The definitive account of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the tragic legacy of Timothy McVeigh, leading to the January 6 insurrection, comes from jourrnalist Jeffrey Toobin (The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court,The Run of His Life: The People vs. O.J. Simpson). In Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right Wing Extremism , Toobin has combed nearly a million previously unreleased tapes, photographs, and documents, including detailed communications between McVeigh and hi...
Apr 30, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast Poets Clint Smith and Terisa Siagatonu address issues like climate change, while also looking back at American history. Clint Smith is the author of the best-selling narrative nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America and the poetry collection Counting Descent . His latest, Above Ground , traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood, particularly Black fatherhood. Terisa Siagatonu is an award-winning poet, teaching artist, mental health...
Apr 23, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Transcript available on Metacast What is “cheating” in the era of generative AI and cognitive enhancers? What rights do we have against institutional misuse of AI and nanotechnology? These technologies have permeated everything from criminal justice to the future of work – and without proper safeguards, they have the power to wreak havoc on our fundamental human rights to privacy, freedom of thought, and self-determination. Former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, podcast host, and author Preet Bharara (Doing...
Apr 16, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Transcript available on Metacast Laurel Braitman is the Director of Writing and Storytelling at The Medicine and the Muse Program at Stanford School of Medicine. There, she helps clinical students, staff, and physicians communicate more clearly and vulnerably – for their own benefit as well as that of their patients. Braitman is also the founder of “Writing Medicine”, a global community of health care professionals. Her new memoir, What Looks Like Bravery: An Epic Journey Through Loss to Love , examines grief and chronicles a l...
Apr 09, 2023•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast Atul Gawande is a surgeon and author who’s well-known for his clear and eloquent writing on medicine. He was a staff writer for “The New Yorker” magazine from 1998 until 2022, when President Biden appointed him to lead global health at the US Agency for International Development. Gawande is the author of four best-selling books including “The Checklist Manifesto,” and most recently, “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End”. In that book, Gawande considers what medicine can not over...
Apr 02, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week, our guest is Jennifer Egan , who writes with nuance on an astounding range of subjects and disciplines. Her novels include The Invisible Circus, Look at Me, and Manhattan Beach , That intellectual breadth also shows up in her journalism, featured in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and elsewhere. Her most recent novel, The Candy House, is a sort of sibling to the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad , featuring some of that book’s most belo...
Mar 26, 2023•1 hr 16 min•Transcript available on Metacast For more than thirty years, Michael Pollan has been writing books and articles about the places where the human and natural worlds intersect: on our plates, in our farms and gardens, and in our minds. His many acclaimed titles include How to Change Your Mind , The Omnivore’s Dilemma , and The Botany of Desire . In his recent essay collection, This is Your Mind on Plants , Pollan takes a deep dive into three psychoactive plants: opium, caffeine, and mescaline. Pollan co-founded the UC Berkeley Ce...
Mar 19, 2023•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tsitsi Dangarembga is a novelist, playwright, activist, and filmmaker. She is the author of the Tambudzai Trilogy , which traces the life of a rural girl from her childhood in colonial Zimbabwe to her adulthood in a country repressed by political elites. The first novel in the series, Nervous Conditions , was “hailed as one of the 20th century’s most significant works of African literature”. On February 28, 2023, Tsitsi Dangarembga came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater to read from her new essay ...
Mar 12, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week, we’ll dive into the curious world of criminals and crooks with journalist Patrick Radden Keefe, a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine and author of the bestsellers Empire of Pain: The Secret of the Sackler Dynasty and Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland . Keefe is also the writer and host of Wind of Change, an 8-part podcast which investigates the strange convergence of espionage and heavy metal music during the Cold War. On February 21, 2023, Patric...
Mar 05, 2023•1 hr 16 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week, our guest is poet Natalie Diaz in conversation with essayist and author Hilton Als. Natalie Diaz is an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian community and is the director of the Fort Mojave Language Recovery Program, where she works with the last remaining speakers of the Mojave language. Language and loss are explored throughout Diaz’s poetry, in collections including When My Brother Was an Aztec and Postcolonial Love Poem , which won her the Pulitzer Prize. Hilton Als is another ...
Feb 19, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast In a cultural landscape filled with endless pundits and talking heads, Fran Lebowitz stands out as one of our most insightful social commentators. Her essays and interviews offer her acerbic views on current events and the media – as well as pet peeves including tourists, baggage-claim areas, after-shave lotion, adults who roller skate, children who speak French, or anyone who is unduly tan. All of this (and more) is captured in the beloved Netflix series Pretend It’s a City, directed by Martin ...
Feb 12, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week, we have two in-studio conversations. First, Jeremy A. Greene, a doctor and professor at Johns Hopkins University, talks with Hannah Zeavin about his book “The Doctor Who Wasn’t There”. It traces the history and pitfalls of technology in health and medicine – specifically electronic media. That includes electronic health care records, which can make medical care more efficient and less expensive – but can also lead to mixups and dangerous errors. This program was recorded on October 21...
Feb 05, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Songwriter, performer, and multi-instrumentalist Thao Nguyen is celebrated for her richly percussive music and her fiercely delivered vocals. She has released five albums with the band Thao & The Get Down Stay Down including the most recent, Temple, a powerful exploration of Nguyen’s identity as a queer person and the daughter of Vietnamese refugees. Her collaborations with Joanna Newsom, Andrew Bird and many others have earned her an esteemed place in the indie rock world. In 2019, Nguyen a...
Jan 29, 2023•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week – Jeff Chang talks to Nikole Hannah-Jones, one of today’s foremost investigative journalists. Her reporting on civil rights and racial justice, including school segregation, has earned her numerous awards, chief among them a Pulitzer Prize for her work on the 1619 Project. It’s an ongoing initiative from the New York Times that reframes the way we understand America’s history by examining the modern legacy of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans. This month, an adaptation f...
Jan 22, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week, a conversation with two brothers, both distinguished members of the federal judiciary, Justice Stephen Breyer and his brother, Judge Charles Breyer. Stephen Breyer retired in summer 2022 after nearly 28 years as a member of the Supreme Court. Prior to that, he served nearly 14 years as a Court of Appeals Judge. He is especially appreciated for his pragmatism, issuing decisions most often informed by their real life consequences, and his firm belief that judges are loyal to the law, no...
Jan 15, 2023•1 hr 16 min•Transcript available on Metacast Rachel Kushner is the author of novels The Mars Room, The Flamethrowers , and Telex from Cuba , as well as a book of short stories, The Strange Case of Rachel K . Her career-spanning book of essays The Hard Crowd , solidified her place of authority amongst today’s writers, covering everything from a Palestinian refugee camp to her young life in the San Francisco music scene. Kushner has won the Prix Médicis and been a finalist for the Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was...
Jan 08, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week, our guest is Richard Powers. He’s the author of thirteen novels on everything from neuroscience, to artificial intelligence to the environment. His book, “The Overstory” earned him a Pulitzer prize in fiction. The Financial Times called it “A Great American Eco-Novel.” His latest book is called “Bewilderment”, and it also deals with environmental catastrophe. It’s the story of a widowed father and his son, and their journey into the wilderness. On April twenty-fifth, 2022, Richard Pow...
Jan 01, 2023•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest is Jeremy Denk, one of America’s foremost pianists. Winner of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and the Avery Fisher Prize, Denk is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He returns frequently to Carnegie Hall and has recently appeared with ensembles including the Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic, and Los Angeles Philharmonic. In addition to phenomenal technique, Denk brings a deep knowledge of music history and composition to his performances – and to his writings...
Dec 25, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Transcript available on Metacast Kim Stanley Robinson is widely recognized as one of the foremost living writers of science fiction. In The Ministry for the Future, Robinson imagines a near-future where climate change has wreaked havoc, from severe heat waves, to flooding, limited resources, and a global refugee crisis. It’s a terrifying set of circumstances, but it’s not without hope —Robinson brings to life a possible path for survival. Robinson has also published a memoir, The High Sierra: A Love Story, a “sublime” and “radi...
Dec 18, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast Patti Smith is a writer, performer, and visual artist who gained recognition in the 1970s for her revolutionary merging of poetry and rock. She has released numerous albums and books including her seminal record Horses, hailed as one of the top 100 albums of all time; Just Kids, a beautifully crafted love letter to her lifelong friend, the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe; and M Train, a collection of essays about memory, loss, and the simple pleasures of everyday life. Her new book, A Book...
Dec 11, 2022•1 hr 14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich is a popular professor at UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy, and the author of eighteen books, including the bestsellers The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It , The Common Good , Saving Capitalism , Aftershock , Supercapitalism , and The Work of Nations , which has been translated into twenty-two languages. He is co-creator of the 2017 Netflix original documentary Saving Capitalism and of the award-winning 2013 film Inequality for All . Now, wi...
Dec 04, 2022•1 hr 13 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. Jessica B. Harris is the preeminent authority on the culinary culture of the African Diaspora. Harris has spent over three decades studying African food and its migration. To understand the rich and complex flavors of African American cuisine requires looking at the culinary cultures of the African continent and the slave trade that brought Africans to America. Harris is the author of twelve critically acclaimed cookbooks documenting the foods and foodways of the African Diaspora including I...
Nov 27, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Siddhartha Mukherjee is the author of The Gene: An Intimate History, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer , and The Laws of Medicine . Told in six parts and laced with his own experience as a researcher, doctor, and a prolific reader, Mukherjee’s new book The Song of the Cell , tells the story of how scientists discovered cells, began to understand them, and are now using that knowledge to create new humans. Mukherjee is an associate professor of medicine at Columbia University and...
Nov 20, 2022•1 hr 14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jemele Hill is the Emmy Award–winning former cohost of ESPN’s SportsCenter and 2018 NABJ Journalist of the Year. Hill is a contributing writer for the Atlantic , where she covers the intersection of sports, race, politics, and culture. She is also the producer of a Disney/ESPN documentary with Colin Kaepernick. She grew up in Detroit, graduated from Michigan State University, and now lives in Los Angeles. In her new unapologetic, character-rich, and eloquent memoir Uphill , Hill shares the story...
Nov 13, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast Anand Giridharadas is the author of the international bestseller Winners Take All, The True American, and India Calling. His new book The Persuaders offers an insider account of activists, politicians, educators, and everyday citizens working to change minds, bridge divisions, and fight for democracy–from disinformation fighters to a leader of Black Lives Matter to Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and more. A former foreign correspondent and columnist for The New York Times for more t...
Nov 06, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast Actor and activist Jane Fonda has redefined herself again and again. Born into Hollywood royalty, she’s been an acclaimed actor, an anti-war activist, a fitness guru, and in her seventies and eighties, a comedic partner to actor Lily Tomlin in the Netflix series “Frankie and Grace”. Now, at 84, she says she’s never been happier, and we’ll hear why. In early 2022, she founded the Jane Fonda Climate PAC, endorsing climate champions at all levels of government. On October 24, 2022, Jane Fonda spoke...
Oct 30, 2022•59 min•Transcript available on Metacast As new information emerges about the impacts of social media and screens on young people, so do new strategies to guide and protect teens. Our guests, Harvard University researchers Emily Weinstein and Carrie James, set out to try and understand more about this complex and complicated issue. Their years of research included interviews with over 3500 teens. And much of what they found - from the teens’ own fears and concerns, to the unique ways in which they use technology, is surprising. On Octo...
Oct 23, 2022•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week, a conversation with artist George McCalman. His new book, “An Illustrated Black History”, features 145 Black artists, scientists, and public intellectuals whose enormous contributions to US history are in stark contrast with their frequent absence from the public eye. McCalman envisioned the book as a sort of bible - a compendium that’s accessible to all ages, and with vibrant art that draws the reader in. George McCalman is an artist and creative director based in San Francisco. His ...
Oct 23, 2022•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast A native of Oakland, California, Leila Mottley uses her writing as a tool to call for social justice reform and advocate for victims of sexual violence. Her acclaimed poetry has appeared in Oprah Daily and The New York Times , and her incandescent debut novel Nightcrawling was selected by Oprah Winfrey for her 2022 Book Club, making Mottley - who is 20 - the club’s youngest author ever. Inspired by true stories of the exploitation of young women by police departments in the United States, includ...
Oct 16, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Transcript available on Metacast For the millions of Americans asking “What can I do?” to dismantle white supremacy comes an answer: Do the Work! An Antiracist Activity Book. The revolutionary antiracism workbook by W. Kamau Bell and Kate Schatz addresses institutional racism in the United States, giving readers a hands-on understanding of systemic racism, white privilege, and Black disenfranchisement–and what to do about it all. Kamau Bell is a dad, a husband, and a comedian. He directed and executive produced the 2022 Showtim...
Oct 09, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
