In many ways, the COVID-19 pandemic was public health’s finest hour. Millions of lives were saved, thanks to isolation measures. Vaccines were developed in record time. Systems were developed for contract tracing and testing. But it was also an apocalyptic moment for a system under strain. As a result, trust in doctors and scientists has plummeted. A recent Pew Research Center poll found that Americans who say they have a great deal of confidence in scientists dropped from 39 percent in 2020 to ...
Mar 01, 2024•52 min
This week, Big Books and Bold Ideas is launching an election year series that asks: What is American democracy in 2024? Americans come to that question with significantly different views. And what American democracy was when this country was founded isn’t necessarily what it is today or what it will be in the future. Democracy is dynamic. Heather Cox Richardson spends a lot of time thinking about democracy. She’s a historian and the force behind the most popular newsletter on Substack , with mor...
Feb 23, 2024•51 min
MPR News host Kerri Miller has never skirted the topic of faith. On her former weekday show, she regularly dialoged with leaders like Jenan Mohajir from Interfaith America, activist and author Anne Lamott , theologian Jemar Tisby , Sister Joan Chittister , and evangelical disrupter Rachel Held Evans . She even did a year-long series with women from a variety of faith backgrounds in 2019. So it seemed fitting, during the 2024 winter member drive, to return to this theme and remember a few of the ...
Feb 16, 2024•52 min
Choices made in a moment reverberate for generations, despite best intentions. Vanessa Chan adeptly explores this concept in her debut novel, “ The Storm We Made ” — a work of historical fiction set in her home country of Malaysia, which was inspired by stories her grandmother would tell. The main character is Cecily, a discontented housewife in 1930s Malaya, who is charmed into becoming a spy for the Japanese during the British occupation. She is increasingly disillusioned with the colonizing f...
Feb 09, 2024•52 min
Women spies pop up in Hollywood movies all the time. But as Liza Mundy’s new book reveals, it took determined persistence, personal risk and a lot of sacrifice for women to be welcomed as CIA operatives. “The Sisterhood” is a meticulously researched, seven-decade history of women who worked behind the scenes at America’s premier foreign intelligence agency. Mundy details how women opened up new avenues of recruiting for assets, formed a team that uncovered a Russian mole operating within the age...
Feb 02, 2024•54 min
Tracy K. Smith is known for her powerful poetry. She's a Pulitzer Prize winner and former U. S. Poet Laureate. Yet her newest book, “ To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul ,” is memoir — a classification she initially resisted. But as she tells MPR News host Kerri Miller, she eventually saw that her own story is a kind of microcosm of America’s story. It’s a meditation on who we’ve been, who we are and who we want to become. On this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, Smith joins M...
Jan 26, 2024•52 min
Americans’ faith in the value of higher education is faltering . Unlike our global peers, the U.S. is seeing a steady decline in college enrollment and graduation rates, especially among young men. Since 1992, the sticker price for four-year private colleges has almost doubled and more than doubled for four-year public colleges, even after adjusting for inflation. Student debt is paralyzing. And Gen Z is watching. About half believe a high school diploma is sufficient to “ensure financial securi...
Jan 19, 2024•58 min
Are you convinced the U.S. government knows more than it will reveal about UFOs? After doing a deep dive into the history, journalist Garrett Graff is too. But he doesn’t think the cover-up is a necessarily hiding alien life. “There are two obvious cloaks of secrecy that surrounds the government cover-up of its understanding of what UFOs and UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena) are today,” Graff tells MPR News host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. “One level is we don’t know...
Jan 12, 2024•52 min
This year, Big Books and Bold Ideas is introducing an occasional series that will feature books on democracy. That series begins as we mark the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection. To gain context, we invited three historians and authors from different regions of the country to reflect on this American moment. Can history be a guide to where we are? Do we have the chaos and divisiveness we deserve? How do we approach what comes next with clarity and perspective? Guests: Carol Anderson a...
Jan 05, 2024•52 min
“Here is the world,” writes theologian Frederick Buechner. “Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.” Those words rooted Amy Butler through some of the darkest moments of her life. As Butler slowly embraced her call to be a pastor, she was rejected by her conservative evangelical family, who doesn’t believe women should be in pastoral roles. She was the first woman ever appointed to lead the historic Riverside Church in New York City, but the challenges of breaking the “staine...
Dec 29, 2023•51 min
For years, author Jedidiah Jenkins and his mother, Barbara, have flirted with the idea of a cross-country road trip together. The goal: to retrace Barbara’s route across America which she walked with her husband, travel writer Peter Jenkins, in the 1970s. But there is one problem: they have wildly disparate world views. Barbara is a baby boomer who lives in rural Tennessee. She supports Trump, listens to conservative media and is a deeply passionate evangelical Christian. Jedidiah is almost the ...
Dec 22, 2023•52 min
Members of MPR and supporters of The Slowdown came together in mid-October to celebrate poetry with Major Jackson. The poet was in the Twin Cities to speak at the Twin Cities Book Festival , which is where he also learned that The Slowdown — a daily poetry podcast that he hosts — had won the prestigious Signal Award for Best Daily Podcast of 2023 . MPR News' Kerri Miller in Conversation with The Slowdown's Major Jackson It was on that jubilant note that he spoke with host Kerri Miller ab...
Dec 15, 2023•1 hr 11 min
To humans, roads are so ubiquitous, they are almost invisible. They crisscross every continent and allow for travel, exploration and connection. But to wildlife, roads are dangerous divisions of habitat. Around a million animals are killed by cars every day. Roads change migration patterns, cut off animals from their food sources and create noise so loud that it drowns out the ability for some animals to communicate with each other or hunt their prey. But road ecologists are working on solutions...
Dec 08, 2023•49 min
What word or phrase conjures immediate understanding in your family — but puzzled looks from everyone else? In one family, pizza crust is known as “pizza bones.” In another, children who weren’t allowed to say fart were instructed to use the word “foof” instead. This Thursday, MPR News host Kerri Miller talked about “ familect ” with word wizard Anatoly Liberman. Guest: Anatoly Liberman is a linguist and professor of languages at the University of Minnesota. His latest book is, “ Take My Word Fo...
Dec 07, 2023•48 min
To the strict Rastafari father of Jamaican poet Safiya Sinclair , Babylon was not just an ancient city. It was a symbol for corruption, for wickedness, for decadence and depravity. And it was everywhere. So he kept his family tightly controlled, separate from outside influences that could contaminate. It was in that environment that Sinclair first grew and then stifled. Her father’s Rastafari faith was all-encompassing. While her mother taught her the music of nature and encouraged her to read, ...
Dec 01, 2023•51 min
What book did you read this year that you immediately recommended to all your friends? That was the topic MPR News host Kerri Miller tackled Monday at 9 a.m. for a special live edition of her regular Friday show, Big Books and Bold Ideas. Instead of chatting with an author, Miller took calls and chatted with Glory Edim , the founder of Well-Read Black Girl, and Julie Buckles , the owner of Honest Dog Books in Bayfield, Wis. Before the show, we asked our social media followers what their favorite...
Dec 01, 2023•48 min
Can you imagine a day when families visit the moon for summer vacation? When travel to see Saturn’s rings up close is a romantic getaway? When humans living on Mars schedule tours of Olympus Mons — a volcano roughly the size of Arizona? The day is coming. But since it’s not possible quite yet, the would-be space traveler can do the next best thing: Take the scenic route through the galaxy with astronomer and science communicator Philip Plait in his new book, “ Under Alien Skies .” Written as a l...
Nov 17, 2023•52 min
The season finale of Talking Volumes brought author and columnist Margaret Renkl to Minnesota, hours after the first snow carpeted our Northern landscape. She declared it “magical” — a theme familiar to those who’ve read her New York Times columns or her new book, “ The Comfort of Crows .” In it, the self-described backyard naturalist details what she saw in her Tennessee half-acre backyard over the course of 52 weeks. She laughs at the bumblebees and fusses over foxes. She laments the absence o...
Nov 10, 2023•2 hr 41 min
On July 7, 2016, a Black gunman ambushed Dallas police officers working a peaceful protest, shooting 14 and killing five. The trauma surgeon who worked to save many of those officers — Dr. Brian H. Williams — made headlines when he spoke at a press conference after the incident. In an emotional moment, he confessed his complicated feelings as a Black man in America to the mix of race, policing and guns. “I want the Dallas P.D. to also see me, a Black man, and understand that I support you, I wil...
Nov 03, 2023•51 min
Viet Thanh Nguyen has a critical mind. He’s critic of populist politics. He’s a critic of history. He’s a critic of the country where he was born, Vietnam, and he’s a critic of the country he calls home, the United States. He’s even a critic of his own memories. But Nguyen says his captious lens isn’t meant to blister. It’s simply meant to reveal truth. And if you write truthfully, you will likely offend. Talking Volumes with Viet Thanh Nguyen Nguyen joined host Kerri Miller on stage at the Fitz...
Oct 27, 2023•2 hr 34 min
In C Pam Zhang’s dystopian not-too-distant future, the planet is covered in a crop-killing smog. Food as we know it is rapidly disappearing to be replaced by a gray, mung bean flour. Zhang’s protagonist, a young unnamed Asian chef, decides to flee her dreary career and lies her way into becoming the head cook at a mountaintop research community, where the sky is still clear and the uber-rich work to recreate and hoard the world’s biodiversity. The prose in “ Land of Milk and Honey ” is as rich a...
Oct 20, 2023•48 min
Ann Patchett is a perennial favorite at Talking Volumes. So it’s no surprise that she sold out the Fitz for her conversation with host Kerri Miller on Sept. 28. What ensued was a raucous two hours of honest conversation. Just a few of the topics they covered: Ann’s “shiny new attitude” about book tours, how to be a feminist while still making dinner every night, why Ann keeps a drawer stocked with $20s in her desk and — last but certainly not least — Ann’s new novel, “Tom Lake.” Don’t miss this ...
Oct 06, 2023•2 hr 51 min
Lauren Groff’s new novel, “The Vaster Wilds,” begins in the bleak winter of 1609, when the residents of the early American colony of Jamestown are diseased and starving. A young servant girl, who was brought to the new world by a prosperous and indifferent family, decides to run from the desolation. But she leaves Jamestown not knowing her direction, her surroundings or even her name. Can she survive the untouched wilderness? Groff says her new book is haunted by climate change — the fact that w...
Sep 29, 2023•52 min
When Dr. Abraham Verghese released his debut novel in 2009 it was an literary marvel. “Cutting for Stone” captivated readers, sold more than 1.5 million copies in the U.S. alone and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for two years. Readers had to wait 14 years for another book by Verghese, but by all accounts, his new novel was worth the wait. Oprah Winfrey named it a book club pick, called saying it was “one of the best books I’ve read in my entire life — and I’ve been reading since...
Sep 22, 2023•2 hr 44 min
Carol Dunbar didn’t set out to be an writer. For more than a decade, she was an actress based in the Twin Cities. She told stories by embodying them. But then she and her husband — also an actor — decided to leave it all behind. They moved off the grid, to rural Wisconsin, so her husband could handcraft furniture. It was there, while learning to split wood and pump water and raise two toddlers in the midst of the chaos, that Dunbar came to the stunning conclusion that she was a storyteller — jus...
Sep 15, 2023•49 min
Jason Fitger is not a likeable character. A creative writing professor at the fictitious Payne University, an aptly named small liberal arts college in the Midwest, Fitger is cantankerous and acid-tongued, beleaguered and inappropriate. He doesn’t really like students — and he doesn’t like England, which is where he has been pressured into leading a study abroad program. The students on the tour are equally hapless. For the most part, this is their first trip away from home. One believes they ar...
Sep 08, 2023•55 min
The first time Helen Macdonald and Sin Blaché met, it was to finish the book they had been cowriting for a year. Macdonald, author of the best-selling “ H is for Hawk ,” and Blaché, an artist living in Ireland, first met online. During the COVID lockdowns, bored and restless, they started to play with the idea of writing a book together. Chapters began to fly digitally over the Irish Sea. What resulted is “ Prophet ,” a fast-paced techno-thriller that centers around a lethal mystery: Someone has...
Sep 01, 2023•56 min
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 th...
Aug 18, 2023•55 min
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 wi...
Aug 10, 2023•56 min
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 r...
Aug 04, 2023•52 min
