Today nearly three years after the attack on the US Capitol my guest is American hero, Aquillino Gonell, author of the new book American Shield: The Immigrant Sergeant Who Defended Democracy. You know Staff Sergeant Gonell as one of the brave members of the Capitol Police who defended our country and our constitution when insurrectionist mobs attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021. You saw Sergeant Gonell testify in July of 2021 at a televised Congressional hearing. At the witness table ...
Jan 07, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 59
Welcome back to Booked Up, a podcast that features you, me and our favorite authors. We release a new episode every Sunday morning. Today for the December book club, we are discussing Norman Lear, the Hollywood legend who passed this month at the young age of 101. There are gazillion people who have a thing or two to say about this ground-breaking writer, director, producer, activist. So, to anchor our conversation, Jen selected his best-selling memoir Even This I Get to Experience , published b...
Dec 31, 2023•57 min•Ep. 58
Rob Verchick, author of the award-winning new book, The Octopus in the Parking Garage: A Call for Climate Resilience is Jen’s guest today. Why this unusual title? As he describes: “One morning in Miami Beach, an unexpected guest showed up in a luxury condominium complex’s parking garage: an octopus. The image quickly went viral. But the octopus—and the combination of infrastructure quirks and climate impacts that left it stranded—is more than a funny meme. It’s a potent symbol of the disruptions...
Dec 24, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 57
Today we are doing Jen’s favorite thing: following the big dirty money. This time the focus is on the world of private equity. Those two words together sound ever so restrained and elite, even contained. In reality though the world of private equity is rough and destructive and affects all of us from patients seeking health care to workers losing their jobs. There are more than $10 trillion in private equity assets under management. And many public pension funds as well as ordinary members of th...
Dec 17, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 56
Chuck Collins, author of several works of nonfiction including The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions is Jen’s guest today. They mostly discuss his debut novel, Altar to an Erupting Sun , a near-future story of one community facing climate disruption came out this May. “My bologna has a first name, it’s O-S-C-A-R. My bologna has a second name, it’s M-A-Y-E-R….” Listeners of a certain age will remember that television ad jingle from their childhoods. Chuck Collins al...
Dec 10, 2023•54 min•Ep. 55
Today Jen’s guest is Orly Lobel, author of the recent book THE EQUALITY MACHINE: Harnessing Digital Technology for a Brighter, More Inclusive Future. Orly just sold the film rights to her book on Barbie to CBS Studios. The book is called YOU DON’T OWN ME: How Mattel v. MGA Entertainment Exposed Barbie's Dark Side. The book and the CBS production will follow the parallel journeys of Barbie inventor Ruth Handler and Bratz creator Carter Bryant. “Inspiration exists; it must find you working.” Picas...
Dec 03, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 54
For our special book club episode today, we are discussing the new bestselling memoir – THE WOMAN IN ME by pop icon Britney Spears. As you know, Britney is a multiplatinum, Grammy-Award winning entertainer. She has sold an incredible 100 million records worldwide. She released her new book THE WOMAN IN ME around two years after she got free from the abusive and legally questionable 13 year long conservatorship during which her father and his team controlled her every move, every morsel, and ever...
Nov 26, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 53
Today Jen’s guest is Taylor Lorenz, author of the new book, Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet . Together they discussed many topics including the controversy around mommy bloggers and the credit due to Julia Allison and other women social media pioneers. Taylor Lorenz is the sometimes controvesial, never boring technology columnist for the business section of the Washington Post, covering online culture and the content creator industry. She was prev...
Nov 19, 2023•58 min•Ep. 52
Today Jen’s guest is journalist, filmmaker, author, and activist Andrea Chalupa. You know Andrea from her award-winning podcast Gaslit Nation that she founded with Sarah Kendzior. Fake populism. Demonizing the press. Scapegoating. Propaganda. Personal militia. All ingredients for a successful dictatorship and topics of their conversation. Andrea and Sarah collaborated on the book we are discussing today called DICTATORSHIP: IT’S EASIER THAN YOU THINK. They describe DICTATORSHIP as “a wild ride s...
Nov 12, 2023•57 min•Ep. 51
Film star Illeana Douglas is Jen’s guest today. Ileana is the author of the gorgeous new book: Connecticut in the Movies: From Dream Houses to Dark Suburbia . This spans around 100 years from the silent film era up through the early 21st Century. This beautiful coffee table book is filled with delicious never-before-seen movie stills and back lot stories. Illeana has starred in too many films to mention. You know her from the movies including Cape Fear, Ghost of My Heart, Good Fellas, and To Die...
Nov 05, 2023•58 min•Ep. 50
Today for the October book club, Jen Taub’s friends, authors Jennifer Rubin and Brian Karem discuss Cassidy Hutchinson’s new best-selling memoir, ENOUGH. Is Cassidy Hutchinson a heroic champion of the truth or just another Trump Administration insider who could have spoken sooner when it really mattered? Does the story she tells in ENOUGH make readers more empathic or more resentful? These questions and more are the focus of Jen’s conversation today with Jen and Brian. Unless you have been livin...
Oct 29, 2023•55 min•Ep. 49
The hilarious self-named “progressive hillbilly” comedians Trae Crowder and Corey Ryan Forrester are Jen’s guests today. They co-authored the super-funny book Round Here and Over Yonder. I’m just going to steal their bios right from their book because nothing I could say would compare. Trae Crowder grew up in Celina, TN, a town sometimes described as having “more liquor stores than traffic lights” (2-0 as of the last count). He first cained national attention for his “Liberal Redneck” series of ...
Oct 22, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 48
Zeke Faux, author of the new bestseller, Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall is Jen’s guest today. Of all the books, and scholarly articles, and news stories, and blog posts, and legal complaints and, you get the idea… on crypto, Number Go Up is truly the first one to pull everything together in one place. And that result is something immensely entertaining and informative. And to be clear, this is not a condemnation of those other works, readers can learn so much from. I...
Oct 15, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 47
Author Michael Lewis joins Jen Taub today to talk about Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon , his new book that focuses on Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto-wunderkind who is now on trial on federal criminal charges including wire fraud, securities fraud, commodities fraud, and money laundering. Though Michael needs no introduction, here’s one anyway. You know Michael from his numerous bestselling works of narrative nonfiction. You may in fact be someone like John Williams of the New Y...
Oct 08, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 46
We are extraordinarily grateful that historian and biographer Dr. Helen Fry made time for us right as her latest book Women in Intelligence : The Hidden History of Two World Wars was released in the UK and is poised to launch in the United States. This new book is filled with intrigue hidden in plain sight. Spies recruited at cafés, ordinary women bicycling around town passing along messages to help the Allies, secret codes knit into jumpers (that’s the British English word for what we Americans...
Oct 01, 2023•51 min•Ep. 45
Believe or not, this month’s Booked Up Book Club is TUCKER, the book, the man, the walking grievance machine. It’s true, Jen read Chadwick Moore’s authorized biography of Tucker Carlson. And joining her are Rick Wilson and Martin Pengelly, to talk about it so you don’t have to. Rick Wilson is a longtime Republican political strategist, award-winning ad-maker, and political commentator (and fifth generation Florida man). In 2015, Rick emerged as one of the earliest and most vocal critics of Donal...
Sep 24, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 44
Ali Velshi is Jen’s guest today. You know him as an anchor and business correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC. His show Velshi appears every Saturday and Sunday from 10 - noon. Ali is also the host of the podcast Velshi Banned Book Club. And, in keeping with the focus of Booked Up, Ali is a nonfiction author himself. He wrote Gimme My Money Back and co-authored How to Speak Money. Plus he has several new books forthcoming. On September 25th, is the publication date for The Trump Indictments comes...
Sep 17, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 43
Hadley Vlahos is the author of the bestelling new book The In-Between: Unforgettable Encounters During Life’s Final Moments . She is a hospice registered nurse, mother, and wife. Hadley’s husband Chris also works in the medical field as a doctor of physical therapy. She started her career as a registered nurse at twenty-two. Today as a hospice nurse, she now visits people at their home while also educating and sharing stories about hospice care on social media, where she has 1.6 million follower...
Sep 10, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 42
In this haunting new book, LAWYER, JAILER, ALLY, FOE, Eric L. Muller brings into vivid color a world that is largely forgotten paper records. It’s no wonder that his book caught the attention of novelist John Grisham whose praise appears on the cover: “A fascinating and detailed account of one of America’s darkest chapters.” Eric’s accomplishments with this work cannot be overstated. He made a complex topic emotionally moving by unearthing the stories of three men who worked as lawyers inside of...
Sep 03, 2023•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 41
Donald Trump is the subject of our book club today. Trump is not known to be a big reader or even an author – his most popular book Art of the Deal , was ghost written by Tony Schwarz, as you probably know. Nevertheless, our book club episode today focuses on him. Not a book, but on the day he got booked up in Georgia. We recorded this episode on Thursday, August 24th, just hours before Mr. Trump was scheduled to surrender at a jail in Georgia. He will be there to answer to thirteen charges brou...
Aug 27, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 40
Pulitzer-Prize winning writer Connie Schultz is Jen’s guest today. Connie is the author of two memoirs. Her first Life Happens: And Other Unavoidable Truths and second …And His Lovely Wife: A Memoir from the Woman Beside the Man. Connie made her fiction debut in 2020 with her New York Times bestselling novel The Daughters of Erietown . And this coming February the youngest readers can welcome into the world her first children’s book, Lola and the Troll. Formerly a columnist at The Plain Dealer i...
Aug 20, 2023•57 min•Ep. 39
Brandon Wolf, author of the memoir A Place for Us joins Jen on Booked Up today. Brandon is a survivor of the 2016 horric domestic terror attack at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida where his best friends, Drew Leinonen and Juan Guerrero, and 47 others were murdered. Brandon has honored the victims’ legacies with action, advocating for LGTBQ+ civil rights and gun-safety reform. Today Brandon is the press secretary for Equality Florida. Brandon’s memoir is beautifully-written and incredibly movi...
Aug 13, 2023•58 min•Ep. 38
Today’s Booked Up guest is Allyson McCabe, author of the deeply felt, carefully researched book, Why Sinéad O’Connor Matters , which was published in May two months before the musician’s passing. Allyson interviewed Sinéad for NPR in 2021 in connection with her autobiography Rememberings . As guitarist and songwriter Vernon Reid wrote, “Acknowledging that Sinéad's life story can be a difficult, contradictory mess, McCabe painstakingly relates this magnificent, irreplaceable artist's tale to her ...
Aug 06, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 37
Today is all about BARBIE. The new film, the doll, the legend. Too much hype? No, not enough. This month’s new blockbuster film directed by Greta Gurwig starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling has more than just the best one-liners “She’s everything. He’s just Ken.” It also provides theater audiences the opportunity to share howls of laughter delight about the humorous send up of the patriarchy, and also sob openly about what our lives could have been if more girl’s imaginations were able to flo...
Jul 30, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 36
Jen’s guest today is Ben McKenzie, author of the new book EASY MONEY: CRYPTOCURRENCY, CASINO CAPITALISM, AND THE GOLDEN AGE OF FRAUD. In this incredibly fast-paced, relatable book, Ben, joined by journalist Jacob Silverman, takes us on a journey into the dark side of crypto. You don’t need any kind of expertise to follow along. Plus, even if you’ve been around the bitcoin block before, you will appreciate the jaw-dropping encounters with the key players including FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (befor...
Jul 23, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 35
Jen’s guest today is Professor Scott J. Shapiro, author of the new book FANCY BEAR GOES PHISHING. That’s phishing with a PH. But Fancy with an F, as in Fancy Bear, the Russian hack. Subtitled THE DARK HISTORY OF THE INFORMATION AGE, IN FIVE EXTRAORDINARY HACKS. With this book, Scott hopes “that these true-crime stories – some accidental, some not – will engage readers who have little or not prior interest in technology and equip them to read beyond the headlines.” You know Scott from his famous ...
Jul 16, 2023•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 34
Kathy Griffin is Jen’s guest today. They cover everything from her life on the D-List to her cameo in Pulp Fiction (while she was dating Quentin Tarantino) to how Donald Trump tried to destroy her, to her SOLD OUT show in Vegas at the Mirage. Plus a chills and ugly cry-induscing story about Stevie Nicks. No spoilers. You’ll have to listen. Kathy is “The Gays” favorite two-time-Emmy and Grammy award winning comedian. (Half-way to an EGOT). And, Kathy made the Guiness Book of World Records. That i...
Jul 09, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 33
This week Jen’s guest is Adam Benforado, author of the compelling new book A Minor Revolution: How Prioritizing Kids Benefits Us All . The Atlantic said A Minor Revolution is “An extremely sympathetic and worthy attempt to protect kids…. [this is] a book that reads like a manifesto. His ideas are bold, to the point, and ambitious.” Salon praised Adam’s work as “Ambitious . . . His unifying argument is anti-inertial. . . . The book blew my mind.” And friend of the podcast, Heather McGhee (author ...
Jul 02, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 32
As featured in The New York Times , Mary Trump and E. Jean Carroll are collaborating with Jen on a serialized romance novel called THE ITALIAN LESSON. Mary is writing the novel, Jen is editing, and E. Jean is advising and responding to readers’ questions. The trio is releasing Mary’s novel in segments on backstoryserial.com (which is on Substack). You can read everything in one place through chapter two by linking: https://www.backstoryserial.com/p/the-italian-lesson . Get a taste of the ITALIAN...
Jun 25, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 31
They kvetched, they kvelled, they talked about Hitler. Naturally. What did you expect? This week Jen’s guest is two-time Emmy-Award winning comedian Judy Gold. Judy fit Booked Up into her busy schedule. This spring she finished her one-woman show called, “Yes, I can Say That”, based on her similarly titled book Yes, I Can Say That: When They Come for the Comedians, We Are All in Trouble . The New York Times called Judy’s show “A deliberately uncomfortable, laugh-packed show seeded with stealth m...
Jun 18, 2023•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 30
