Jo Hamya’s new novel, “ The Hypocrite ,” opens as the trap is being laid. Sophia, a 20-something playwright, has invited her father, a famous and provocative British novelist, to come see her new work. As the play begins, he is shocked to realize he recognizes the set. It’s a replica of the kitchen in his vacation home near Sicily. Then the lead actor saunters onstage wearing the author’s favorite shirt and proceeds to have loud sex with a woman he just picked up at a bar. The audience roars. Th...
Aug 30, 2024•58 min•Transcript available on Metacast The first sentence of Frank Bruni’s new book says it all. It reads, “Let me tell you how I’ve been wronged.” More and more Americans are living mired in resentment, says Bruni, convinced that they are losing because someone else is winning. And it’s poison to our collective culture. In his new book, “ The Age of Grievance, ” he writes: “[Grievance] turns everything — beer, M&M’s, Skittles, restaurant chains, theme parks, athletic teams, athletic competitions — into cultural battlefields. For...
Aug 16, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast When A.J. Jacobs decided to immerse himself in early Americana, he didn’t think about the fact that the required wool stockings wouldn’t have elastic. “They would fall down to my ankles,” he laughs. “I had to put on little sock belts every morning. I’ll never get back that time.” But no matter. He was committed to getting into the headspace of the Founding Fathers, because he wanted to better understand the reasoning and the intentionality of America’s foundational document The result is his new...
Aug 08, 2024•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Debut novelist Sarai Johnson created four generations of Black mothers and daughters to tackle the questions that came up in her own life: What does forgiveness look like? Can cycles of trauma be broken? Can a daughter truly leave her mother’s mistakes in the past? “ Grown Women ” expertly probes for answers via the lives of Evelyn, Charlotte, Corinna and Camille. Resentment lingers like a cancer, even as each generation of women struggles to not repeat mistakes that wound. Is it possible for th...
Aug 02, 2024•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast Claire Messud has long wanted to write a novel inspired by her family’s history in Algeria, thanks to a handwritten memoir, more than 1,500 pages long, penned by her paternal grandfather. It was rich with stories and history and photos about her ancestors, who were born in French Algeria but then expelled from their homes in 1962 when Algeria won its independence. Her new novel, “ This Strange Eventful History ,” was inspired by that personal past. It sprawls across generations, geography and ti...
Jul 26, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast New York Times bestselling author Nicola Yoon’s new novel, “One of our Kind,” is one of the most talked about books of the summer. On this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, Yoon joins MPR News host Kerri Miller to talk about what led her to write a book about finding the sinister in a Shangri-La. When does our natural bent to protect and enjoy become destructive? What is the true meaning of community?
Jul 19, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast Lily Chen is not endowed with good fortune — despite the fact that her scientist mother managed to grow a backyard of four-leaf clovers. She doesn’t win raffles or lotteries. She scrapes out a meager living as an unpaid intern with the hopes that it might give her a shot at an entry-level gig. In short: Not lucky. But then a chance encounter upends her life and changes her idea of what fortune really is. Rachel Khong’s new book, “ Real Americans ,” is already a New York Times bestseller and one ...
Jul 12, 2024•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Civil War is remembered for its sweeping battles: Gettysburg, Atlanta, Antietam. Less known are the small troops of men, enlisted by both sides, to fight far from the battlefields. These ruthless soldiers relied on stealth to sneak behind enemy lines — often wearing their opponent’s uniform — and destroyed supply lines, assassinated military officials and gathered critical information. Today, we know this kind of warfare as shadow ops — which is a specialty of military historian Patrick K. O...
Jul 05, 2024•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast Taiyon Coleman has been writing since she was a child. At age 8, she announced to her family that a novel was in the works. Today, she’s a published author and a professor of literature at St. Catherine University. But the road from there to here wasn’t as straight-forward as you might think. Coleman joins host Kerri Miller on Big Books and Bold Ideas this week to talk about what happened in the in-between. Some of it is detailed in her new collection of personal essays, “ Traveling without Movi...
Jun 28, 2024•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast America is steeped in the notion of rugged individualism. It’s comforting to think success is based on our own hard work and self determination. But social scientist Robert Mark Rank says random chance governs far more of our lives that most of us want to admit. This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Rank joins MPR News host Kerri Miller to talk about his new book, “ The Random Factor .” He shares how luck and chance play a crucial role in shaping history, the natural world and our everyday live...
Jun 21, 2024•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast Noor Khan is still reeling from the disintegration of her family when she stumbles across a library cart stacked with books in her new small-town high school. In her heart, she just wants to finish her senior year and get back to Chicago as quickly as possible. But when she learns the books are being removed by a group of parents trying to ban literature they deem as obscene, she is enraged. Will her values force her to act, even if doing so puts a target on her back? Or is the fight not worth t...
Jun 14, 2024•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dystopian novels aren’t known for being hopeful. But that’s exactly what Leif Enger brings to the genre with his new book, “ I Cheerfully Refuse .” The beloved Minnesota author joined MPR News host Kerri Miller at the Sheldon Theatre in Red Wing on June 4 for a special “on the road” version of Talking Volumes. Their conversation revolved around books: the unpredictable journey of writing them, the sometimes haphazard way of finding them, the way a good book leaves a mark that cannot be erased. A...
Jun 07, 2024•1 hr 24 min•Transcript available on Metacast What do you imagine your death will look like? It’s not a morbid or depressing question to Alua Arthur. She’s a death doula, and she firmly believes that giving thought to that question is the key to living a meaningful life. Arthur herself thinks about dying a lot. As she tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, she has detailed plans for what she’d like her deathbed to be like. But more importantly, she says living with an awareness of mortality helps her live with intention...
May 31, 2024•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast Who knew boring could be an asset? In Lea Carpenter’s new spy novel, “ Ilium ,” we meet our young and restless unnamed narrator on a day when she’s urging herself to be less mundane, to take more risks. She has no idea that the spies she’ll soon be working for want her precisely because she’s inexperienced, untested and ordinary. She quickly gets pulled into a high-stakes mission against a target who has a complicated backstory when it comes to American intelligence forces. Carpenter joined spy ...
May 24, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast Birds, bats, freshwater mussels and a small catfish. They all slipped away in 2023 , among the 21 species declared extinct by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Grief is a rational response. So are the questions novelist and conservationist Lydia Millet articulates in her new book, “ We Loved It All .” A blend of memoir and ecological truth-telling, Millet’s first nonfiction work examines what the vanishing will mean for the coming generations and for our sense of self. “No one wants to tell ou...
May 17, 2024•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Big Book and Bold Ideas talks with authors from around the globe. But our favorite moments come when host Kerri Miller sits down with Minnesota writers to talk about story, craft and how calling this state home influences both. This week, we took a look back at some conversations with notable Minnesota authors, including Shannon Gibney, who just won her third Minnesota Book Award, Hmong writer Kao Kalia Yang and not-ashamed-to-be-a-mystery-writer William Kent Krueger....
May 10, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jamie Figueroa’s new memoir, “ Mother Island ” is stylistically unique. She combines prose and creative nonfiction, myth and short stories to explore her memories. But the heart of the book — her push-pull relationship with her mother and her process of uncovering a true self — is as old as time. Figueroa’s mother was taken from Puerto Rico as a young child and raised in a New York City orphanage, separated from her native language, culture and ancestry. As many immigrants before her, she learne...
May 03, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast Alexandra Fuller’s new memoir begins with the death of her 21-year-old son, Fi, and chronicles her attempts to grieve well in the searing aftermath of his loss. Among other things, that meant acknowledging her kinship with others who had gone before her. In her gorgeous new book, “Fi: A Memoir of My Son,” she writes: “The way a pilot sees wind and clouds, or a sailor reads currents and water, I look unconsciously for stories to remind me where I am, to remind me that, whatever I’m going through,...
Apr 26, 2024•58 min•Transcript available on Metacast Danny Ryan doesn’t see himself as ambitious — which is surprising, seeing as he’s both stolen and made millions. But in his mind, he’s just an average guy trying to survive in a world that would rather he not. Ryan is the central character of Don Winslow’s sweeping crime trilogy that draws parallels to movies like “The Godfather” and “Goodfellas.” Readers first met Ryan as a mid-level Irish-American mobster in New England in “ City on Fire ,” which came out in 2022. One year later, Winslow relea...
Apr 19, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast Americans overwhelmingly support gender equality. But not as many see themselves as feminists . Elizabeth Cobbs says that’s because we don’t know our history. Her latest book, “ Fearless Women ,” chronicles how the fight for women’s rights began at the founding of our country, when Abigail Adams urged her husband to “remember the ladies” (and her plea was met with laughter), and continues through today. Cobbs argues that women’s rights and democracy itself are intertwined, that as rights were af...
Apr 12, 2024•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast Myriam J. A. Chancy spent her childhood in Haiti and then moved with her family to Winnipeg. But those island roots shaped who she became and inspired her latest novel, “ Village Weavers .” It follows a complicated female friendship that spans decades and countries. Growing up in 1940s Port-au-Prince, Gertie and Sisi are enthralled with each other — until their families discover a secret and force them apart. As girls, they didn’t understand why. But as they grow and weave in and out of each oth...
Apr 05, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast When Kao Kalia Yang’s mother was a child growing up in Laos, she lived a comfortable life. Her father was a prosperous merchant. She was the only Hmong girl in the village to go to school. She felt valued. The war changed all that. Hunted by North Vietnamese soldiers, Yang’s maternal family had to flee into the jungle and live a desperate existence for years. Eventually, her mother met a boy also in hiding, and they married. She was 16. It was an extraordinary chapter in her mother’s remarkable ...
Mar 29, 2024•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast What do you see, hear and experience when you drop miles into the deepest parts of the ocean? For journalist Susan Casey, it was transformative — even emotional. Her latest book, “The Underworld,” is a homage to the abyss and the scientists who explore it. She also describes her own dives in deep-sea submersibles, through the oceanic “ twilight zone ,” which is rich with bioluminescent creatures, down to depths of 5,000 meters, where utter darkness still teems with life. Casey joined MPR News ho...
Mar 22, 2024•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you’ve ever struggled to remember where you set down your phone, or how you know the person you just ran into at the grocery store, you’re not alone. Everyday forgetfulness is a part of living — and of aging. But for neuroscientist Charan Ranganath, more compelling than what we remember is why we remember. “The human brain is not a memorization machine; it's a thinking machine,” he writes in his new book “ Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters .” Rangana...
Mar 15, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Transcript available on Metacast At the center of Tommy Orange’s new novel sits a family nearly destroyed. It’s suffering the long-term effects of government-ordered separation, from decades of displacement and neglect, and from the white American philosophy best summed up by the phrase: Kill the Indian, save the man. It’s a theme familiar to readers who loved Orange’s first novel, “ There There .” In fact, “ Wandering Stars ” functions as both a prequel and a sequel to that best-seller. Orange joined MPR News Host Kerri Miller...
Mar 08, 2024•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast In many ways, the COVID-19 pandemic was public health’s finest hour. Millions of lives were saved, thanks to isolation measures. Vaccines were developed in record time. Systems were developed for contract tracing and testing. But it was also an apocalyptic moment for a system under strain. As a result, trust in doctors and scientists has plummeted. A recent Pew Research Center poll found that Americans who say they have a great deal of confidence in scientists dropped from 39 percent in 2020 to ...
Mar 01, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week, Big Books and Bold Ideas is launching an election year series that asks: What is American democracy in 2024? Americans come to that question with significantly different views. And what American democracy was when this country was founded isn’t necessarily what it is today or what it will be in the future. Democracy is dynamic. Heather Cox Richardson spends a lot of time thinking about democracy. She’s a historian and the force behind the most popular newsletter on Substack , with mor...
Feb 23, 2024•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast MPR News host Kerri Miller has never skirted the topic of faith. On her former weekday show, she regularly dialoged with leaders like Jenan Mohajir from Interfaith America, activist and author Anne Lamott , theologian Jemar Tisby , Sister Joan Chittister , and evangelical disrupter Rachel Held Evans . She even did a year-long series with women from a variety of faith backgrounds in 2019. So it seemed fitting, during the 2024 winter member drive, to return to this theme and remember a few of the ...
Feb 16, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast Choices made in a moment reverberate for generations, despite best intentions. Vanessa Chan adeptly explores this concept in her debut novel, “ The Storm We Made ” — a work of historical fiction set in her home country of Malaysia, which was inspired by stories her grandmother would tell. The main character is Cecily, a discontented housewife in 1930s Malaya, who is charmed into becoming a spy for the Japanese during the British occupation. She is increasingly disillusioned with the colonizing f...
Feb 09, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast Women spies pop up in Hollywood movies all the time. But as Liza Mundy’s new book reveals, it took determined persistence, personal risk and a lot of sacrifice for women to be welcomed as CIA operatives. “The Sisterhood” is a meticulously researched, seven-decade history of women who worked behind the scenes at America’s premier foreign intelligence agency. Mundy details how women opened up new avenues of recruiting for assets, formed a team that uncovered a Russian mole operating within the age...
Feb 02, 2024•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
