Big Books & Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller

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William Moyers shares his journey to sobriety in new memoir Sep 13, 2024

Show notes

William Moyers was one of the lucky ones.

Sober for decades after years of addiction to alcohol and crack cocaine, he became a model of success and redemption. He started working at the Hazelden Betty Ford, and in 2006, he published a vulnerable memoir, “Broken,” about his journey out of addiction.

But then he was prescribed pain killers after some dental work. And he found himself addicted again. Only this time, he had a public persona. People looked to him for hope. And he found opioids a much harder substance to break free from.

What happened next is captured in his new memoir, “Broken Open: What Painkillers Taught Me about Life and Recovery.” Moyers said it changed his focus from sobriety to recovery, and it caused him to rethink how addicts can get there.

This week, he joins host Kerri Miller in the studio for an conversation about what true recovery looks like. “It’s really messy,” he says. “It’s particularly messy for those of us who are public advocates for organizations like Hazelden Betty Ford who are putting their stories out there to inspire others to get well. My story has helped thousands and thousands of people, and I’m glad for it. But there’s more to it, which is why I have to tell this story.”

Guest:

William C. Moyers is the vice president of public affairs and community relations at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. His new memoir “Broken Open: What Painkillers Taught Me about Life and Recovery.”

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Rural Voice: How to build more civic-minded communities Sep 10, 2024

Show notes

How do we restore trust in civic institutions and nurture a renewed sense of possibility in a shared future?

That was the central question animating the Rural Voice community discussion MPR News host Kerri Miller led at the Sheldon Theatre in Red Wing on Thursday.

She was joined by political scientist and Minnesota native Brian Klaas, who set the stage by describing the bleak realities of the political landscape in America right now. People feel disempowered and divided. Trust in institutions is low. Democracy feels fragile.

But the citizens of Red Wing believe there is hope. They shared stories from their own community of how real problems have been solved, despite political differences.

They talked through some of the obstacles, like how to be more inclusive and how to deal with the constant drumbeat of negativity in online spaces. And Klaas gave examples of how citizen assemblies — a relatively new process to this country — can break through the partisan gridlock.

Rural Voice: How to Build More Civic-Minded Communities

This is the second Rural Voice conversation of the 2024 season, which launched at the Minnesota State Fair. Rural Voice is a series of town halls hosted by Miller about the rewards and challenges of making a home in rural America.

Margaret Renkl on ‘The Comfort of Crows’ Sep 06, 2024

Show notes

The 25th season of Talking Volumes launches later this month. To celebrate, we thought we’d bring you one of our favorite conversations from last year.

The 2023 season finale of Talking Volumes brought author and columnist Margaret Renkl to Minnesota hours after the first snow carpeted our Northern landscape.

She declared it “magical” — a theme familiar to those who’ve read her New York Times columns or her newest book, “The Comfort of Crows.”

In it, the self-described backyard naturalist details what she saw in her Tennessee half-acre backyard over the course of 52 weeks. She laughs at the bumblebees and fusses over foxes. She laments the absence of birds and butterflies that used to be proliferate. But she also refuses to give in to despair.

For those of us paying attention, she told MPR News host Kerri Miller, it would be “easy for the grief to take over.”

“But what a waste it would be if we did that,” she added. “If it’s true, that we’re going to lose all the songbirds — at least the migratory ones — how much more are we obliged to notice them and treasure them while we have them?”

Don’t miss this warm and candid conversation about the gift of nature, the solace of observation and the gospel Renkl finds in her own backyard.

And get your tickets for the 25th season of Talking Volumes, which includes authors Edwidge Danticat, Alice Hoffman, Louise Erdrich and Kate DiCamillo, here.

Rural Voice at the Minnesota State Fair Aug 30, 2024

Show notes

The third season of Rural Voice kicked off at the Minnesota State Fair on Monday, Aug. 26. It was a steamy day, but it didn’t discourage rural change makers who gathered at the MPR booth for a lively and hopeful town hall with moderator Kerri Miller.

The question before them: How is rural Minnesota changing, and how are rural communities thriving in the midst of it?

Rural Voice at the Minnesota State Fair

Participants included Northland Foundation CEO Tony Sertich, who emphasized that rural communities no longer need “jobs, jobs, jobs” but “workers, workers, workers.” Teresa Kittredge from 100 Rural Women talked about the importance of mentorship in rural communities, especially when it comes to leadership paths for women. Ben Winchester, a rural sociologist at the University of Minnesota, discussed the implications of a “brain gain” in rural areas, instead of a “brain drain.” Senator Rob Kupec, DFL-Moorhead, stressed the desperate need for housing, a point everyone agreed on, including Kitty Mayo, editor at Lake County Press. Scott Marquardt, president of the Southwest Initiative Foundation, shared his excitement over the potential for renewable energy and innovation in rural parts of Minnesota.

Other urgent issues mentioned: the need for more robust child care in rural areas, the importance of mental health services and fresh ways to welcome newcomers.

If you are rural living, rural loving or just “rural curious,” you don’t want to miss this conversation at 9 a.m. Monday, Sept. 2. And then get involved. Miller is taking Rural Voice on the road in September. She’ll be in Red Wing on Sept. 5 to talk about how to build civic-minded communities; Detroit Lakes on Sept. 9 to discuss sustainable agriculture; and Worthington on Sept. 19 to consider how rural communities thrive when immigrants put down roots. Register online to attend.

Jo Hamya ambushes everyone in ‘The Hypocrite’ Aug 30, 2024

Show notes

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. The author is undone.

At the same moment, Sophia is having lunch with her mother at a nearby cafe and fretting over what her father will think of the play. Her mother, the writer’s ex-wife, is both sympathetic and cavalier, weary of dealing with self-absorbed artists and yet unable to abandon her martyrdom.

Who is the hypocrite here? All of them.

Hamya’s novel is a bracing, complex and uncompromising look at the generation conflicts in our present age. She joins MPR News host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about “The Hypocrite” and so much more — including our current cancel culture, how to write a play within a novel and why she took pains to avoid writing actual sex scenes in her book.

Guest:

Jo Hamya is a London-based writer. “The Hypocrite” is her second novel.

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How to defeat 'The Age of Grievance' Aug 16, 2024

Show notes

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 many Americans, the war zone is infinite.”

This week, Bruni joins host Kerri Miller on Big Books and Bold Ideas, as part of our Democracy in America series, to discuss how we got here and how we move forward. In the age of toxic social media and divided national politics, can we learn to inoculate ourselves and our communities against grievance?

Guest:

Frank Bruni is a longtime correspondent and opinion columnist for The New York Times. In 2021, he started teaching at Duke University’s school of public policy. His new book is “The Age of Grievance.”

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Author A.J. Jacobs attempts a year of living constitutionally Aug 08, 2024

Show notes

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 book, “The Year of Living Constitutionally.” It’s part performative art — “I went method,” he says — and part intellectual adventure. While writing with a quill pen, lighting his house with beeswax candles and wearing a tricorn, Jacobs researched and talked to dozens of scholars about how to best interpret the Constitution.

“We see it as etched in stone,” he tells host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. “But it was really deeply fluid. If we recapture that mindset, maybe we will be more flexible in our thinking today.”

Guest:

A.J. Jacobs is a journalist and an author. His past books include “The Year of Living Biblically” and “Drop Dead Healthy.” His newest is “The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man’s Humble Quest to follow the Constitution’s Original Meaning.”

Subscribe to Big Books and Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS or anywhere you get your podcasts.

Subscribe to the Thread newsletter for the latest book and author news and must-read recommendations.

‘Grown Women’ tackles the complicated wounds in mother-daughter relationships Aug 02, 2024

Show notes

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 them to find a modicum of forgiveness? Or will the cycles of neglect, half-lies and emotional distance repeat?

This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Johnson joins host Kerri Miller for a vulnerable conversation about mothers and daughters and trying your best, even when your best isn’t enough.

Claire Messud’s new novel in inspired by her own family’s history Jul 26, 2024

Show notes

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 time, moving from 1940 to 2010, and across multiple points of view.

In fact, MPR News host Kerri Miller says the way Messud plays with time is one of the vital threads of the book — and Messud admits time is almost a character in the novel. “The past informs the present,” she says. “People’s dreams and hopes for the future inform the present, and in a funny way, the ghosts of the past — the people who are no longer there but whose voices swirl around in our head — make sure the past is always with us.”

Join Miller and Messud on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to take a journey into memory, time and the longing for home.

Guest:

Claire Messud’s novels includes “The Emperor’s Children” and “The Woman Upstairs.” Her new novel is “This Strange Eventful History.”

Subscribe to Big Books and Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS or anywhere you get your podcasts.

Subscribe to the Thread newsletter for the latest book and author news and must-read recommendations.

‘Get Out’ meets ‘The Stepford Wives’ in Nicola Yoon’s new thriller Jul 19, 2024

Show notes

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?

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