It's been four years since the world went into lockdown mode as COVID-19 rapidly spread across the globe. But a new book by political scientist Dali Yang dives into the information about, and mitigation of, the disease in its earliest days in China. In today's episode, Yang speaks with Here & Now's Scott Tong about the research that went into Wuhan , the way local governments and medical officials abstained from disclosing crucial intelligence in the early days, and the strict lockdown that foll...
Apr 03, 2024•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jay, the 17-year-old at the heart of Daniel Kraus' novel Whalefall , has an hour of oxygen left on his tank. He's been diving in the ocean off the coast of Monterey, California trying to recover a skeleton but his mission is complicated when he's swallowed whole by a sperm whale. In today's episode, Kraus speaks with NPR's Ayesha Rascoe about how a book that's so enmeshed in death also reveals quite a lot about life, and how he conceptualized the pacing of his chapters to emphasize Jay's race ag...
Apr 02, 2024•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast Early in today's episode, Here & Now's Scott Tong poses what a lot of activists and listeners might think that the two words titling Akshat Rathi's new book, Climate Capitalism , are at odds with one another. But Rathi says governments can play a role in shifting economic policy to prioritize both profit and environmental protections. In his book and in this interview, he explains how business leaders, students and politicians are already implementing ideas that connect the dots between the clim...
Apr 01, 2024•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today's episode features interviews with two poets whose new works look back in time, either in their own lives or those of their subjects. First, Don Paterson speaks with NPR's Scott Simon about his new memoir, Toy Fights , which recounts his childhood in Scotland. The two get to talking about Paterson's self-described "descent into madness" and the reason his poems go unmentioned in the book. Then, Simon speaks with Michael Ondaatje about A Year of Last Things , and how the Booker Prize-winnin...
Mar 29, 2024•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast The story of Saba, the protagonist of Leo Vardiashvili's novel Hard by a Great Forest , is much like the author's own. A young boy flees the Soviet Republic of Georgia with his father and brother as the country is ravaged by a war. Decades later, when his father goes back to their homeland and promptly disappears, Saba must face his family's past and immense loss in an effort to find him. In today's episode, Vardiashvili tells NPR's Scott Simon about being separated from his own family, and the ...
Mar 28, 2024•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast A new memoir by historian Charles Spencer, 9th Earl Spencer and brother of Princess Diana, details a difficult childhood marked by alleged physical and sexual abuse at Britain's Maidwell Hall in the 1970s. In today's episode, Spencer tells NPR's Scott Simon how childhood naivete thinking his parents were all-knowing authorities who must've known about the school's cruelty when they sent him there prevented him and others from speaking up about what was happening, and why writing A Very Private S...
Mar 27, 2024•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast To listen to Book of the Day sponsor-free and support NPR's book coverage, sign up for Book of the Day+ at plus.npr.org/bookoftheday Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Mar 26, 2024•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast NPR's Sarah McCammon grew up in the white evangelical church and though she left the tradition as an adult, she's continued to cover its ties to Trump's politics closely as a journalist. Her new book, The Exvangelicals , chronicles why so many people like herself have removed themselves from evangelicalism. In today's episode, she speaks with NPR's Ayesha Rascoe about the different breaking points she heard from other defectors from COVID to racial justice and why a decline in people who identif...
Mar 25, 2024•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast Percival Everett is a prolific author his 2001 book Erasure was recently adapted into the Oscar-winning film American Fiction . But his latest book, James , expands on a story readers around the world already know: Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. In today's episode, Everett speaks with NPR's Andrew Limbong about why he wanted to reframe the classic novel from the perspective of the enslaved titular character, why he doesn't think of his new work as a direct response to Twain, and why he doesn't b...
Mar 22, 2024•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tessa Hulls' grandmother, Sun Yi, was a dissident journalist in Shanghai who faced intense political persecution during the Chinese Communist Revolution; she suffered severe mental distress after fleeing to Hong Kong. In today's episode, Hulls tells Here & Now's Scott Tong that her grandmother's trauma often cast a shadow over their family one she had been running away from for years, and one she decided to finally face in her new graphic memoir, Feeding Ghosts . It's a reexamining of Hulls' mat...
Mar 21, 2024•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast Eight young women are competing at the 12th Annual Women's 18 and Under Daughters of America Cup, a boxing competition at the heart of Headshot . Each girl has her reasons for fighting her way to this ring in Reno, Las Vegas and Rita Bullwinkel's debut novel is a searing look inside the mental and physical state of her protagonists. In today's episode, the author speaks with NPR's Scott Simon about how her own childhood as a polo player informed her writing, and why she chose to follow her chara...
Mar 20, 2024•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Christine Blasey Ford says the time leading up to her 2018 testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee and its aftermath is a lot like surfing, venturing out into unknown waters. Her new memoir, One Way Back , recounts her experience coming forward with an accusation that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her in the 1980s. In today's episode, Blasey Ford speaks with NPR's Michel Martin about why she originally wanted to avoid being in the public spotlight, but...
Mar 19, 2024•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast 2034 , the first novel by Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis, chronicled a nuclear conflict between China and the U.S. Now, their sequel 2054 takes a look at the country two decades later. The President is suddenly assassinated giving a speech, which sparks a flood of conspiracy theories, digitally-altered images and horrifying technological discoveries. In today's episode, the authors speak with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly about the relationship between technology and American institutions...
Mar 18, 2024•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today's episode features two retired journalists who've written memoirs reflecting on some of the highs and lows of a career in the industry. First, former Washington Post editor Marty Baron speaks with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly about Collision of Power, covering the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections and the state of media in today's electoral cycle. Then, former NPR producer Peter Breslow joins NPR's Ayesha Rascoe to discuss Outtakes , taking a three-month work trip camping across China and up...
Mar 15, 2024•19 min•Transcript available on Metacast Eight translators from eight countries travel to a Polish forest to begin adapting famed author Irena Rey's newest book into their respective languages. But when Irena Rey disappears, a competitive, ego-fueled search unravels in the surrounding woods and within each person. In today's episode, author Jennifer Croft speaks with NPR's Scott Simon about her new novel, The Extinction of Irena Rey , and how her own experience as an International Booker Prize-winning translator sparked an interest in ...
Mar 14, 2024•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast Before World War I, approximately 2 million Jewish people fled Russia and Eastern Europe for the United States. The Last Ships from Hamburg , a new book by Steven Ujifusa, recounts this time in history with a special focus on three businessmen who facilitated mass emigration: Jacob Schiff, Albert Ballin and J.P. Morgan. In today's episode, Ujifusa speaks with Here & Now's Scott Tong about how anti-immigrant rhetoric in the U.S. looks very similar today to how it did then, and why beyond historic...
Mar 13, 2024•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast Maurice Vellekoop's new graphic memoir, I'm So Glad We Had This Time Together , is named after the song Carol Burnett would close out her show with in the '60s and '70s. But it's also a reflection of some of the author-illustrator's most cherished childhood memories, going shopping in downtown Toronto with his mom. In today's episode, Vellekoop tells NPR's Ayesha Rascoe how that relationship changed as he came to terms with his sexuality something his religious mother did not accept and how his ...
Mar 12, 2024•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast Raquel Toro, the protagonist of Xochitl Gonzalez's new novel, is working on her thesis about a minimalist sculptor when she discovers his all-but-forgotten wife, artist Anita de Monte, died after falling 33 stories from their apartment more than a decade prior. Based on the story of Cuban artist Ana Mendieta, Anita de Monte Laughs Last is an odyssey into ego, power and marriage in the art world. In today's episode, Gonzalez tells NPR's Scott Simon how fiction allowed her to expand on Mendieta's ...
Mar 11, 2024•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tommy Orange's debut novel, There, There , centers several Native American characters grappling with identity in the bustling city of Oakland, California. In today's episode, we revisit a profile of Orange reported by NPR's Lynn Neary in 2018. Then, Orange joins NPR's Scott Simon to discuss his new book Wandering Stars , a sequel to There, There that stretches across time to follow a survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864. Orange explains how an image he saw in a museum in Sweden introduced...
Mar 08, 2024•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast Journalist Kara Swisher, who's been covering the internet and the tech industry for decades, says she's not surprised when people like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk lie to her but what she says they sometimes don't realize is how much they lie to themselves. Her new memoir, Burn Book , recounts what she's learned in conversation with some of the brightest minds in Silicon Valley. In today's episode, Swisher tells NPR's Steve Inskeep that as disillusioned as she is with how much harm the industry has c...
Mar 07, 2024•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Yasheng Huang, a professor of global economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, names four major contributors to China's economy in his new book, The Rise and Fall of the EAST : exams, autocracy, stability and technology. Huang writes that those have been the driving factors of Chinese development dating back to the Sui dynasty, and particularly during the economic boom of the past half-century. But he tells Here & Now's Scott Tong that a declining property sector, a lack of investm...
Mar 06, 2024•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast Lucy Sante says it was a smartphone app that ultimately pushed her to come out to herself and the world as trans in her mid 60s. In her new memoir, I Heard Her Call My Name , the writer and professor chronicles how using the gender swap function on FaceApp ultimately opened a brand new life to her. And she tells NPR's Don Gonyea that though there are a lot of complexities to having that kind of realization later in life, there are also a lot of positive outcomes. To listen to Book of the Day spo...
Mar 05, 2024•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Early in today's episode, NPR's Mary Louise Kelly asks Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Steve Coll why he felt the need to write The Achilles Trap about the Iraq War amidst so many ongoing world conflicts. Coll explains that he hoped enough time had passed to try to answer a lingering question: Why did Saddam Hussein allow the world to believe he harbored weapons of mass destruction when he didn't? Coll's reporting which includes Hussein's own audio recordings unravels decades of tension and miscom...
Mar 04, 2024•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today's episode features two books that capture how cooking, taking care of loved ones, and running a home has sustained women for generations. First, NPR's Scott Simon speaks with Helen Rebanks (who is joined by actor and comedian Nick Offerman) about The Farmer's Wife , which chronicles her life as a homemaker and farmer in England. Then, Here & Now's Celeste Headlee speaks with former Kentucky poet laureate Crystal Wilkinson about Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts , which stretches back into ...
Mar 01, 2024•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast With permission from the Orwell estate, Sandra Newman's latest novel takes place in the same world and with many of the same characters as 1984 , but retold through the eyes of Winston Smith's love interest, Julia . It's a deep exploration of women's experiences under totalitarianism, and as Newman tells NPR's Scott Simon, an appreciation of the original that doubles down on some of Orwell's humor and ability to capture the psyche of fear and unexpected comfort under political tyranny. To listen...
Feb 29, 2024•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Journalist and former CNN anchor Hala Gorani tells NPR's Leila Fadel that she has a whole paragraph queued up to answer a seemingly simple question: Where are you from? Gorani's memoir, But You Don't Look Arab , unpacks her many roots across Istanbul, Syria, France and the U.S. and grapples with how her identity and its impact on her work have been scrutinized for decades. In today's episode, she opens up about why she had to change her name and add a photo of herself to her passport to land a j...
Feb 28, 2024•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Phillip B. Williams' debut novel, Ours , is a sweeping story that takes place in the 19th century. It takes off with a conjuror named Saint who destroys plantations and enslavers, and creates a community of freed people, Ours, that grapples with mysticism, spirituality and liberation over the course of several decades. In today's episode, Williams speaks with NPR's Ari Shapiro about the different interpretations and experiences of freedom in the novel, and the importance of community in the stor...
Feb 27, 2024•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast There's a moment in Carrie Sun's memoir, Private Equity , when she remembers trying to answer a text for her high-pressure hedge fund job while running on the treadmill. It ended poorly and Sun says, looking back, it was a good metaphor for the toll her career was taking on her life. In today's episode, Sun speaks with Here & Now's Scott Tong about the moral, mental and physical sacrifices we normalize for work, and why maybe that's not such a good thing. To listen to Book of the Day sponsor-fre...
Feb 26, 2024•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today's episode focuses on two books about legendary journalists, the business of reporting and the state of the industry today. First, NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Jennet Conant about Fierce Ambition , a biography of war correspondent Maggie Higgins the first woman to win a Pulitzer for foreign correspondence, who also resented being defined by her gender. Then, NPR's Scott Simon asks The New Yorker 's Calvin Trillin about The Lede , an introspection into the realities of being a reporte...
Feb 23, 2024•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast Photojournalist Kate Medley took a road trip across 11 states in the South, documenting the culture of convenience stores and gas stations that serve hot, delicious food. Her new book, Thank You Please Come Again , captures how these establishments serve as important community meeting points across class, ethnic and racial divides. In today's episode, Medley speaks to NPR's Debbie Elliott about how communities of color are playing an important role in this Southern tradition, and how it's manife...
Feb 22, 2024•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
