Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchNicole Evelina, "America's Forgotten Suffragists: Virginia and Francis Minor" (Two Dot Books, 2023)
Episode 60
After being forgotten for nearly 130 years, the “Mother of Suffrage in Missouri” and her husband are finally taking their rightful place in history.
S…
2 years, 11 months ago
Howard Fishman, "To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse" (Dutton, 2023)
Episode 121
Howard Fishman's To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse (Dutton, 2023) is a fascinating hybrid biography that weave…
2 years, 11 months ago
Hannah Pittard, "We Are Too Many: A Memoir [Kind of]" (Henry Holt, 2023)
Episode 162
What happens when you come of age in mid-life? Why is so challenging to figure out your own past? Can you find the permission to be weird? (And can y…
2 years, 11 months ago
Alfred J. Rieber, "Stalin As Warlord" (Yale UP, 2022)
Episode 1337
The Second World War was arguably the defining moment in the history of the Soviet Union. In Stalin as Warlord (Yale University Press, 2022), eminent…
2 years, 11 months ago
Joseph Sassoon, "The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire" (Pantheon, 2022)
Episode 416
Today I talked to Joseph Sassoon about his book The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire (Pantheon, 2022)
They were one of…
2 years, 11 months ago
Francis L. Sampson, "Look Out Below!: A Story of the Airborne by a Paratrooper Padre" (Catholic U of America Press, 2023)
Episode 31
A veteran of the Second World War and the Korean War, Francis L. Sampson was a real-life hero whose exploits inspired one of the most famous war film…
2 years, 11 months ago
Peter Stansky, "The Socialist Patriot: George Orwell and War" (Stanford UP, 2023)
Episode 87
Few English writers wielded a pen so sharply as George Orwell, the quintessential political writer of the twentieth century. His literary output at o…
2 years, 11 months ago
TaTa Dada: The Real Life and Celestial Adventures of Tristan Tzara
Episode 115
Tristan Tzara, one of the most important figures in the twentieth century's most famous avant-garde movements, was born Samuel Rosenstock (or Samueli…
2 years, 11 months ago
Katherine C. Mooney, "Isaac Murphy: The Rise and Fall of a Black Jockey" (Yale UP, 2023)
Episode 388
Isaac Murphy, born enslaved in 1861, still reigns as one of the greatest jockeys in American history. Black jockeys like Murphy were at the top of th…
2 years, 11 months ago
Stephen Hauser, "The Face Laughs While the Brain Cries: The Education of a Doctor" (St. Martin's Press, 2023)
Episode 202
Dr. Stephen L. Hauser and a patient named Andrea were both 27 years old when they met. He was an up-and-coming neurologist-in-training; she was a Har…
2 years, 11 months ago