don’t abuse their clout.
Guest:
- Brian Klaas is an associate professor in global politics at University College London and a columnist for The Washington Post. His latest book is “Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us.”
Steamboat Willie might be the first thing that springs to mind when you think of early cartoons. But the golden age of animation was far from simple and saccharine. Join Kerri Miller for a conversation about the history of animation.
It took many decades after Mahmood Mattan’s execution at Cardiff Prison in Wales for his name to be cleared over a killing he did not commit.
Booker Prize finalist Nadifa Mohamed remembers seeing his picture in the newspaper, and she later learned that Mattan, a young Somali sailor, knew her father.
Mattan’s story — and the life he led before his hanging — is at the center of Mohamed’s novel, “The Fortune Men.”
Host Kerri Miller talked with Mohamed about her historical novel, her family’s history and about the miscarriage of justice during this latest Big Books and Big Ideas show.
Guest:
Nadifa Mohamed’s new book is “The Fortune Men.” She is also the author “Black Mamba Boy” and “The Orchard of Lost Souls.”
When celebrated ESPN writer Ivan Maisel’s son died by suicide in 2015, he channeled his grief into words. His deeply personal and moving book, “I Keep Trying to Catch His Eye: A Memoir of Loss, Grief and Love,” is a testament both to a father’s love and to the human soul’s ability to grieve and remember and still not lose hope.
Host Kerri Miller talked with Maisel for her weekly Big Books and Big Ideas conversation.
If you’re struggling or have a loved one who is struggling, a reminder that help is available through the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255.
Guest:
- Ivan Maisel is an author and speaker. His new book is “I Keep Trying to Catch His Eye.”
When Barbara F. Walter started researching her book, “How Civil Wars Start, and How to Stop Them,” in 2018, many wondered if it was an “exercise in fear-mongering.” The idea that the U.S. could find itself mired in a second civil war seemed incredulous, even irresponsible.
In 2021, it doesn’t feel as implausible.
Walter’s book examines how civil wars start and what they have in common. “Civil wars ignite and escalate in ways that are predictable; they follow a script,” Walter writes in her introduction
Walter joined host Kerri Miller to talk about the risk factors for a country imploding and why she is concerned about America right now.
Guest:
- Barbara F. Walter is a professor of international relations at the University of California-San Diego and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
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For our final Big Books and Bold Ideas show of the year, host Kerri Miller talks with three writers who also own bookstores and invites them to share the titles from 2021 they loved and were most eager to put in readers’ hands.
Last week, I brought you three memoirs from 2021 that I think should top your 2022 reading pile.
Today features three biographies not to be missed. They include Walter Isaacson’s “Codebreaker," since I can't resist any story about a great scientist.
The story unfolds first in Hawaii, where Jennifer Doudna is a nature-loving introvert who falls in love with a book about DNA. Competitive and brilliant, Doudna ends up at the University of California, where she joins with a group of international researchers who see the potential and the methods for gene editing. That research, led in part by Doudna, will become CRISPR, a technique that is revolutionizing genetic medicine. Doudna shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry with French scientist Emmanuelle Charpentier in 2020.
My second not-to-be-missed biography of 2021 is Andrea Elliott’s deeply reported, beautifully written “Invisible Child.” I read the book after I heard Elliott, who is a New York Times investigative reporter, on a podcast. To tell the story of 11-year-old Dasani, Elliott spent time in a homeless shelter with her family, followed her to school and watched as social safety nets failed her repeatedly. She is learning what it means to be poor in a city of great riches.
And my third biography is Kati Marton’s “The Chancellor.” Full disclosure: This book is on the top of my to-be-read list, but I can’t wait to dive in. Angela Merkel's life as a scientist, a student of history and an avid reader is as intriguing as her four terms as German chancellor, where she essentially ran Europe before stepping down officially this week.
- Add to your to-be-read pile Buy these books here
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Ann Patchett is out with a new collection of essays. Join Kerri Miller for a wide-ranging conversation with Patchett about being present, the gift of friendship, and how the pandemic can reveal what matters most.
Marine Corps veteran Phil Klay won the National Book Award in 2014 for his first book, “Redeployment,” a collective of stories that emerged from his service in the Iraq War.
His much-anticipated second release came out in October, and once again, he uses his military experience to inform the story. “Missionaries” is a novel that follows the lives of four characters leading up to a pivotal year in Columbia, and uses that backdrop to examine the system of counterterrorism warfare the United States has developed and exported worldwide.
Listen to host Kerri Miller talk to Klay about his book, about how wars end and the distortion of patriotism.
On this week’s show about big books and bold ideas — what a lawyer who investigates sex crimes says about the state of #MeToo and writing a novel about his experience.
Kate Bowler is back with another bestseller. In her new book, “No Cure for Being Human,” she asks: How do you move forward with a life you didn’t choose? Bowler talks with host Kerri Miller about her book, her life today and how hope is better than anticipation.
What does it mean to leave a legacy if you can’t have kids?
That’s the core question N. West Moss wrestles with in her new memoir, “Flesh & Blood.” Honest, wise and filled with moments of whimsy, Moss allows everything from good cocktails to the natural world — including a praying mantis in her sunroom she names Claude — to teach her how to heal.
Host Kerri Miller talked with Moss about the book and about Moss’ infertility journey.
Guest:
- N. West Moss is the author of the new book “Flesh & Blood: Reflections on Infertility, Family and Creating a Bountiful Life.”
In Louise Erdrich’s new novel, “The Sentence,” a bookseller with a fervent love of reading reads a page in a book that a ghost has been reading. She discovers that one of the sentences on that page is so dangerous that she suspects it changes according to the reader’s ability to decipher it.
The novel swirls in a kaleidoscope of ghosts and grief, joy and intimacy — all propelled by the necessity of books.
Guest:
Louise Erdrich is the author of “The Night Watchman,” winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Her latest novel, “The Sentence,” was released Nov. 9. She is also the owner of Birchbark Books, an independent bookstore in Minneapolis.
The New York Times bestselling author of “This Tender Land” joined host Kerri Miller at the Fitzgerald Theater for the finale of this season’s Talking Volumes.
There’s more to Daniel Boone than the stereotype of an explorer wearing deerskin and a raccoon hat.
On her Friday book show, MPR News host Kerri Miller sorted fact from fiction with the help of Matthew Pearl. “The Taking of Jemima Boone: Colonial Settlers, Tribal Nations, and the Kidnap That Shaped America” is Pearl’s latest book and his first nonfiction work. In it, he describes how Boone thought he could live peacefully in Kentucky with the Native Americans whose land he’s stolen — until his daughter, Jemima, was kidnapped by them.
But despite that, Boone’s relationship with the region’s tribes was always as admiring as it was adversarial.
Guest:
- Matthew Pearl, author of “The Taking of Jemima Boone: Colonial Settlers, Tribal Nations, and the Kidnap That Shaped America”
Use the audio player above to listen to their conversation.
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Host Kerri Miller’s third Talking Volumes event of the season took place on Wednesday, Oct. 13, with Amor Towles, whose latest book is “The Lincoln Highway.”
Dealing with climate change can feel overwhelming. Efforts to address it can feel futile.
But climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe insists all is not lost. In this week’s conversation about big books and bold ideas, MPR News host Kerri Miller talks with Hayhoe about her new book, “Saving Us: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World.”
Hayhoe argues that collective action is still possible when it comes to climate change, and she offers practical and thoughtful ideas on how to pull the debate from the quagmire of politics and division.
Guest:
- Katharine Hayhoe is a climate scientist and the chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or RSS.
Host Kerri Miller’s second Talking Volumes event of the season took place on Thursday, Sept. 30, with Kate DiCamillo, whose latest book is “The Beatryce Prophecy.”
In his new novel, award-winning author Richard Powers probes an essential question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful, imperiled planet?
Called an “ecological parable,” Powers’ latest book, “Bewilderment,” tells the story of a widowed astrobiologist as he struggles to raise his precocious son alone, in the midst of our all-too-real climate crisis.
“We really are in need of a change in cultural consciousness,” Powers told MPR News host Kerri Miller. “Or we need a new way of thinking about ourselves, on the Earth. Not as something separate from the nonhuman, but as an integrated neighbor, situated in a real place, not one that we're trying to master and dominate.”
Guest:
- Richard Powers is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist. His latest book is “Bewilderment.”
Use the audio player above to listen to their conversation.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts , or RSS.
Losing a parent at a young age shapes a person. In her debut memoir, “Seeing Ghosts,” Kat Chow pours her grief onto the page and examines how the loss of her mother when she was only 13 both marked her and made her into who she is today.
She also looks back at past generations of her family to examine how their journey from China and Hong Kong to Cuba and America both marked and made them.
Her book asks what it means to reclaim and tell your family story. Is it a form of exorcism? Or is it a way to hold on to those we loved and lost?
Listen to Kerri Miller’s fascinating conversation about big books and bold ideas, as she talks with Chow about her new book and family identity.
Host Kerri Miller kicks off the fall season of Talking Volumes with a conversation with novelist Lauren Groff, whose latest book is “Matrix.”
When she was still in training, Dr. Leana Wen led a student organization whose motto was, “It takes more than medical school to make a physician.” It also takes more than “M.D.” after your name to be the kind of courageous, unflagging, ethical public health leader that this country needs.
Dr. Wen’s memoir, "Lifelines: A Doctor's Journey in the Fight for Public Health,” shows why. She has lived the advice from a mentor and close friend: “Turn your pain into passion, your passion into purpose.”
Dr. Wen joined host Kerri Miller for a conversation about her memoir and how her personal story has shaped the public health leader she has become.
Guest:
- Dr. Leana Wen is an emergency room doctor and professor of public health at George Washington University and a former health commissioner for the city of Baltimore.
As the delta variant surged last month, more Americans got vaccinated against COVID-19. But one in four Minnesota adults is still unvaccinated against the virus, and their reasons for turning down the shots are varied and personal.
Guest host Catharine Richert talked with a family doctor and a family therapist about what’s behind vaccine hesitancy and how to have conversations with people who are vaccine hesitant. She also spoke with a community organizer about the reasons why he hasn’t gotten a vaccine shot.
Guests:
- Dr. Eduardo Medina is a family physician at HealthPartners Park Nicollet Clinic in Minneapolis.
- Bill Doherty is a family therapist and professor of family social science at the University of Minnesota. He’s co-founder of Braver Angels, an organization that brings together reds and blues to try to depolarize America.
- Tommy McBrayer Jr. is a community organizer in south Minneapolis and vaccine hesitant.
Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.
During the pandemic, Minnesota’s theater companies lived their industry’s credo: The show must go on. Some worked outdoors, others offered livestreams and virtual performances and some went deep with pandemic-specific programming.
Now that Broadway has reopened and many local venues are returning with masks and social distancing, theater companies are applying what they learned during the quarantine to their futures.
Guest host Euan Kerr checked in with Minnesota theater directors on life during the pandemic and returning to the stage in all its forms.
Guests:
- Joseph Haj is the artistic director of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis
- Kevin West is general manager, artistic associate and director of the Capri After School Theater in Minneapolis
- Lily Tung Crystal is the artistic director of Theater Mu in St. Paul
Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
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As a Black girl adopted by Scottish communists, growing up in Glasgow in the 1970s, poet Jackie Kay developed a passion for Bessie Smith. Her father introduced her to the blues, and Bessie Smith was the wild spirit who helped her find her true self. She tells the story in her new book, “Bessie Smith, A Poet’s Biography of a Blues Legend.”
Writer Jason Mott grew up Black in the American south. When he went on book tour for “The Returned,” it was so odd and hilarious that he wrote about it for his next novel. But when the news filled up with the chaos and violence of Black men being killed by the police, he changed that story. His new book, “Hell of a Book,” is part comedy, part tragedy, all truth about America.
Both authors joined guest host Euan Kerr to talk about their new work, reading, writing and keeping on.
Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
It has been a challenging year and a half for Gov. Tim Walz. He joined host Mike Mulcahy to talk about governing during a pandemic, social upheaval and climate change.
Plus, in the second half of the hour: fires and drought. What’s the current situation with the Greenwood Fire and other Minnesota wildfires, and how might things change this weekend? MPR News reporters Dan Gunderson and Dan Kraker give an update on the state of Minnesota’s landscape.
Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
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Electric cars are still rare in Minnesota — representing less than one percent of all cars sold each year. But we’ll be seeing more of them soon.
Gov. Tim Walz signed Minnesota rules that will force manufacturers to increase the number of electric cars for sale in the state and President Joe Biden has signed an executive order that calls for half of all passenger vehicles sold in 2030 to have zero emissions. The push for electric vehicles is designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions and address global warming.
MPR guest host Mike Mulcahy talks about what this means for consumers with Rolf Nordstrom, president and CEO of the Great Plains Institute; Lisa Thurstin, coordinator for the Minnesota Clean Cities coalition, which is based out of the American Lung Association; and Scott Lambert, president of the Minnesota Auto Dealers Association.
Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
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According to the Uniform Crime Report released last month by the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the number of reported violent crimes in Minnesota last year went up by 17 percent over the previous year.
Much of those numbers are driven by rising crime in larger cities. But some suburban communities are also experiencing upticks in certain kinds of crime.
Recently the police chiefs of Crystal, Maple Grove, Plymouth, and New Hope told FOX-9 TV that this year, they’re seeing a level of violence they haven’t seen before.
Guest host Brandt Williams talked with two criminologists and a public policy expert about how crime trends are impacting Minnesota's smaller towns and communities.
Guests:
- Ralph Weisheit is a distinguished professor of criminal justice at Illinois State University
- Walter DeKeseredy is director of the Research Center on Violence and a professor of sociology at West Virginia University
- Julie Tesch is president & CEO of the Center for Rural Policy & Development
Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.
What is your summer song for 2021? What does it mean to you?
Every summer has a song that defines it — the song that seems inescapable, that’s always playing in the background of your summer social gatherings, that perfectly sums up your mood.
Guest host Brandt Williams talked with two music journalists about what makes the perfect summer song and their picks for 2021’s song of the summer. And we heard from listeners about their personal songs of the summer.
Guests:
- Jim McGuinn is the program director for The Current
- Charlie Harding is a songwriter and host of the Vulture podcast Switched on Pop
Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
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Earlier this month, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that “a hotter future is essentially locked in.” The news of the changing climate and its effects can have psychological impacts, which experts call “climate anxiety.”
According to recent studies, Millennials and members of Generation Z think and worry more about climate change than people in older generations.
Brandt Williams talks to a professor of psychology who focuses on how climate change affects our mental health, and to two young people who are working towards a better outcome for the planet.
Guests:
- Susan Claytonis a professor of psychology at the College of Wooster. She studies the psychological impact of climate change.
- Niki Narasimhan is a 17-year-old incoming senior at Wayzata High School and high school leader with Youth Environmental Activists Minnesota.
- Sophia Curran-Moore is a 17-year-old incoming senior at St Louis Park High School and a high school leader with Youth Environmental Activists Minnesota.
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What are the possible solutions for the lack of affordable housing? Friday at 9 a.m., host Chris Farrell will talk with an academic who studies housing policy and a real estate agent dealing with the crisis on the ground.
The labor market is tight, with many employers desperate for workers. But there are signs it’s starting to stabilize.
Job openings rose to a new record high in June, but hiring also increased. That could be a sign that supply pressures are beginning to ease. July also saw a big jump in hiring.
But the surging delta variant is raising concerns about whether the momentum can continue.
What’s next for the economy? Guest host Chris Farrell got the scoop straight from Neel Kashkari, who leads the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis. They talked about the labor market, the potential for inflation and how the rest of 2021 might look for the Ninth District.
Guest:
- Neel Kashkari is the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.
Minnesota farmers have been hit hard by the summer’s hot, dry conditions. Seventy-eight percent of the state is currently experiencing extreme drought conditions, and small farmers are weathering the drought with virtually no safety net.
Earlier this month, Minnesota received $17.5 million in federal aid to mitigate the impact of climate change. Gov. Tim Walz says some of that will go to support farmers and ranchers.
Small farmers are pushing for more streamlined ways to get a piece of that pie. Many aid programs for farmers are targeted to large, traditional crop and livestock farms. But there’s less infrastructure to support small farmers.
Guest host Chris Farrell talked with Minnesota’s Department of Agriculture Commissioner and small farmers about the impact of the drought and the future of small farming in Minnesota.
Guests:
- Thom Petersen is the Minnesota Department of Agriculture Commissioner
- Kathy Zeman is the executive director of the Minnesota Farmers’ Market Association and the owner of Simple Harvest Farm Organics
- Janssen Hang is the executive director and co-founder of the Hmong American Farmers Association
Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.
The #FreeBritney movement has highlighted the immense power that court-ordered guardians wield over their wards and raised alarms about the potential for abuse. Guest host Chris Farrell will examine guardianships and conservatorships, and discuss what steps can be taken to reduce the risk of exploitation.
Guests:
- Pamela Teaster is a professor of human development and family science at Virginia Tech and director of the Virginia Tech Center for Gerontology.
- Marit Peterson is associate director of the Minnesota Elder Justice Center.
Universal basic income and many of its derivatives have gained traction over the last few years. Guest host Chris Farrell will talk with two experts about the benefits of these programs, challenges, and lessons learned.
Guests:
- Amy B. Castro, assistant professor of social policy and practice and the co-founder and director of the Center for Guaranteed Income Research at the University of Pennsylvania.
- Darrick Hamilton is the Henry Cohen Professor of Economics and Urban Policy and the founding director of the Institute for the Study of Race, Stratification and Political Economy at The New School.
The highly contagious delta variant is spreading across the country, leading to a surge in COVID-19 cases.
The latest surge in cases may mean that many people are once again making decisions about social gatherings, where to wear masks and whether to travel.
Guest host Nina Moini spoke with public health officials about how to make these decisions using the latest guidance and explored how it’s affecting our mental health with a psychologist.
Guests:
- Dr. Nipunie Rajapakseis a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Mayo Clinic Children’s Center
- Dr. Cecília Tomoriis the director of global public health and community health at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing
- Kathleen Vohs is a marketing professor at Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota
Use the audio above to listen to the conversation.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.
Speeding and reckless driving have skyrocketed during the pandemic. Public safety officials say that speed is the biggest factor in deadly crashes in Minnesota.
Guest host Nina Moini talks about what’s behind the increase in reckless driving and fatal crashes and what we can do about it
Guests:
- Nichole Morris is the director of the HumanFIRST Research Lab. She is also a researcher at UMN's Center for Transportation Studies.
- Ash Narayanan is the executive director of Our Streets Minneapolis.
- Ethan Fawley is the Vision Zero Program Coordinator for the City of Minneapolis.
The quiet lakes of the Boundary Water Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota have been bustling with visitors, even as fires, development and international relations threaten the fragile area.
On Wednesday, guest host Dan Kraker talked with Ann Schaller of the U.S. Forest Service, David Seaton of Hungry Jack Outfitters and Matt Poppleton of the YMCA’s Camp Widjiwagan about how we can protect its isolated beauty as it’s used by more and more people.
Roughly 50 million acres of land in the United States is considered reservation land — held by the government in trust for Native tribes. That’s about 2 percent of the country, but that’s a lot less than the acreage once set aside for tribes in the late 19th century through treaties.
Now tribes across the country are trying to reclaim some of those millions of lost acres within their reservation boundaries.
Guest host Dan Kraker talked about it with Cris Stainbrook of the Indian Land Tenure Foundation, former Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa chair Karen Diver and Benjamin Benoit of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe.
Where will people go when home becomes unpleasant or unbearable because of climate change?
One answer is … maybe Minnesota. In fact, climate migration to the state is already happening.
MPR News guest host and Duluth correspondent Dan Kraker talked with Jamie Alexander of Drawdown Labs at Project Drawdown and Abrahm Lustgarten, a senior environmental reporter for ProPublica.
Is there a word or phrase that you grew up with, something you felt was unique to your family? Maybe it was an expression your parents or grandparents used to show affection or describe frustration, only to eventually discover it had foreign origins? Or perhaps you still wonder where it came from?
Borrowed words have flooded most languages, including English.
Anatoly Liberman, etymologist and professor of languages at the University of Minnesota, joined MPR News host Kerri Miller to talk about the origin of words or phrases that have been passed down over generations.
Emily Oster is driven by data. An economics professor who often applies a risk-analysis lens to things like parenting, she wants to give you the numbers and let you decide.
Her new book, “The Family Firm,” picks up were “Cribsheet” left off. It equips parents to make decisions for their elementary kids using data and looking at evidence. Topics she tackles include schooling, nutrition, discipline and screen time.
Oster joined host Kerri Miller to talk about her book, her approach to parenting and how to use evidence to make decisions.
The COVID-19 delta variant is leading a new surge of infections nationwide leaving families and school officials to face a complicated reopening of classrooms. Host Kerri Miller was joined by two pediatric specialists to discuss mask and vaccine mandates, what the delta variant means for children and the state of vaccines for children under 12.
Guests:
Dr. Madeleine Gagnon is the associate medical director of pediatrics at Gillette Children’s Specialty Healthcare in St. Paul.
Dr. Paul Offit is a pediatrician and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia.
A rise in homicides and other violent crimes in 2020 and 2021 have made headlines in major American cities across the country, but what or who is to blame is up for debate.
Guests:
- Jeff Asher, data analyst and co-founder of AH Datalytics.
- Roseanna Ander is the founding executive director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab and Education Lab.
The CDC issued revised masking guidelines Tuesday after a recent study based on a new cluster of COVID-19 cases among fully vaccinated people shows that the delta variant is more contagious than previously thought. Host Kerri will get us the latest on the delta-driven surge in new infections and help sort through what we know and what we don’t.
The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack held its first hearing on Tuesday. Host Kerri Miller will talk about Tuesday’s emotional testimony, what we learned, and what’s ahead for the investigation.
Guests:
- Seamus Hughes is the deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University.
- Paul Waldman is an opinion columnist for the Plum Line blog at The Washington Post and senior writer at The American Prospect.
It could be a rough fall for Fido.
With animal owners working and often schooling at home during the pandemic, many pets have gotten used to having their humans around all the time. Now that offices and schools are reopening, all those pandemic pups might be in for a rough transition.
So what should you do to get your pets ready for your absence? Host Kerri Miller got tips Thursday morning when she talks to two dog lovers and canine behaviorists.
Guests:
- Michelle Stern is a professional dog trainer and the founder of Pooch Parenting.
- Brian Hare is a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University. His book, “The Genius of Dogs,” is a New York Times bestseller.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
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When Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker asked to speak to former President Donald Trump about his last year in office, he agreed, surprising them all. He hosted them for a lavish dinner at Mar-A-Lago, his hotel and residence in Palm Beach, Fla., just 10 weeks after his term ended. During their two-and-a-half-hour conversation, Trump was fixed on “The Big Lie” that he won the 2020 election. He also said he believes he’s America’s greatest president, that “not even George Washington” could beat him.
The braggadocio is not unexpected from Trump, and it marks Leonnig and Rucker’s new book, “I Alone Can Fix It,” a follow-up to their Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “A Very Stable Genius.” Their latest release details the final 12 months of the Trump presidency.
It’s packed with revelations about the former president’s mishandling of the pandemic (he wouldn’t do anything differently) to the racial justice protests after George Floyd’s murder (he wishes he’d called out the military). But the stories grabbing the most headlines are those that describe Trump’s obsession with self over country, with the health of his poll numbers above all.
Wednesday morning, host Kerri Miller talked to Leonnig about the book, how she and Rucker managed to research it, and how she believes history will look back at the tumultuous year of 2020.
Guest:
- Carol Leonnig is a reporter for the Washington Post and the co-author of the newly released “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS
Businesses are preparing to call workers back to the office, and universities are ready to welcome students back to campus — in the midst of a resurgent wave of COVID-19 infections.
Rochelle Walensky, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says the pandemic is now a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” More than 99 percent of deaths from COVID-19 this month can be traced back to people who hadn’t gotten immunized against the disease.
Because of that, some corporations — most notably, hospitals — are starting to require the COVID-19 vaccine for its workforce. A coalition of health care organizations last week called on all medical facilities in the U.S. to demand vaccinations for health care personnel. A new report found that about 1 in 4 people who work directly with patients in hospitals are not vaccinated.
Universities are also entering the fray, with some mandating that students returning to campus get vaccinated or stay home.
Leading infectious disease experts applaud the moves. Dr. Anthony Fauci said that while a nationwide vaccine mandate is unlikely, he would like to see more localized attempts to require the vaccine. He also called on the Food and Drug Administration to give final authorization to the COVID-19 vaccines.
That’s a step some organizations, like the military, say they are waiting for before they make a final decision about requiring the vaccines.
Is this the right idea, at the right time? Or is requiring vaccines a step too far? Monday morning, host Kerri Miller talked about the pros and cons of vaccine mandates with two experts — including Minnesota’s leading infectious disease expert and a doctor who co-authored the recommendation that health care workers be required to get vaccinated.
Guests:
- Dr. Hilary M. Babcock is an infectious disease expert at Washington University School of Medicine who specializes in the prevention of infection transmission in health care settings.
- Mike Osterholm is an epidemiologist and the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS
Shocking fact: The average American home has more than 300,000 items in it. And that was before the pandemic, when many of us used Amazon as retail therapy.
While Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus certainly understand the impulse, they encourage a different path. When they were kids growing up in poverty in Ohio, they equated stuff with success. But as they got older and were able to acquire more, they discovered that material goods didn’t grow their happiness.
That’s when The Minimalists was born. Both Millburn and Nicodemus embarked on a journey to get rid of clutter. To their surprise, they found that decluttering their space led to a decluttering of their minds — and that gave them the mental and emotional space to reorder their relationships.
Since that time, they’ve launched a website, a podcast, two Netflix documentaries (“Minimalism” and “Less is Now”) and now a book that details their passion for finding more in less.
Friday, they talked with host Kerri Miller about their written blueprint, “Love People, Use Things” and share lessons learned.
Guests:
- Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus are lifelong friends, authors and speakers. Together, they are The Minimalists. Their new book is “Love People, Use Things: Because the Opposite Never Works.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.
Before George Floyd was killed, before there was a national reckoning on race, there was The Race Card Project.
It started in 2010, when journalist Michele Norris was on a book tour, promoting her deeply personal memoir “The Grace of Silence.” Norris began asking people who would show up at her events to think of the word “race,” and then write down just six words to capture their most honest and intimate expressions.
What she heard astounded her.
“Native Americans, America’s invisible invisible invisible.”
“With kids, I’m Dad. Alone … thug.
“I’m ashamed for my ancestors’ race.”
“I am not an exotic creature.”
The simple question quickly took on a life of its own. Norris began by leaving blank postcards in cities she visited. Eventually, the project became a website where anyone could submit their stories.
Related link: The Race Card Project: Six Word Essays
At this point, Norris has now received more than half a million answers to her question, from all 50 states and around a hundred countries and territories.
“I had no idea there were so many people who were so eager to talk about race and identity that they would share their thoughts with a stranger, knowing that their stories could be posted on a website for anyone to see,” she wrote.
Thursday, Norris joined host Kerri Miller to talk about what she’s learned about America and the fluid notion of identity from The Race Card Project.
Guest:
- Michele Norris is an award-winning journalist and the founder of The Race Card Project.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.
We’re going backward.
Instead of climbing out of the pit of the pandemic, the U.S. is seeing a new surge. The highly contagious COVID-19 delta variant is causing new infections, new hospitalizations and new deaths — almost exclusively among the unvaccinated.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said last week that cases are up more than 70 percent from the previous week. Deaths, a lagging indicator, have increased 26 percent. In almost every instance, it’s the unvaccinated getting sick and dying from the virus.
The good news? Vaccines work. The bad news? The U.S. needs more people to get vaccinated. And trying to convince the remaining hesitant will not be a fast or easy job.
What does this mean for breakthrough infections? Will cases continue to rise, and will mask mandates go back into place, as they already have in Los Angeles County? And what about kids — especially those 12 and under who aren’t yet eligible to be vaccinated? Do they face another year of wearing masks in the classroom? Kerri Miller tackled those topics and more Wednesday morning with two doctors who are on the front lines of pandemic research.
Guests:
- Dr. Monica Gandhi is a professor of medicine and associate division chief of the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases and Global Medicine at UCSF/San Francisco General Hospital.
- Dr. Tina Tan is a professor of pediatrics at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University and an attending physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS
While most Americans have access to some kind of retirement savings, about twenty-five percent of workers have nothing saved at all. Meanwhile, America’s top earners are raking in millions, even billions, from their retirement accounts with very little tax debt.
Guests:
- Justin Elliott is an investigative reporter at ProPublica.
- Elena Spatoulas Patel is an assistant professor of finance at University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business.
It’s a headline that could be ripped from the past: Shocking poll finds many Americans now want to seceded from the United States.
But it’s based on a study that came out last week. It found that 66 percent of Republicans in the South would like to secede and form their own country. Not to be outdone, 47 percent of Democrats in the West feel the same.
Those numbers are the highest they’ve been in years and reflect the polarization of our moment, but they aren’t necessarily a new trend. Residents of more rural areas have tried to leave states dominated by large, urban centers. Californians have considered splitting the state numerous times. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan aimed to become the state of Superior. Meanwhile, regions like the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are fighting to gain statehood in the first place.
Some political commentators say splitting big states would be a good thing. Others point to the fact thatit’s all but impossible to achieve. Is this an idea whose time has finally come? On Monday, host Kerri Miller investigated the possibility of the splitting states.
Guests:
- Richard Kreitner is a writer for The Nation. In 2020, he published “Break It Up: Secession, Division and the Secret History of America’s Imperfect Union.”
- Eric McDaniel is an associate professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS
Why do we sweat? The science behind this primal bodily function is complicated, fascinating and often just plain weird.
In her delightful new book, “The Joy of Sweat,” science journalist Sarah Everts makes the case that it’s time our species finds “serenity instead of shame” in perspiration.
She traveled the world in pursuit of sweat’s history and sociological value — from saunas in Scandinavia to dating events in Russia where potential partners sniff each other’s sweat to determine attraction.
What she found is that sweat is more than our body trying to stay cool. Trace amounts of drugs and disease can appear in our sweat. Perspiration can reveal what we eat. Even something as basic as our fingerprints are really just “sweat prints.”
For more sticky science, host Kerri Miller talks to Everts about the fascinating world of sweat.
Guest:
- Sarah Everts is a science journalist and the author of the new book "The Joy of Sweat: The Strange Science of Perspiration."
Most churches, mosques and synagogues are meeting in person again. But faith leaders see signs that spiritual communities will not return to pre-pandemic norms.
Physical church attendance, already in decline for decades, has fallen even more. Even after reopening, the average church reports a 36 percent drop in attendance levels.
Generational differences are also coming into stark contrast. Boomers are the only generation who say they want to return to physical worship. For Generation X, millennials and Generation Z, less than half want to return to weekly gatherings, preferring a hybrid approach.
But not all faith leaders are dismayed at the changes, choosing instead to see this as an opportunity to rethink how and why faith communities gather. So what should change? And why?
Thursday morning, host Kerri Miller spoke with two leaders who are in charge of reimagining congregations in a post-pandemic world.
Guests:
- Mikka McCracken is the executive director of innovation for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
- Rabbi Esther Lederman is the Union for Reform Judaism’s director of congregational innovation.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS
Thousands of people across the U.S. have reported a range of symptoms months after recovering from COVID-19. For many long-COVID patients, an accurate diagnosis can be a difficult task and getting access to quality care is often another hurdle in the process to get treated. Guest host Catharine Richert spoke with an infectious disease researcher and the leader of a COVID-19 rehabilitation program about what we know so far about the disease’s long-term effects and what can be done to extend health care access to the most vulnerable.
Guests:
- Dr. Hana Akselrod is an assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at George Washington University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C.
- Dr. Greg Van is a preventive, occupational and aerospace medicine specialist who leads the Covid Activities Rehabilitation Program at Mayo Clinic.
The delta variant is now the dominant COVID-19 strain in the U.S.
Many states in the South, such as Missouri, are dealing with a surge of hospitalizations because of the highly contagious variant. They also have some of the lowest vaccination rates in the country.
Minnesota, where 67.4 percent of those 16 and up have received at least one dose of the vaccine, has dodged a delta variant wave so far. But the state Department of Health says renewed diligence is needed and the surge we’re seeing elsewhere should prompt any unvaccinated individuals to get the vaccine.
Meanwhile, the CDC issuednew guidance on kids returning to school this fall, and national health officials are talking with vaccine manufacturers about a possible booster.
Tuesday, guest host Catharine Richert talked about all that and more with Minnesota’s leading health experts.
Guests:
- Jan Malcolm is the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Health.
- Kris Ehresmann is the director of the Minnesota Department of Health’s Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Prevention and Control Division.
Both the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines were built using new mRNA research, to astounding success. What’s the next big thing mRNA science could tackle?
Guests:
- Justin Richner is an assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Illinois Chicago College of Medicine.
- David Bentley is the co-director of the RNA Bioscience Initiative at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
Crowds of people will watch movies on a big screen this summer. But the pandemic fundamentally changed the industry. How will movie theaters, and the movie-going public, adapt?
Guests:
- Alissa Wilkinson is the film critic and culture reporter at Vox.
- Monica Castillo is the arts and culture reporter for Colorado Public Radio.
Ashley C. Ford’s debut memoir, “Somebody’s Daughter,” takes readers on an emotional journey of her life growing up as a young Black girl in Indiana with a single mother, an absent father and a heavy family secret.
Guest:
- Ashley C. Ford is a writer, host and educator who lives in Indianapolis with her husband and their chocolate lab Astro Renegade Ford-Stacy. “Somebody’s Daughter” is her debut memoir.
Ranked-choice voting is a type of voting that allows voters to choose multiple candidates, instead of just one, and rank them by preference — and it’s growing in popularity. Maine started using ranked-choice in federal elections in 2018, and Alaska will begin doing the same next year. More than 50 cities, including Minneapolis, also use it.
Proponents say it helps ensure winners have the approval of a majority of voters, streamlines the election process, and helps balance the ideological extremists in both parties. Critics say it’s too complicated and will alienate voters.
In this episode, MPR News host Kerri Miller heard both sides. Does ranked-choice voting enhance or harm the democratic process?
Guests:
- Jeanne Massey is the executive director of FairVote Minnesota.
- Nick Murray is a policy analyst at the Maine Policy Institute.
Last week, researchers announced they successfully used CRISPR injected directly into the bloodstream to treat a genetic disease. It’s being hailed as a major milestone for patients, and heralds the day when CRISPR — an innovative gene-editing technique that allows for precise changes to DNA — is used to treat other genetic diseases like muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis and cancer.
CRISPR works like a pair of genetic scissors. If researchers can identify a genetic defect inside a living cell, they can use CRISPR to cut that spot and either delete, repair or replace the affected gene.
But that same power has the potential for harm. In 2019, a Chinese doctor ended up in prison after he used CRISPR to create the world’s first gene-edited babies. Bioethicists warn that CRISPR should be used cautiously, lest scientists accidentally transform the human race.
Tuesday, host Kerri Miller spoke with one of the pioneers of CRISPR and a bioethicist who specializes in the ethics of genetic modification.
Guests:
- Alexis Komor is a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego and the lead researcher at the Komor Lab.
- Jeffrey Kahn is the Andreas C. Dracopoulos director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and a professor of bioethics and public policy in the Department of Health Policy and Management of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS
Pandemic fatigue has sparked a surge of interest in outdoor recreation. The National Park Service is expecting one of their busiest years on record. As vacationers prepare to venture out for summer, what can they do to make the national park experience more enjoyable?
Guests:
- Jenny Anzelmo-Sarles is the assistant director for communications and chief spokesperson at the National Park Service.
- Ashley D'Antonio is a recreation ecologist and assistant professor in the Department of Forest Ecosystems & Society at Oregon State University.
Historic heat waves are striking many parts of the country this June, leaving some cities struggling to cope with another sweltering week. How unusual are these events?
Guests:
Katharine Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist and chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy.
Jessica Oster is a paleoclimatologist at Vanderbilt University.
Although President Joe Biden ultimately won the presidential race, the question remains: Why didn’t Democrats do as well as had been expected? Taking lessons from 2020, what could Democrats do to strengthen their hold in Congress in the next election cycle? What strategies might they implement to counter persuasive GOP messaging?
Guests:
Marcela Mulholland is the political director at Data for Progress.
Aimee Allison is the founder of She the People.
For most of her life, Paula Stone Williams lived as a man. She led a conservative evangelical church for more than 20 years. She was married to a wonderful woman and had three children. But she also harbored a secret. Since she was a small child, she knew she was a woman.
Her path to coming out — and what happened afterwards — is the subject of her new memoir, “As A Woman: What I Learned about Power, Sex and the Patriarchy After I Transitioned.”
Tuesday at 9 a.m., Williams will join Kerri Miller to discuss her transition at the age of 60, how her family and friends reacted and what she learned about the patriarchy after living her life as a trans woman.
Guest:
- Paula Stone Williams is a transgender pastor. Her just-published memoir is “As A Woman: What I Learned about Power, Sex and Patriarchy After I Transitioned.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS
Vaccination rates are at a near standstill. Meanwhile, the most contagious variant of the COVID-19 virus yet is spreading quickly in the United States. Is another surge inevitable?
Guests:
Lindsey Leininger is a public health educator at “Dear Pandemic” and a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.
Dr. Marty Makary is a surgeon and professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the author of “The Price We Pay.”
Summer officially started last week, so Kerri Miller is asking: What’s a true “beach read”?
I was perusing Amazon’s summer reading guide recently when I ran across a feature that asked the people who write them to define a true beach read.
These are authors who embrace the idea of publishing novels that skim above the serious and the weighty, to deliver a refreshing, escapist, absorbing book that you can put down and pick up at your leisure.
Writer Alex Michaelides believes a great beach read is “something I can lose myself in, an addictive page turner; but rich and complex enough to occupy my mind in between readings.”
Sally Hepworth believes a beach read is, at its essence, a holiday for your mind.
Dav Pilkey holds up the beach read as "reading what you love without judgment, from one’s self or from others.”
Mary Kay Andrews says give her a book with a "topical or tropical" theme “and it won’t matter whether my toes are planted in a sandy beach or just a backyard sandbox.”
So, no matter where your toes are planted this summer, I’ve got a trio of new beach reads to get you started.
Tuck a copy of “The View Was Exhausting” by Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta into your beach bag. The novel takes the reader beyond the facade of a made-for-Hollywood romance and asks why aren’t these A-lister stars really together? It’s great, gossipy fun.
I’m creating a trip for adventurous readers about the myths and mysteries of Greece, so my reading list is full of fiction and non-fiction books about the place.
That’s why it was fun to discover Polly Samson’s “A Theater for Dreamers.”
Narrated by a young novelist, the story is set on the island of Hydra in the swinging ’60s, where singer songwriter Leonard Cohen has joined an eclectic group of artists for some sexy summer fun.
That would be enough for a great beach read, but this novel does more, exploring the moral codes and unfulfilled promise of era.
And my last beach read is a novel in my library queue that everyone is talking about. It's Zakiya Dalila Harris’ “The Other Black Girl.” Nella Rogers is a young editorial assistant in New York’s publishing industry — which means she works long hours and makes no money — when the company finally hires the second Black employee. Nella assumes they’ll quickly find common cause in such a white-dominated business but things get creepy pretty quickly.
My three quintessential beach reads are: Zakiya Dalila Harris’ “The Other Black Girl,” Polly Samson’s “A Theater for Dreamers,” and Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta’s “The View Was Exhausting.”
Buy these books here.
What responsibility do officers have to intervene in the behavior of another officer?
Minneapolis established a “duty to intervene” policy in 2016, setting a rule that officers must “either stop or attempt to stop another sworn employee when force is being inappropriately applied or is no longer required.”
How is that rule applied in practice? Should officers be required to report any wrongdoing by another officer?
Many businesses across the country, from resorts to restaurants, say they are struggling to hire enough employees.
Some conservatives and businesses blame the enhanced unemployment benefits, saying they’re incentivizing and paying workers to stay home rather than return to the workplace. So far, 26 states have voted to end participation in the federal unemployment programs before the Sept. 6 cutoff.
But many labor economists say it’s not that simple and that placing the blame on extra unemployment support ignores the bigger picture. They say a dearth of child care, poor transportation, lingering fears of workplace safety and poor wages are also factors.
Thursday, host Kerri Miller spoke with two experts who watch the job market about the complicated labor picture.
Guests:
- Erica Groshen is senior economics adviser at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations and research fellow at the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
- Indivar Dutta-Gupta is the co-executive director of the Center on Poverty and Inequality at Georgetown University.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS
The never-ending culture wars have a new battle, and this time, it’s playing out in America’s classrooms.
It focuses on critical race theory, an academic pursuit developed in the 1960s that examines how race and racism function in law and society. In recent weeks, Republican legislatures in more than a dozen states have either passed or advanced bills that ban or limit the teaching of critical race theory, calling it divisive and unpatriotic to force students to consider the influence of racism on history.
Educators are worried about the chilling effect it could have on their ability to teach a robust view of history — especially since in some towns, conservative activists and parents are inflaming the issue with local school boards.
Why is critical race theory the latest rallying cry? Is there really a threat? And what are the implications? Host Kerri Miller spoke with two experts on Wednesday to get the context.
Guests:
- Clint Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of “How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America.”
- Leslie Fenwick is dean emeritus and a professor in the School of Education at Howard University.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS
The Journal of the American Medical Association reported a 41 percent increase in the frequency of heavy drinking among women, compared to 2019.
Is the pandemic to blame?
Tuesday, two experts join host Kerri Miller to talk about the history and evolution of drinking in the US, its role as a social and cultural tool, and its use as a coping mechanism.
Guests:
Christine Sismondo is a writer, drinks expert and author of “America Walks Into a Bar: A Spirited History of Taverns and Saloons, Speakeasies and Grog Shops.”
Mallory O’Meara is a filmmaker, author, and cohost of the literary podcast Reading Glasses. Her upcoming book is titled, “Girly Drinks: A World History of Women and Alcohol.”
What if the Second Amendment isn’t really about guns at all?
Historian Carol Anderson believes the right to bear arms was designed to keep Black people enslaved and powerless. Her new book, “The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America,” lays out the historical context for the Second Amendment’s passage. She builds the case that militias at the time of our country’s founding were primarily about protecting slavery, and that white supremacy is embedded into the bedrock of the right to bear arms.
Last week, host Kerri Miller talked about soaring gun sales and gun violence. This Monday, she added to the conversation by talking with Anderson about the racial threads woven through gun rights in America.
Guest:
- Carol Anderson is a professor of African American studies at Emory University and the author of many books. Her latest is “The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America.”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.
After Kay Wilkinson watches her father devolve from a kind and intelligent man into a paranoid stranger due to Alzheimer’s disease, she and her husband make a pact. Once they both turn 80, they will take their own lives together — the better to spare themselves and their loved ones a humiliating and protracted decline.
But what really happens when they turn 80?
That’s the premise of Lionel Shriver’s new novel “Should We Stay or Should We Go.” The Wilkinsons are in their early ‘50s when they firmly decide 80 is their drop-dead date. But when they actually cross that threshold, the novel spins out a dozen alternative scenarios. One spouse goes through with it, while the other doesn’t. Maybe they enter a luxurious retirement village or their children stuff them into a grim, state-run institution called, paradoxically, Close of Day Cottages.
Friday, host Kerri Miller talked with Shriver about her intensely personal book. How does one cope with the complexities of longevity? Is there a way to live a long, vibrant life and still go out in style?
Guest:
- Lionel Shriver is an award-winning author. Her latest book is “Should We Stay or Should We Go.”
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.
Thursday, two experienced gardeners will join MPR News host Kerri Miller to talk all things gardening, give advice about how to grow and manage a garden in this kind of weather, and answer questions from listeners.
Guests:
Catherine Grant is the biology department greenhouse manager at the University of St. Thomas.
Julie Weisenhorn is an extension educator and an extension associate professor at the University of Minnesota’s Department of Horticultural Science.
In just the last couple of months, cybercriminals have hacked several U.S. companies using different types of ransomware, paralyzing a petroleum pipeline, compromising a meat manufacturer, delaying ferry operations between Massachusetts’ mainland and Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, and even targeting K-12 schools. Join us as host Kerri Miller talks to two cybersecurity experts about threats, the risks of corporate hacking, what can be done to prevent them and what can be done to protect those who are most vulnerable.
Guests:
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Lauren Zabierek is the executive director of the Cyber Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School.
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Kim Zetter is an investigative journalist who covers privacy, computer security and national security. She is also author of the book “Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World’s First Digital Weapon.”
A reckoning is coming for Southern Baptists this week.
More than 16,000 Southern Baptists are in Nashville, Tenn., for the denomination’s national convention – the most high-profile gathering in years. The already conservative denomination is battling an ultraconservative faction within itself that says Southern Baptists are drifting too far left.
What happens next has the potential to further splinter an already divided evangelical America.
Issues the Southern Baptists will vote on include race, women’s roles in the church, and how to handle sex abuse. Sex abuse survivors will be paying special attention to that last one, since a letter written by former Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore was leaked earlier this month. It alleged that sex abuse claims have been mishandled and dismissed by SBC leaders for years and described in detail how many leaders bucked the call for sexual abuse reforms.
On Tuesday, the day the convention begins, host Kerri Miller spoke with two women who’ve been watching the SBC’s response to sexual abuse victims for years. They fear that their pleas for reform will once again be ignored.
Guests:
- Mary DeMuth is a speaker and author of many books, including “We Too: How the Church Can Respond Redemptively to the Sexual Abuse Crisis.”
- Jules Woodson is a sexual assault survivor and an advocate.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS
Last month, Texas became the 20th state to pass legislation that says no permit is required to carry a concealed handgun.
Meanwhile, gun sales are way up. They spiked in March 2020, which is largely attributed to fears surrounding the pandemic, and have remained at unprecedented levels since.
Gun violence is also soaring. More than 8,600 people have died from guns in the U.S. this year. More than 260 mass shootings have been recorded in 2021 so far, and the number of people who use a gun to attempt suicide — more than 24,000 in 2019 — goes up every year.
How can we hold all these facts together? Is there causation? Or just correlation? Monday, host Kerri Miller spoke with two women who study gun violence. Is there a way for guns to be available in America without the surrounding harm?
Guests:
- Bindu Kalesan is an adjunct professor at Boston University and vice president of the Gun Violence Survivors Foundation.
- Kami Chavis is a professor of law, director of the Criminal Justice Program at Wake Forest University School of Law and special adviser to the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.
The traditional summer job for teens has been on the decline since its late 1970s peak. In the years since, the employment rate among teens has maintained its downward trend. Aside from the economic downturn brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, what has accounted for the changes in teen employment?
The Department of Defense has revived an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force to gather what is known about UAPs. The task force’s assessment is due to Congress by June 25. On Thursday, host Kerri Miller explores the possibilities with two experts, an astrophysicist and a conspiracy theory debunker.
Guests:
Dr. Avi Loeb is an astrophysicist and the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science Harvard University.
Mick West is a science communicator who debunks conspiracy theories online and is the author of “Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic and Respect.”
By the last count, more than 3,600 U.S. health care workers died during the first 12 months of the pandemic.
They put their own health and safety on the line to treat a novel virus even as they worried about spreading it to their own family members, tried to correct harmful misinformation about the disease and many Asian American health care workers were subject to racist attacks.
Over 60 percent of front-line workers report that stress from COVID-19 has negatively impacted their mental health.
Even as case counts decline, concerns about burnout among front-line workers persist.
Wednesday at 9 a.m., host Kerri Miller spoke with two physicians about the lasting impacts of COVID-19 on health care workers.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
Farmers of color are set to get unprecedented help this month. The U.S. Department of Agriculture plans $4 billion in debt relief as part of the latest pandemic stimulus package.
The debt relief is designed to address a well-established history of discrimination against Black, Indigenous and other farmers of color.
Studies going back to the 1920s have documented how little access to government help farmers of color have had compared to their white counterparts. During that same time period, the proportion of Black farmers in the U.S. has shrunk from 14 percent in 1920 to just under 2 percent in 2017.
But there are some who oppose the deal. Banks are upset that they won’t make as much money if farmers of color are allowed to pay off the debt early. Some white farmers are suing to get the USDA to remove the race classification from the program, saying it’s reverse discrimination.
Meanwhile, many Black farmers say the program doesn’t go far enough and that they are skeptical that the payments will actually materialize.
Tuesday, host Kerri Miller and two experts discussed why the program is needed and what it means for farmers who’ve struggled to make the system work for them.
Guests:
- John Boyd Jr. is a fourth-generation Black farmer, businessman and civil rights activist. He is the founder and president of the National Black Farmers Association.
- Thomas Mitchell is a professor of law and co-director of the program in real estate and community development law at Texas A&M University School of Law.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.
Well-intended strategies to help overweight kids shed pounds often backfire. New research says there’s a better way.
Guests:
Katie Loth is an assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Minnesota.
Rebecca Puhl is a professor at the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at the University of Connecticut.
If you need evidence of America’s pent-up wanderlust, just look at Memorial Day weekend: More than 7 million people were screened at U.S. airports, the highest number since the pandemic began. And road travel expected a 60 percent jump compared to the holiday weekend last year.
Travel experts say it lines up with an expected surge in “revenge travel,” Americans who are eager to shed the pandemic — with all its disappointment and canceled plans — and finally get out of the house.
But the travel industry is not what it was before COVID-19 took over the world. Some changes, such as masking and decreased capacity on cruise ships, are temporary. Other adaptations, like expanded cleaning and relaxed cancellation and rebooking policies, are likely here to stay.
Plus, a global pandemic has made would-be tourists view travel differently. Experts say this will be the age of conscious travel. Tourists will be more discerning about trips, more appreciative of nature and local communities, more careful with their money.
Thanks to flexible workspaces, some might even embark on long-term “workations,” combining work with vacations and staying for longer periods of time in a new place.
Friday morning, host Kerri Miller discussed what post-pandemic travel might look like with two experts who believe travel won’t just snap back to the way it was before COVID-19. Post-pandemic travel will be something new.
Guests:
- Kyle Potter is executive editor of Thrifty Traveler.
- Bianca Alexander is co-host of Conscious Living, a lifestyle series on PBS that travels the globe exploring what it takes to be a more mindful human.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS
Ecologist Suzanne Simard talked with host Kerri Miller about her new book “Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest” and what humans can learn from the way trees cooperate and communicate with other plants.
President Biden last week asked the U.S. intelligence community to “redouble their efforts” to bring the nation closer to understanding the origin of COVID-19, giving them 90 days to gather information. Two infectious disease physicians discussed why it is important to find the origin of COVID-19 and what we can reasonably expect in that time frame.
A record breaking number of migrant children and teenagers have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border this year. As in years before, many children make the perilous journey without their parents only to face an uncertain future.
Why they do it is complicated.
Guests:
Lomi Kriel is a journalist with the ProPublica-Texas Tribune Investigative Initiative.
Setareh Ghandehari is the advocacy director at Detention Watch Network.
Kerri Miller is here just in time for the official start of the summer with a bunch of “take it to the lake” crime novels & thrillers that you can find in your local library.
Hardbacks abound at the start of summer — shiny new books just out of the oven that will cost you a chunk of change at your local indie bookstore or on Amazon.
I’ll have three must-read, just-published thrillers and crime novels next week for you, but I’m starting the summer with some of my favorites that should be available either in paperback or as an e-book at your local library.
I’m a new fan of Wallace Stroby. He’s a fellow journalist who was the editor of the Newark Star Ledger — Tony Soprano’s hometown paper — and Stroby’s crime novels are replete with small-town Jersey wise guys with big guns and get-rich-quick ambitions. He’s published nine novels, four of them featuring accomplished thief and bad girl Crissa Stone. Start with “Cold Shot to the Heart.”
Louise Candlish made quite a splash when she published her debut novel, “Our House” in 2019. It was short-listed for best British crime and thriller novel of the year and I love the way the novel opens: Fi Lawson arrives home from a day at work to discover new people have moved into her house and all of her possessions are gone. The novel dives into themes of gentrification, suburban shenanigans and those annoying neighbors you know that are way too house proud.
My last not-so-new but must-read thriller is “They All Fall Down” from Rachel Howzell Hall. Updating the Agatha Christie novel, “And Then There Were None,” Howzell Hall brings seven strangers to a verdant island off the coast of Mexico and let’s the sex, drugs and dram roll from there.
It’s a great lakeside read that you can finish in a weekend.
My three not-so-new but must-read crime and thriller novels are: “They All Fall Down” by Rachel Howzell Hall; Wallace Stroby’s “A Cold Shot to the Heart,” and Louise Candlish’s “Our House.”
Adulting can be hard.
Julie Lythcott-Haims believes that statement is more than a meme. It’s the truth.
The transition from childhood to adulthood used to be clear: Finish your education, get a job, leave home, marry and have children. But the world has changed dramatically.
Lythcott-Haims, a former dean at Stanford University and a mom to two young adults, says young people today lead different lives and have more freedoms — and thus, need updated guidance.
In her new book, “Your Turn: How to be an Adult,” she offers compassion, practical advice and personal stories for anyone struggling to “hashtag adult.” She shared that wisdom with host Kerri Miller Friday morning.
Guest:
- Julie Lythcott-Haims is an author, speaker and activist. Her latest book is “Your Turn: How to be an Adult.”
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS
In the days immediately following the violent storming of the Capitol in January, Republican lawmakers came forward with an idea: Why not set up a bipartisan commission, similar to the one established after 9/11, to sort through the facts and determine how such a chaotic event happened?
But now it appears that type of investigation might not happen. A bill to establish such a commission passed the House last week with support from every Democrat and 35 Republicans. GOP party leaders strongly oppose the bill, and most Republican senators said they will block it this week if Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer forces a vote.
Thursday, host Kerri Miller examined the chances that the inquiry will still happen and what it says about America if it doesn’t.
Guests:
- Jeffrey Engel is founding director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University and co-author of “Impeachment: An American History.” He also co-hosts a podcast called “The Past, The Promise, The Presidency.”
- Andra Gillespie is an associate professor of political science at Emory University.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.
In April, President Joe Biden announced his plan for letting Americans attend community college for free. The proposal — part of his $1.8 trillion American Families Plan — would waive tuition for two years of public community college and give qualified students more cash to cover living expenses.
Almost immediately, it ran into opposition. If successful, it could make college accessible to students from low-income families. But critics say it could also be a faux fix that shovels more taxpayer money into a system that some say chronically underperforms.
Host Kerri Miller got two takes on Biden’s plan Wednesday morning. Is free community college the best way to help under-resourced students get ahead?
Guests:
- Beth Akers is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where she focuses on the economics of higher education.
- Joshua Wyner is founder and executive director of the College Excellence Program at the Aspen Institute.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS
Floyd’s murder sparked a local, national, and global outcry that fueled protests calling for an end to anti-Black racism and an overhaul of policing. Tune in as host Kerri Miller talks to two local activists about what changes Floyd’s murder has brought about and which efforts are still in progress.
Guests:
Sondra Samuels is president and CEO of the Northside Achievement Zone (NAZ).
D.A. Bullock is a North Minneapolis resident, filmmaker, local activist, and member of Reclaim the Block’s communications team.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS
People were caught off guard when the normally cautious Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced in mid-May that people fully vaccinated against COVID-19 no longer need to maintain social distance or wear masks in most indoor environments.
Since then, epidemiologists, public health leaders and government officials have grappled with the new guidance. In Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz rescinded the mask mandate for those who are vaccinated a day after the CDC’s announcement.
Those unvaccinated are still strongly encouraged to wear masks in public and to keep distancing while indoors. But determining who is vaccinated and who isn’t is based on the honor system. With just over 50 percent of Minnesotans 16 and older fully vaccinated, critics say lifting the mask mandate in May is too much, too soon.
Monday, host Kerri Miller got answers to some of the questions surrounding this unexpectedly quick change. Why did the CDC make such an abrupt shift, and why now?
Guests:
- Dr. Leana Wen is an emergency physician and public health professor at George Washington University. She’s a contributing columnist for The Washington Post and a CNN medical analyst.
- Dr. Robert Wachter is the chair of the UC San Francisco Department of Medicine. He recently filled in as host on In the Bubble, a podcast dedicated to covering pandemic science.
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS
It’s a great time to be selling a home, but what do multiple offers and sales prices far above asking say about larger housing trends?
Guests:
Jeff Smith is executive director at the Missouri Workforce Housing Association and former professor of public policy at The New School.
Daryl Fairweather is the chief economist at Redfin.com.
The tug of war over abortion rights is headed back to the Supreme Court.
The court will review Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and will consider whether state laws banning abortions in the period before a fetus is considered viable outside the womb are unconstitutional.
Just last year, the court ruled that a Louisiana law requiring physicians who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals to be unconstitutional.
That ruling came after President Trump appointed two justices to the court, creating a 5-4 conservative majority. But Chief Justice John Roberts broke from his conservative colleagues and instead concurred with the four liberal justices on the decision, upholding the precedent of Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
Since then, the ideology of the court has shifted considerably. The split between conservative and liberal justices flipped to 6-3 after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and judge Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed to fill her seat just days before the 2020 election.
Thursday, a legal historian and a journalist covering the Supreme Court joined host Kerri Miller for a conversation about how the court might approach this case and what it could mean for the future of Roe v. Wade and abortion in America.
Guests:
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Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court for the New York Times.
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Mary Ziegler is the Stearns Weaver Miller professor at Florida State University College of Law and the author of "Abortion in America: A Legal History, Roe v. Wade to the Present.”
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.
Myths are tricky things.
At first, they bind civilizations together with a common idea. But too often, those same ideas turn rancid if left unchallenged and form a soft spot on the nation’s citizenry.
In her new book, “We Need New Stories,” Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik identifies six key myths of contemporary Western society that she believes are poisoning the well of public thought. They include identity politics, political correctness and the illusion of virtuous origin.
Wednesday morning, MPR News host Kerri Miller spoke with Malik about how and why we need to deconstruct the myths and find new stories to tell.
Guest:
- Nesrine Malik is a columnist for The Guardian and the author of “We Need New Stories: The Myths that Subvert Freedom”
To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above
Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.