Marcia Franklin talks with author Yiyun Li about her works, including her recent novel, Kinder Than Solitude. Li, who came to the U.S. in 1996, originally studied to be an immunologist but fell in love with writing. In addition to many awards for her fiction, Li received a MacArthur “Genius Grant.” She discusses her life, the themes of her books, and why she only writes in English. Don’t forget to subscribe, and visit the Dialogue website for more conversations that matter. Originally Aired: 10/...
May 09, 2021•29 min
Marcia Franklin talks with David Epstein, an award-winning sports journalist and author of the bestselling book The Sports Gene. It delves into the controversial research on what role genetics plays in the development of athletic talent. The book also takes on the so-called “10,000 Hour Rule,” which contends that 10,000 hours of practice can produce mastery in a field, including sports. Don’t forget to subscribe, and visit the Dialogue website for more conversations that matter. Originally Aired...
May 02, 2021•29 min
Known for elevating the “ordinary” with her keen observations, including life in Latino and Arab communities, Palestinian-American poet Naomi Shihab Nye is the author or editor of more than 30 works of poetry, fiction and essays. Her books include Words Under the Words; Red Suitcase; Fuel; You and Yours; Never in a Hurry; Habibi; A-maze Me; Honeybee; and 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, which was nominated for the National Book Award. Nye, whose father was a journalist, gleans ...
Apr 25, 2021•29 min
S.C. "Sam" Gwynne is the author of Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2011, a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and the winner of both the Texas and Oklahoma Book Awards. It paints the epic story of the Comanches, whose territory comprised an estimated 250,000 square miles of the American Plains, an area now part of five states. It also draws the more i...
Apr 18, 2021•29 min
Amy Waldman, a former reporter for The New York Times, discusses her bestselling novel The Submission, which tells the fictional tale of Mohammad “Mo” Khan, a secular Muslim who wins a competition to design a memorial honoring the victims of a terrorist attack similar to 9/11. When the jury members discover who’ve they’ve selected, some try to change the result. But the decision is leaked to the press, resulting in outrage not over the selection of Khan, but over his entry, which includes a gard...
Apr 11, 2021•29 min
Marcia Franklin talks with author Alexandra Fuller about her works, her life and her writing philosophy. Fuller was raised in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Malawi and Zambia, and her reminiscences of growing up in war-torn Africa with her hardscrabble parents form the basis of two memoirs, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood (2002) and Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness (2011). In the books, she details her growing awareness not only of the manic depression and alcohol...
Apr 04, 2021•29 min
Marcia Franklin talks with author and former journalist Kati Marton. She describes the experience of researching her book Enemies of the People, which chronicles her effort to learn more about her parents. They were imprisoned by the Hungarian government during the Cold War for their work as reporters for American news outlets. Released after nearly two years, her parents fled to the United States, where they lived out their lives and never discussed their ordeal. Years after their deaths, Marto...
Mar 28, 2021•29 min
Marcia Franklin talks with Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin . Called the "first great 9/11 novel" and winner of the 2009 National Book Award for fiction, the novel weaves together the stories of fictional characters all living in New York City in 1974 during the week Philippe Petit made his famous tightrope walk between the Twin Towers. Although the book barely mentions the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, it is considered an homage to that day and its effect on the count...
Mar 21, 2021•29 min
When a Tunisian street vendor set himself on fire in December 2010 to protest treatment by a police officer, he set off an unlikely chain of uprisings throughout the region, now dubbed as the “Arab Spring.” Marcia Franklin talks with Suzanne Maloney, an expert on Iran who was at the time a scholar at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, about how uprisings in the Middle East affect the United States. Maloney is now a vice president of Brookings and director of it...
Mar 14, 2021•29 min
Host Marcia Franklin talks with historian David Kennedy about Depression-era policies and whether they have parallels to the modern financial crisis. Kennedy, professor emeritus at Stanford University, is known for integrating both economic and cultural analyses in his works about particular historical eras, as he did in Freedom from Fear , a book about the Great Depression in the United States. That book won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000. Kennedy is also the author of several other books, includin...
Mar 07, 2021•29 min
Host Marcia Franklin talks with Strobe Talbott, a former journalist and diplomat who was the president of the Brookings Institution from 2002 to 2017. Talbott, who wrote for Time magazine for more than 20 years, has also penned a dozen books. Franklin and Talbott talk about his passion for the subject of global warming, and whether the issue is still on the political radar for politicians and the public. His book, Fast Forward: Ethics and Politics in the Age of Global Warming , suggests politica...
Feb 28, 2021•29 min
Host Marcia Franklin talks with author and world traveler Pico Iyer, whose books and essays about the far corners of the world explore not just the dynamics of those cultures, but also travel itself and its effect on an "outsider." Iyer's many books include: Video Night in Kathmandu , The Lady and the Monk , Falling off the Map and The Global Soul . His most recent book when Franklin interviewed him, The Open Road , is about the life and philosophy of the Dalai Lama, who was a friend of Iyer's f...
Feb 21, 2021•29 min
Host Marcia Franklin talks with former child soldier Ishmael Beah, whose bestselling book, A Long Way Gone , details his harrowing experiences in the 1990s when he fought with the government-backed army in Sierra Leone as a teenager during a brutal civil war. Beah fled attacking rebels in his homeland at age 12 and was later picked up and forced to serve in the government army. He was eventually released by the army and sent to a UNICEF rehabilitation center. Franklin and Beah talk about how he ...
Feb 14, 2021•29 min
Host Marcia Franklin talks with author and New Yorker magazine writer Philip Gourevitch about the stories he's covered, including the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. The two discuss what lessons Gourevitch thinks can be learned from these events, and why he is often drawn to subjects that make others look away. In The Ballad of Abu Ghraib , Gourevitch pieced together transcripts of interviews filmmaker Errol Morris conducted with soldiers who were accused of torturin...
Feb 07, 2021•29 min
Host Marcia Franklin talks with Dr. Abraham Verghese, a professor at the Stanford School of Medicine and an author of both fiction and non-fiction works. They discuss not only the themes of his work, but also his thoughts on healthcare reform and ways for doctors to establish better working relationships with their patients. Verghese's first book, My Own Country , was a poignant chronicle of how his life was changed by working with AIDS patients in rural Tennessee. It was a finalist for the Nati...
Jan 31, 2021•29 min
Host Marcia Franklin talks with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gretchen Morgenson, then a financial editor and columnist at the New York Times who covered the country's financial crisis since its inception. They discuss the federal government's push to increase home ownership, which Morgenson sees as the underpinning of the financial collapse. The two also talk about various taxpayer-funded bailouts of companies such as AIG, and whether Morgenson sees any light at the end of the tunnel for th...
Jan 24, 2021•29 min
Writer Ethan Watters joins Marcia Franklin to discuss the themes in his book, Urban Tribes , which looks at the ways in which young, unmarried Americans create their own sense of family. Ethan Watters has written about psychiatry and social psychology for 20 years. He has also taught writing at Berkeley, Stanford, and California College of the Arts. In 1994 he co-founded the San Francisco Writers' Grotto. In addition to several books, he's written about social trends for publications from Esquir...
Jan 17, 2021•29 min
Marcia Franklin talks with Indian politician, author and former U.N. Under-Secretary-General Dr. Shashi Tharoor. They discuss his revealing look at India's role in the global economy, The Elephant, The Tiger, and The Cell Phone: The Transformation of India in the 21st Century . After talking with Franklin, Tharoor was elected to the Indian Parliament in 2009 to represent the Thiruvananthapuram constituency in the Indian state of Kerala. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast and visit the Dial...
Jan 10, 2021•29 min
Marcia Franklin talks with John Hockenberry, a longtime journalist who was the program director for the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference. They discuss his view on changes in the media world, as well as advances in adaptive technology for disabled people. Hockenberry became a paraplegic in an auto accident as a teenager, but that didn't keep him from reporting all over the world. He recorded those wheelchair-piloted adventures in his 1995 book, Moving Violations - War Zones, Wheelchairs and Declara...
Jan 03, 2021•29 min
Host Marcia Franklin talks with New Yorker writer George Packer, who has been to Iraq six times. Packer discusses his book on the subject, The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq , which the New York Times named one of the ten best books of 2005. He also talks with Franklin about the changing political landscape at home in America. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast and visit the Dialogue website for more conversations that matter! Originally Aired: 10/05/2008 The interview is part of Dialogu...
Dec 27, 2020•28 min
Idaho Public Television host Marcia Franklin interviews Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Haynes Johnson about his nonfiction book, The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism , in which he examines the parallels between the McCarthy era of the 1950s and today's post 9-11 political arena. He also offers his views on Fidel Castro’s place in Cuba, and opines about the current states of journalism and education. Don’t forget to subscribe, and visit the Dialogue website for more conversations that ma...
Dec 20, 2020•28 min
After the 9/11 attacks, were Americans any safer five years later? Marcia Franklin asks that question of counterterrorism expert Juliette Kayyem, who also discusses the recommendations of a report she co-authored, "Preserving Security and Democratic Freedoms on the War in Terrorism." Don't forget to subscribe, and visit the Dialogue website for more conversations that matter! Originally Aired: 09/14/2006 The interview is part of Dialogue’s series, "Conversations from the Sun Valley Writers' Conf...
Dec 13, 2020•29 min
Idaho Public Television host Marcia Franklin talks with Thomas Cahill, the former director of religious publishing at Doubleday and the author of The Hinges of History, a seven-volume series that examines the transitional moments in Western civilization. They discuss several of the volumes, including How the Irish Saved Civilization , The Gift of the Jews , Why the Greeks Matter and The World Before and After Jesus, as well as the commonalities we have with ancient civilizations. Don't forget to...
Dec 06, 2020•29 min
Firoozeh Dumas, the Iranian-born humorist and author of Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America, talks with Marcia Franklin about growing up as an Iranian immigrant in California after the Iranian Revolution, why she felt it was so important to write her memoir, and the role of humor in her life. Don't forget to subscribe, and visit the Dialogue website for more conversations that matter! Originally Aired: 12/22/2005 The interview is part of Dialogue’s series, "Conversations fr...
Nov 29, 2020•29 min
The recipient of the coveted Caldecott Medal, David Macaulay is the creator of children’s books that explain how architectural wonders such as pyramids and cathedrals were built. He and host Marcia Franklin discuss his show, “Building Big,” his books Cathedral and Mosque, and his philosophy on modern architecture. Don't forget to subscribe, and visit the Dialogue website for more conversations that matter! Originally Aired: 12/15/2005 The interview is part of Dialogue’s series, "Conversations fr...
Nov 22, 2020•29 min
Idaho Public Television host Marcia Franklin talks with Robert MacNeil, the veteran journalist, author, and former co-host of the NewsHour on PBS. MacNeil, who was born in Canada, talks about becoming an American, how the news profession changed over the course of his career, and his love for the English language. Don't forget to subscribe, and visit the Dialogue website for more conversations that matter! Originally Aired: 12/08/2005 The interview is part of Dialogue’s series, "Conversations fr...
Nov 15, 2020•29 min
Idaho Public Television host Marcia Franklin talks with award-winning Australian author Thomas Keneally about his novel Schindler's Ark , which was the basis for the Oscar-winning movie, Schindler's List . They discuss his experiences researching and writing the book, as well as his thoughts on adapting the story to film with Steven Spielberg. They also take a peek at Keneally’s next book, The Commonwealth of Thieves: The Story of the Founding of Australia. Don't forget to subscribe, and visit t...
Nov 08, 2020•29 min
Marcia Franklin talks with Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), the last of the so-called "Big Six" leaders of the African-American civil rights movement. Don’t forget to subscribe, and visit the Dialogue website for more conversations that matter! Originally Aired: 11/14/2014 Lewis was the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from 1963 to 1966, and played a seminal role in some of the 56 most important activities of the movement, including the Freedom Rides, the march from Selma ...
Nov 01, 2020•46 min
In the lead-up to the November 2016 elections, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham joined Dialogue host Marcia Franklin to talk about presidential character. Meacham talks with Franklin about the qualities he believes are essential to being a successful president, and the unique nature of the 2016 presidential race. An executive editor at Random House, Meacham is well-known for his appearances on political discussion programs. He started his journalistic career at the Chattanooga Times and...
Oct 25, 2020•29 min
Host Marcia Franklin talks with investigative journalist Jane Mayer, the author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Mayer, a staff writer for The New Yorker, worked for more than three years on the book, an expansion of an article she wrote on Charles and David Koch for The New Yorker in 2010. The two brothers, the scions of Koch Industries, have spent decades funding conservative candidates and causes. In her book, Mayer traces the history...
Oct 18, 2020•29 min
