Big Books & Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller

Latest Episodes:

Neuroscientist Emily Falk links choice to change in ‘What We Value’ Jun 13, 2025

Show notes

If you’ve spent time this week doomscrolling on your phone — even though you know it’s not good for you, that it ramps up anxiety and you’d be better off taking a walk or just going to bed — Emily Falk’s new book is for you.

“What We Value” is a peek behind the mental curtain. Why do our brains intend one thing and do another? Why is lasting change, even desired change, so hard? Neuroscientist Falk says it’s because our gray matter is silently making value calculations, which don’t always benefit us. If we can identify those calculations, she writes, we can harness them to make more meaningful choices.

Falk joins Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to explain her thesis. Along the way, they touch on the addictiveness of Minecraft, why habits — both good and bad — are so hard to change, and how a book about Benedict Cumberbatch impacted Falk’s research and life.

Guest:

Emily Falk is a neuroscientist and a professor of communications at the University of Pennsylvania. She also directs the Communication Neuroscience Lab and the Climate Communication Division at the Annenberg Public Policy Center. “What We Value: The Neuroscience of Choice and Change” is her first book.

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Amanda Nguyen shares how her sexual assault propelled her to activism in new book Jun 06, 2025

Show notes

Amanda Nguyen was aiming for the stars when she was accepted as a student at Harvard. She dreamed of becoming an astronaut.

But in her senior year of college, she was raped. That propelled her into a public role as activist to change an infuriating gap in the law when it comes to rape survivors.

“When I found out that my rape kit could be destroyed, untested, in six months — even if the statue of limitations was 15 years — I felt like that was against everything I was taught about the criminal justice system,” she told Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas.

“It was [at] that moment that I decided I would actually be fighting the criminal justice system to reform it, because that was my definition of justice — to make sure that no one else would go through what I had to go through.”

Nguyen’s new memoir, “Saving Five,” is an inspiring, infuriating and ultimately hopeful testament to how one courageous woman fought the system and won.

Guest:

Amanda Nguyen is an astronaut for Blue Origin and an activist. Her new memoir is “Saving Five: A Memoir of Hope.”

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‘Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine’ talks about bars, the blues and belonging May 30, 2025

Show notes

A neighborhood bar is a peculiar thing. The people who frequent it develop a rapport, a kind of familiarity that makes them feel ownership.

But time rolls on, and no place is untouched by the changes it brings — not the bar nor the people in it.

Texas native Callie Collins knows a thing or two about bars. That’s why she set her newest novel, “Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine,” in an Austin saloon, circa 1970s Texas. The story unfolds from three different viewpoints: the lead guitarist of the new house band; the bar owner trying to help the establishment and herself find a future; and a kid from East Texas desperate for direction and kinship.

Collins talks bars, the blues and belonging with host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas.

Guest:

Callie Collins is a writer and editor from Texas. “Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine” is her first novel.

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Karen Russell blends history and fantasy in her new novel May 22, 2025

Show notes

How do you carry someone else’s memory — both in body and in mind?

The prairie witch in Karen Russell’s fantastical new novel, “The Antidote,” describes it as a pressure and a weight. She has the ability to receive the memories of her fellow citizens in a small failing town in Nebraska, which offers relief to anyone who feels like their pasts are too heavy to bear.

“Whatever they can’t stand to know,” she says, “the memories that make them chase impossible dreams, that make them sick with regret and grief. Whatever cargo unbalances the cart, I can hold on to anything for anyone.”

But when a Dust Bowl-era storm blows through, the deposited memories likewise rush away. What happens when the past is forgotten?

Russell’s long-awaited novel contains epic calamity, deep friendship and just enough magic to stir the pot as she reckons with the consequence of collective forgetting.

Guest:

Karen Russell is the author of many books, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist, “Swamplandia.” Her new novel is “The Antidote.”

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Shigehiro Oishi says a ‘psychologically rich life’ is important to consider in his new book May 16, 2025

Show notes

For many people, a good life is a stable life — a life that’s predictable and filled with purpose. For others, happiness the point. They embrace moments of bliss and satisfaction.

But what about a life that’s focused on curiosity, exploration and a variety of experiences that broaden our world?

University of Chicago psychology professor Shigehiro Oishi says that’s a psychologically rich life — and in his new book, “Life in Three Dimensions,” he argues that a psychological rich life is just as important as a life filled with happiness and meaning.

Professor Oishi joined Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to discuss the markers of a good life. They talk about the value of risk, the importance of awe and how the American individualism can hinder a good life.

Guest:

Shigehiro Oishi is a celebrated professor of psychology at the University of Chicago. His latest book is “Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life.”

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Talking Volumes: Peter Geye on ‘A Lesser Light’ May 08, 2025

Show notes

“A Lesser Light” is Minnesota writer Peter Geye’s sixth novel, and he says he couldn’t have written it earlier in life.

The story revolves around a cold and often hostile marriage. It’s 1910, and husband Theodulf is the newly commissioned caretaker of a grand lighthouse situated on the treacherous shore of Lake Superior. His new bride, Willa, has been forced into the marriage by her scheming mother after a family tragedy. The terrain is brooding, the climate unforgiving. Maybe no surprise, the new relationship is equally harsh.

But Geye says the complexity of Theodulf and Willa are what make them human, and as he’s gotten older, he appreciates the “many shades” of their rocky marriage.

“Of all the institutions in our culture, marriage and parenthood are two of the most fraught,” Geye tells host Kerri Miller. “They can be the most beautiful, the most wonderful, the most amazing — and I don’t know a whole lot of people who end up together like Theodulf and Willa do. But it’s more interesting to me when people like that do.”

Talking Volumes: Peter Geye

Geye joined Miller on stage at The College of St. Scholastica in Duluth on May 1 for a special “on the road” edition of Talking Volumes. They discussed the complications of marriage and family life, why Geye chose to tell this story from many different points of view, and how his many years spent traveling to Lake Superior influenced his book. Music for the evening was provided by Superior Siren.

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What our 'good boys' can teach us about living a good life May 02, 2025

Show notes

We could learn a lot from the good boys (and girls) in our life.

That’s the main thesis of philosopher Mark Rowlands new book, “The Word of Dog.”

He says out loud what many dog owners secretly wonder: Is my dog a better person than me? And while Rowlands certainly agrees that humans remain top of the intellectual pyramid, he does theorize that our canine companions inhabit the world in a uniquely uncomplicated way.

“Although dogs have no idea what philosophy is,” he writes, “they live the big questions.”

Join Rowlands and fellow dog lover Kerri Miller for this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to be enlightened and inspired by the dogs in your life.

Guest:

Mark Rowlands is a professor of philosophy at the University. His new book is “The Word of Dog: What our Canine Companions Can Teach Us about Living a Good Life.”

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‘Fewer Rules, Better People: The Case for Discretion’ Apr 25, 2025

Show notes

Rules are good. Discretion is better.

So argues philosophy professor Barry Lam in his new book, “Fewer Rules, Better People.” While Lam acknowledges law as the backbone of society, he says America has forgotten the good of discretion. Be it a sports referee, a parent, a police officer or a prosecutor, decision makers need the freedom to exercise discernment about how the rules get applied.

Lam joins Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas for a philosophical and practical discussion about how discretion greases the wheels of our culture and why removing it creates a lumbering bureaucracy.

Guest:

Barry Lam is a professor of philosophy at UC Riverside and host of the podcast Hi-Phi Nation. His new book is “Fewer Rules, Better People: The Case for Discretion.”

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Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein’s new book looks at ‘failed liberal policies‘ Apr 18, 2025

Show notes

“The story of America in the 21st century is the story of chosen scarcities.”

So begins “Abundance,” the new book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson that has politicos abuzz.

In it, they argue that progressives have created a culture of scarcity the last few decades, especially when it comes to solving America’s thorniest problem, like homelessness, housing affordability and green energy. The solution, they say, is to face up to the failures of liberal policies, no matter how well intended, and renew a politics of plenty.

“If you look back in American history, America used to built things — proudly,” Thompson tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. “And then at some point over the last 50 years, liberalism — which was once defined as the politics of building — became defined as the politics of blocking. [In the book], we’re trying to execute a bit of a paradigm shift here: We want to marry the politics of building with modern progressivism.”

Guest:

Derek Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the co-author of the new book, “Abundance,” along with the New York Times’ Ezra Klein.

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Eric Puchner’s new novel circles around a love triangle that spans a lifetime Apr 11, 2025

Show notes

Can one decision be the fulcrum of a life?

Or is destiny really millions of tiny choices swirled with events out of our control?

That’s one of the many questions at the heart of Eric Puchner’s gorgeous new novel, “Dream State.” It’s received a dizzying amount of praise since it was released in February — making the New York Times best seller list, becoming an Oprah Book Club pick. But despite the buzz, the novel is deceptively hard to pin down.

Set in rural Montana, the book begins with two college buddies, as one of them, Charlie, prepares to marry the love of his life. But when Cece heads to the family cabin early to prepare for the wedding and meets no-nonsense best friend Garrett, her world wobbles.

What happens next — amidst a wedding besieged by norovirus — launches the next 50 years, as the three friends remain intertwined by regrets and grief, possibilities and love.

Puchner joins host Kerri Miller for a wide-ranging conversation on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. Among topics of discussion: why so few authors write about male friendship, why meeting friends from your beloved’s past can be so perilous and why setting “Dream State” in a Montana cabin was so crucial to the plot.

Guest:

Eric Puchner is an associate professor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and the author of the novel “Model Home,” as well as several short stories. His new book is “Dream State.”

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