What makes us human? It’s a question we keep coming back to, in part because it's got no definitive answer. In this week’s episode we explore the ultimate existential query by looking at two of our most recent human ancestors–Homo floresiensis and Neanderthals–with two experts, anthropologist Gregory Forth and archeologist Rebecca Wragg Sykes. Discovered by archeologists in 2003 on the Indonesian island Flores, Homo floresiensis were nicknamed “Hobbits” for their small stature and large feet. Th...
Jul 14, 2022•39 min•Season 1Ep. 114
(RE-RELEASE) How do you write a trailblazing woman back into history after her iconic colleagues wrote her out? Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner--founder and executive director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation and Center for Social Justice Dialogue; a founder of one the first college-level women’s studies programs in the United States; and author of The Women’s Suffrage Movement and Sisters in Spirit--introduces Eve and Julie to Matilda Joslyn Gage, the should-be household name of the suffrage movem...
Jul 07, 2022•44 min•Season 1Ep. 113
Sometimes finding hope requires shifting our gaze from humanity. In this episode of Book Dreams, we take an up-close and uplifting look at the four-eyed spook fish, the great gray owl, the star-nosed mole, and even the bloodthirsty vampire bat. Our guest, Jackie Higgins–author of Sentient: How Animals Illuminate the Wonder of Our Human Senses–shares riveting details about the sensory capabilities of these animals: the great gray owl’s soundlessness and uncanny hearing, for instance; the spook fi...
Jun 30, 2022•34 min•Season 1Ep. 112
Fairy tales. Why have they survived a thousand years of re-telling? How do they adapt to reflect changing times, places, and storytellers? And what is it about them that captivates us from early childhood and continues to intrigue us throughout our lives? In this episode of Book Dreams, Eve and Julie explore the magic of these familiar stories with scholar, author, and teacher Jack Zipes, one of the world’s leading authorities on fairy tales, folklore, and children’s literature. They talk about ...
Jun 23, 2022•37 min•Season 1Ep. 111
"I always think of that moment in North by Northwest, the Hitchcock movie, when someone is falling off one of the mountains in Mount Rushmore, and he grabs someone's hand, and then he loses their hand, and then he grabs their jacket. And then the jacket starts to rip." In this week's episode of Book Dreams, beloved mystery writer Sara Gran talks about how suspense writers create that "compelling unputdownable quality" that keeps readers turning pages from the start to finish. With refreshing can...
Jun 16, 2022•31 min•Season 1Ep. 110
The best cookbooks are so much more than collections of recipes. They’re windows into a life or a place or a time or a way of thinking. The very best cookbooks are all of these things at once. Black Food: Stories, Art, and Recipes from Across the African Diaspora is one of these rare books. Edited by author-activist Bryant Terry, and published by his new imprint 4 Color Books, Black Food is the work of more than a hundred chefs, artists, and scholars who contributed recipes, artwork, and essays ...
Jun 09, 2022•30 min•Season 1Ep. 109
How should we, as a country, execute our military power, and what role should we, as citizens, play in military policy? In what ways does our current engagement in modern warfare, as it has evolved during the war on terror, fall short of the ideal, and what’s the impact of that shortfall? What’s the connection between our deep polarization at home and the endless, invisible conflicts we’re mired in overseas? What does the conflict in Ukraine teach us about the power and significance of a clear a...
Jun 02, 2022•35 min•Season 1Ep. 108
What makes us human? In this episode, Eve and Julie explore one of our favorite questions with James Suzman, PhD, in a wide-ranging conversation about his book Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots. They talk about which aspects of work are specific to our species and how so much of what we believe to be intrinsic to work is actually just a product of our culture. James also discusses how the way we evolved to find purpose and meaning in work is what distinguishes us from...
May 26, 2022•37 min•Season 1Ep. 107
Ellen McGarrahan was a young reporter at the Miami Herald when she volunteered to witness the execution of Jesse Tafero, who’d been convicted of killing two police officers. That execution went horrifically awry, and watching it changed the course of Ellen’s life. She left journalism, became a private investigator, and reinvestigated the murders attributed to Jesse Tafero, in an effort to determine whether she’d witnessed the execution of an innocent man. Ellen details her reexamination of the c...
May 19, 2022•36 min•Season 1Ep. 106
What do wild bears and libertarians have in common? Turns out, more than you might think. In 2004 a group of libertarians founded the Free Town Project, a movement to take over a town and turn it into a libertarian utopia. After some research, the Free Towners decided that Grafton, New Hampshire, a town with a history of resistance to taxation that goes back to the American Revolution, seemed like the perfect place for their experiment. Enter investigative reporter Matt Hongoltz-Hetling. Matt wa...
May 12, 2022•36 min•Season 1Ep. 105
This week we’re running an episode from the fabulous podcast, History of Literature, about one of our favorite authors, Jane Austen. Each week on his podcast, literature enthusiast–and dear friend of Book Dreams–Jacke Wilson journeys through the history of literature, from ancient epics to contemporary classics. Recent episodes include conversations about Kafka; about the wonderful world of mysteries; and about poet-novelist Stephen Crane. Here’s Jacke’s description of the episode we’re airing n...
May 05, 2022•1 hr 31 min•Season 1Ep. 104
“My people are from Wisconsin. We used to be from New York. We had a little real estate problem.” -Charlie Hill, comedian and member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. (RE-RELEASE) In this week’s episode, Julie and Eve talk to comedian, writer, and actor Adrianne Chalepah and comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff about Native Americans and comedy. In her conversation with Eve and Julie, Adrianne describes how before becoming a professional comedian, she was kicked out of public school for being a cla...
Apr 28, 2022•52 min•Season 1Ep. 103
In 2011, a 27-year-old Austin Kleon gave a talk to college students outlining a simple list: 10 things he wished someone had told him about being creative when he was their age. Austin posted the advice to his blog after the talk, and the list went viral. A year later, his New York Times bestselling book Steal Like an Artist was born. Now, in 2022, Austin joins returning guest host (and Book Dreams producer) Gianfranco Lentini to muse on the 10th anniversary of the publication of Steal Like an A...
Apr 21, 2022•31 min•Season 1Ep. 102
“When Dostoyevsky was 28, he was arrested in the pre-dawn hours by the Czar's political police. ... [Nine months later] the men were brought out into a square in the middle of St. Petersburg in December. Three men were tied to stakes; there were hoods pulled over their heads. A firing squad came out to aim their rifles. Dostoyevsky was next in line to be executed.” Thus begins our Book Dreams interview this week with Kevin Birmingham, author of The Sinner and the Saint: Dostoevsky and the Gentle...
Apr 14, 2022•44 min•Season 1Ep. 101
We did it! We reached our 100th episode of Book Dreams! In celebration, we went back to our guests and asked them this question: What's one book you love and why do you love it? And so now, have we got book recommendations for you! Twenty-eight beloved books from twenty-four of our beloved guests. From old favorites to new discoveries, from short stories to epic doorstoppers, we’ve got your reading list mapped out for you for at least the next 100 episodes. Enjoy! And thanks, as always, for book...
Apr 07, 2022•46 min•Season 1Ep. 100
It was a story that captured the attention of the public and art critics worldwide: A treasure trove of exceptional photographs was discovered after a storage locker auction in 2007. The then unknown photographer? Vivian Maier, a woman who worked her whole life as a nanny. Even after two documentaries were made about Vivian–one of which, “Finding Vivian Maier,” was nominated for an Oscar–many questions remained about her life and art. After watching “Finding Vivian Maier,” retired executive Ann ...
Mar 31, 2022•40 min•Season 1Ep. 99
Is it possible for one person to write both award-winning literary speculative fiction and Marvel's newest “Captain America” series and also be a former civil rights lawyer, a film school graduate, and be less than 35 years old? If the person in question is author Tochi Onyebuchi, the answer is yes. In this episode, Julie and Eve talk with Tochi about his new novel, Goliath, a sweeping science fiction epic set in a post-apocalyptic America only thirty years from today. They also talk about Tochi...
Mar 24, 2022•38 min•Season 1Ep. 98
How’s this for fun? Take 27 incredible writers–including winners of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, PEN Awards, Women's Prize for Fiction, Edgar Award, and more–and invite each of them to write an erotic short story. Then publish the collection in one steamy anthology with the authors listed alphabetically at the beginning of the book but none of the stories attributed, so nobody knows who wrote what. We're talking about authors Robert Olen Butler, Louise Erdrich, Julia Glass, Rebec...
Mar 17, 2022•26 min•Season 1Ep. 97
“Wussy” European vampires. African folklore and mythology, and how they help establish that “homophobia is not African.” How reading Jackie Collins and Leon Uris during childhood fosters a lifelong passion for books. The structuring of an immersive, propulsive fantasy trilogy. This week on Book Dreams, Eve and Julie discuss all of this and so much more with Marlon James, the powerhouse author of A Brief History of Seven Killings, which won the 2015 Man Booker Prize and was a finalist for the Nat...
Mar 10, 2022•37 min•Season 1Ep. 96
How did a forensic and psychiatric nurse transform the way that the FBI studies, profiles, and catches serial killers? In this week’s episode of Book Dreams, Julie and Eve speak with Dr. Ann Wolbert Burgess, the inspiration for the psychological expert, Wendy Carr, on one of Eve and Julie’s favorite Netflix series, “Mindhunter,” as well as her co-author Stephen Matthew Constantine. In the 1970s a small team of agents in the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit decided to interview convicted serial kill...
Mar 03, 2022•37 min•Season 1Ep. 95
In 2019, a librarian at the Central Library in Bristol, England, uncovered a mystery. Pasted to the bindings of four Renaissance books were scraps of parchment from a medieval manuscript. And on these scraps, written in old French, were two names that have captivated readers for almost a millennium: Merlin and Arthur. In this week’s episode, Eve and Julie talk about the origins and the enduring power of the Arthurian legends with Dr. Laura Chuhan Campbell, part of an interdisciplinary team of sc...
Feb 24, 2022•32 min•Season 1Ep. 94
Can an author write a novel about a classical musician and get all the details right? And can he make that world the backdrop for a gripping contemporary thriller? If the author is Brendan Slocumb, then the answer is a resounding yes. In this episode, Brendan joins Eve and Julie to talk about his debut novel, The Violin Conspiracy, about a concert violinist whose Stradivarius is stolen while he's preparing for one of the most important classical music competitions in the world. A concert violini...
Feb 17, 2022•34 min•Season 1Ep. 93
After hearing New York Times Book Review editor Pamela Paul call Ian Urbina’s The Outlaw Ocean “one of the best narrative non-fiction books by a journalist I've ever read,” we instantly decided to invite Ian on Book Dreams and were thrilled when he accepted. A Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, Ian based The Outlaw Ocean on five years of reporting on the lawlessness of the high seas. We spoke with Ian about atrocities committed at sea–including murder, human trafficking, and enviro...
Feb 10, 2022•50 min•Season 1Ep. 92
If you like hearing about the craft of writing and the writing life, you’ll love this bonus episode from The #AmWriting Podcast. #AmWriting focuses on fun, practical, actionable advice for writers of all kinds, and they have a long history of conducting great interviews with great authors. In this episode, hosts KJ, Sarina, and Jess talk with author Jenny Lawson–whose most recent bestseller is Broken (in the Best Possible Way)–about imposter syndrome, being years late on a deadline, sending your...
Feb 09, 2022•43 min
What does the natural world look like after human beings abandon it? Nuclear waste sites, war zones, slag heaps, ghost towns–journalist Cal Flyn delves into the history and rebirth of these neglected places in her book, Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape. In this episode of Book Dreams, Cal shares with Eve and Julie some of these strange cautionary tales, and how she finds hope and beauty in the devastation. From the wilding of domesticated cows turned feral in...
Feb 03, 2022•33 min•Season 1Ep. 91
“It always looked like the women outside of the church were having the most fun. They were wearing the tight jeans and the heels, and I was like, ‘It's so unfortunate. They're going to hell.’” –Deesha Philyaw Even as a child, author Deesha Philyaw understood that church teachings about women and sexuality didn’t “really align with what we know to be the nuance and the complexity of human experience.” Now, in her debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, Deesha explores the...
Jan 27, 2022•32 min•Season 1Ep. 90
Deep beneath the asphalt streets of New York City lurks a breed of creature that’s haunted the subway’s subterranean labyrinth for over a century. No, it’s not sewer alligators or radioactive rats. Instead, we’re speaking of…bookworms. And documentarian Uli Beutter Cohen has been on the hunt to capture their travels. In 2014, Uli founded the viral Instagram account Subway Book Review, which documents her conversations with subway riders about the books they’re reading. After spending nearly a de...
Jan 20, 2022•29 min•Season 1Ep. 89
“I think a lot about how to map the scale of our own lives against the scale of existence.” –Kathyrn Schulz Not long after Kathryn Schulz fell in love with the woman she would marry, her beloved father died. Now she’s written a memoir, Lost & Found, in which she shares these deeply personal stories and expands them into a consideration of the ways that loss and discovery and joy and grief affect, and intermingle in, all of our lives. In our Book Dreams conversation with Kathryn, we discuss every...
Jan 13, 2022•41 min•Season 1Ep. 88
What are dreams made of? What role can they play in predicting the future, and why? To what extent have they shaped the past? What can we glean when we know the content of our dreams, and what does science have to say about why that is? And should we all be taking naps? In this Book Dreams episode on–you guessed it–a book on dreams, Brazilian neuroscientist and dream researcher Sidarta Ribeiro offers answers to these questions and more. Author of The Oracle of Night: The History and Science of D...
Jan 06, 2022•38 min•Season 1Ep. 87
(RE-RELEASE) What happens when a Harvard professor puts the weight of her reputation behind an alleged ancient gospel with monumental implications for the Roman Catholic Church, and the gospel turns out to be a fake? In 2012, Karen King, the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard’s Divinity School, announced the discovery of a gospel in which Jesus refers to “my wife.” Investigative reporter Ariel Sabar, author of Veritas: A Harvard Professor, a Con Man, and the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife, was pres...
Dec 30, 2021•45 min•Season 1Ep. 86
