Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchElizabeth Alexander on 'The Trayvon Generation'
Episode 394
Elizabeth Alexander’s new book, “The Trayvon Generation,” grew out of a widely discussed essay of the same name that she wrote for The New Yorker in …
4 years, 1 month ago
Fiction About Lives in Ukraine
Episode 393
While a steady stream of disturbing news continues to come from Ukraine, new works of fiction highlight the ways in which lives there have been trans…
4 years, 1 month ago
Life in an E.R. During Covid
Episode 392
Thomas Fisher’s new book, “The Emergency,” details his life as an emergency physician at the University of Chicago Medical Center, where he’s worked …
4 years, 1 month ago
A Personal Tour of Modern Irish History
Episode 391
Fintan O’Toole was born in Dublin in 1958, the same year that T.K. Whitaker, a member of the Irish government, published an influential report sugges…
4 years, 2 months ago
The Science Behind Mental Afflictions
Episode 390
In “A Molecule Away From Madness,” the neurologist Sara Manning Peskin writes about the errant molecular activity that underlies many serious mental …
4 years, 2 months ago
How People First Arrived in the Americas
Episode 389
Scholars have long believed that the first Americans arrived via land bridge some 13,000 years ago, when retreating glaciers created an inland corrid…
4 years, 2 months ago
Two New Memoirs About Affliction
Episode 388
In 2017, Frank Bruni suffered a stroke while sleeping in the middle of the night, an event that led to blindness in his right eye. His new memoir, “T…
4 years, 2 months ago
The Invention of the Index
Episode 387
You probably take the index for granted. It might be hard to remember that the handy list of subjects at the back of a book, with the corresponding p…
4 years, 3 months ago
Jennifer Haigh on 'Mercy Street'
Episode 386
Jennifer Haigh’s new novel, “Mercy Street” — which Richard Russo calls “extraordinary” in his review — is about a woman named Claudia who works at a …
4 years, 3 months ago
A Spiritual, Dangerous Quest in the Himalayas
Episode 385
Harley Rustad’s new book, “Lost in the Valley of Death,” is about an American adventurer named Justin Alexander Shetler, who went on a quest in the H…
4 years, 3 months ago