The titular protagonist of Meredith, Alone has not left her home in three years. In today's episode, author Claire Alexander tells NPR's Scott Simon about the character's self-imposed isolation, and how trauma from earlier in life can leave long-lasting impacts on a person's mental health. And yet Meredith's trauma doesn't define her – so Alexander explains why she wanted to write a story that provided a full scope of what it means to overcome mental and emotional wounds. Learn more about sponso...
Apr 03, 2023•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today's episode is all about family. First, Ann Napolitano speaks with NPR's Scott Simon about her new novel, Hello Beautiful , and the intergenerational trauma that can surface even when everything seems perfect on the outside. Then, Simon asks Jenny Jackson about her funny yet thought-provoking debut, Pineapple Street , which follows three women from a well-off Brooklyn family taking stock of their own privilege. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privac...
Mar 31, 2023•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast Imposter Syndrome and Other Confessions of Alejandra Kim follows a Korean-Argentinian teen's journey to understanding who she is. Through the comfort of her multicultural home in Queens to the hallways of her ultra-woke, elite prep school in Manhattan, Alejandra grapples with academics, the politics of school lunch, and even a microaggression from her own teacher. As author Patricia Park tells Here & Now 's Robin Young, it's a story about how quickly the world is changing – and how conversations...
Mar 30, 2023•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast Debra Lee is one of the most influential women in the entertainment industry. But as the former CEO of Black Entertainment Television reveals in her new book, I Am Debra Lee:A Memoir , there are both personal and professional obstacles to navigating corporate leadership – especially as a Black woman. Lee opens up to Here & Now 's Celeste Headlee about the behind-the-scenes reality of her career, from her friendship with Aretha Franklin to the way she coped with workplace harassment. Learn more a...
Mar 29, 2023•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast The title of Esther Yi's novel Y/N refers to an abbreviation for "your name" as it appears in a type of fan fiction where readers put themselves into a story. It's a way to inhabit another life, which is exactly what Yi's central character wants — but can never have. That tension drives the novel, as it explores loneliness, fandom, and K-Pop. Yi tells NPR's Ailsa Chang how it all fits together. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Mar 28, 2023•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Why does poverty persist in one of the world's wealthiest countries? Because it's profitable, argues sociologist Matthew Desmond, in Poverty, By America. He tells NPR's Ayesha Rascoe why wealthier Americans benefit from forces that keep their fellow citizens from growing richer — forces like predatory financial services, stagnant wages, and rising housing costs. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Mar 27, 2023•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today's episode is all about tech. First, Paul Scharre of the Center for a New American Security speaks with NPR's Ari Shapiro about his new book, Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, and the ways autocratic governments can rely on AI for repressive surveillance tactics. Then, Duke University professor Nita Farahany and NPR's Ailsa Chang discuss a potential nightmare: employers' ability to track worker's brains for productivity. Farahany's new book, The Battle for You...
Mar 24, 2023•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Paris Hilton is ubiquitous with early 2000s pop culture: She graced the cover of magazines, her own reality TV show and even Billboard charts. But the heiress now says she was playing a character – one she built to hide from the trauma she endured earlier in her life. In Paris: The Memoir , Hilton finally takes control of her own narrative. She spoke to NPR's Juana Summers about what made her want to start breaking down the walls between her public persona and her private life, and how paparazzi...
Mar 23, 2023•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Author Dina Nayeri was young when she found out that there's a stark difference between credibility and belief – and it's a disconnect at the center of her new book, Who Gets Believed?: When the Truth Isn't Enough. Nayeri's family came to the U.S. as refugees from Iran in 1979. As she tells NPR's Juana Summers, that asylum process showed her how subjective belief can be – and she explains why, for her, the meaning of believing continued to shift, through faith and vulnerability, even as she was ...
Mar 22, 2023•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai's new novel, Dust Child , takes a closer look at the often-fraught relationships between Vietnamese women and American soldiers during the war. In today's episode, the author tells NPR's Scott Simon how she was always fascinated by the stories of the forgotten children from those relationships – often left behind, abandoned, and raised with a deep resentment for their mixed roots. The novel follows both the perspective of that generation – trying to find a better future – and...
Mar 21, 2023•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Edith Wilson dated and then married Woodrow Wilson while he served as president of the United States in 1915. In her new biography, Untold Power: The Fascinating Rise and Complex Legacy of First Lady Edith Wilson , author Rebecca Boggs Roberts – daughter of the late NPR founding mother Cokie Roberts – explores Wilson's influential role in her husband's administration. But as Roberts tells NPR's Steve Inskeep, at a time when women didn't yet have the right to vote, Wilson often hid her political ...
Mar 20, 2023•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today's episode is all about sports. First, The Athletic reporter Evan Drellich speaks with NPR's A Martinez about his investigation into the Astros' 2017 World Series win and subsequent cheating scandal, which is closely examined in Drellich's new book, Winning Fixes Everything . Then, NPR's Juana Summers sits down with former NFL player Colin Kaepernick to discuss his new graphic memoir, Change the Game , which revisits how growing up idolizing Black football players led Kaepernick to pick tha...
Mar 17, 2023•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast Who would Travis Bickle– the protagonist of the 1976 film Taxi Driver – be today? That question sparked the new novel by Priya Guns, Your Driver Is Waiting . It follows Damani, a queer Tamil ride-share driver who is struggling to pay her bills while people on the street around her protest for cause after cause that she can't seem to keep track of. Then she meets Jolene, who is the epitome of the privilege Damani does not have. As Guns tells NPR's Scott Simon, it's a relationship that forces her ...
Mar 16, 2023•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Katherine May, like so many other people, found herself submerged in anxiety and restlessness during COVID-19 lockdowns. But as cities reopened, she looked for new ways to immerse herself in the awe of the natural world around her. That journey is at the center of her new book, Enchantment . And as she tells NPR's Rachel Martin, her relationship with her faith, prayer and her definition of God played a big role. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy P...
Mar 15, 2023•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ruthy Ramirez, the 13-year-old middle child of a Puerto Rican family in Staten Island, vanished without a trace. But more than a decade later, as the family still feels the weight of her absence, one of her sisters spots a woman who she thinks might be her sister on a reality TV show. In her new novel, What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez , author Claire Jimenez explores the way loss, violence and spectacle impacts the women in the Ramirez family. And as she tells NPR's Ayesha Rascoe, there's a big di...
Mar 14, 2023•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast Margaret Atwood has been writing for a long time – and as she tells NPR's Leila Fadel, the world looks very different today than it did when she started. Her new collection of short stories, Old Babes in the Wood , provides different approaches to the passing of time. There's a couple that's facing the realities of aging; there's a conversation with George Orwell, who Atwood says drastically changed her life; and there's even a parallel reality to the author's 1985 dystopian novel, The Handmaid'...
Mar 13, 2023•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today's episode focuses on two pretty different graphic memoirs. First, artist Kendra Neely – who survived the 2015 shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon – speaks to NPR's Juana Summers about processing the trauma and grief following that day's events in her new memoir, Numb to This. Through illustrations, Neely captures the oversaturation she still feels every time news of a shooting breaks. Then, NPR's Eyder Peralta asks Dan Santat about his memoir First Time for Everything,...
Mar 10, 2023•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Describing home for journalist Gulchehra Hoja is complicated. She's from western China, in the Xinjiang province. But as she tells NPR's Steve Inskeep, she considers the Uyghur region –which was formerly free – her native country. Her new memoir, A Stone Is Most Precious Where It Belongs , navigates the difficult and often painful reality of growing up proud of her heritage but under a Chinese nationalist mindset – and doing work that she says eventually led to her family's arrest. Learn more ab...
Mar 09, 2023•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Patrick Bringley worked in events planning at The New Yorker – until his older brother got diagnosed with cancer and passed away. That loss led to a reimagining of priorities for Bringley, who decided to seek solace in one of the most beautiful places he could think of: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. His new memoir, All the Beauty in the World , retraces his journey to becoming a museum guard and finding refuge in the works of art he saw each day. And as he tells NPR's Scott Simon, he also enco...
Mar 08, 2023•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Beth Moore was raised in the Southern Baptist Convention. As an adult, she went on to become an evangelist, teaching Bible studies to women in arenas around the world. But as she recounts in her new memoir, All My Knotted-Up Life , she grew up feeling a deep shame – and surviving sexual abuse at home – that reached a breaking point with the surfacing of the Donald Trump "Access Hollywood" tape and the investigation into the SBC. As Moore tells NPR's Ayesha Rascoe, those events led her to eventua...
Mar 07, 2023•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast The critically acclaimed poet Camonghne Felix says that people going through breakups are not often treated with the same grace or generosity as those who've experienced self-harm or sexual assault. But in her new memoir, Dyscalculia , she explores the ways romantic pain and loss requires its own kind of grief – and the amount of honesty that it requires to truly heal from heartbreak. In today's episode, she tells NPR's Juana Summers about how she yearned for a book, written by a Black woman, th...
Mar 06, 2023•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today's episode features interviews with two people who've given a lot of thought to capitalism's role in modern society. First, Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks with NPR's Steve Inskeep about his new book, It's OK to be Angry About Capitalism , and how he views the way politicians appeal to the working class – oftentimes, he says, without addressing the root of the problems they're facing. Then, NPR's Michel Martin talks to author Malcolm Harris about his new book, Palo Alto , which details the origi...
Mar 03, 2023•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast Willie Mae Brown was a little girl in Selma, Alabama in the 1960s. In her new YA book, My Selma , she recalls growing up during the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the South. As she tells Here & Now 's Robin Young, those core childhood memories include going to church to see Martin Luther King, Jr. speak – which moved Brown's mother to tears as she held the author – and her siblings getting arrested for trying to accompany teachers who were planning to register to vote. But, she says, the...
Mar 02, 2023•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Early on in The Darker the Night , the debut thriller from NPR producer Martin Patience, an investigative reporter links a murder in Glasgow to a significant political figure: the first minister of the Scottish government. As Patience tells NPR's Scott Simon, the story that ensues draws larger questions about journalists and their sources – particularly within governments and police departments – and how the erosion of local media outlets has impacted the way they're trusted by the communities t...
Mar 01, 2023•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jean D'Amérique says he grew up in a neighborhood where "it was easier to find a gun than a book." But as he tells NPR's Ari Shapiro, falling in love with reading and writing changed the course of his life. His new novel, A Sun to Be Sewn , follows a young protagonist growing up in rough circumstances in Port au Prince: her father's a gang leader, her mother's a sex worker. But she's finding her way through poetry – and as the author explains, the medium can carry a lot of political power for pe...
Feb 28, 2023•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Bozoma Saint John says that the loss of her first daughter, who was born prematurely because of preeclampsia, left deep scars in her relationship with her husband. It contributed to their separation later on – but it also led to a lot of reflection after Saint John's husband's cancer diagnosis brought them back together before he died. These are some of the challenges the former Netflix and Pepsi executive explores in her new memoir, The Urgent Life . As Saint John tells NPR's Asma Khalid, there...
Feb 27, 2023•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today's episode features two children's books that touch on the topic of home in one way or another. First, musician Rhiannon Giddens speaks with NPR's Ailsa Chang about turning the song she wrote during the 2020 racial protests, "Build A House," into a children's book that dives into the complexities of slavery and civil rights in the U.S. Monica Mikai illustrated the book. Then, NPR's Ayesha Rascoe asks Grace Lin and Kate Messner about Once Upon a Book , which follows a little girl's journey a...
Feb 24, 2023•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast Margot Kahn and Kelly McMasters know that wanting is a very particular feeling. What women desire is constantly changing, of course: time, money, sex, new shoes. But as the editors of a new collection of essays, aptly titled Wanting , tell NPR's Ailsa Chang, they were more interested in exploring the process of yearning for something – and the rules we construct around that longing – than the objects that we ultimately do or do not get. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.co...
Feb 23, 2023•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Up With The Sun is the newest historical novel from acclaimed author Thomas Mallon – with a real-life actor at its center. Dick Kallman's career rose and then fizzled out throughout the 1950s and '60s. By the time he and his life partner were murdered in 1980, he was no longer performing. But as the author tells NPR's Scott Simon, Up With The Sun – and Kallman's life, which intersected with stars like Lucille Ball and Dyan Cannon – serves as a window into the world of Broadway, primetime TV, and...
Feb 22, 2023•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Gothataone Moeng says she knows the characters in her collection of short stories, Call and Response . They bear similarities to her sisters, cousins, and aunties – but they're their own reflections of life, love, shame, expectations and joy in Gaborone and Serowe, Botswana. In today's episode, Moeng talks to NPR's Scott Simon about some of the different lessons her protagonists are learning, and how spending time back home in her village after a long time away reopened doors to a rhythm of life...
Feb 21, 2023•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
