Big Books & Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller

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Author Sarah Longwell says political character counts in ‘How to Eat an Elephant’ Sep 25, 2026

Show notes

Have Americans given up a sense of virtue in their political leaders? What does character mean when so-called “authenticity” is prized over moral goodness?

As publisher of The Bulwark and host of The Focus Group podcast, Sarah Longwell has thought long and hard about these questions. When she was a young conservative growing up in the ‘90s, she applauded Republicans who held then-President Bill Clinton to task for his moral failings.

“I was very attracted to the idea that character counted,” she tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. “In the years post-Clinton, that idea of virtue or character really was animating for the right — at least in their rhetoric. So it was deeply shocking to me, when Donald Trump came on the scene, to see every Republican I knew, both personally and who I had admired from afar, fall in line.”

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Longwell’s new book, “How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time,” is a call for pro-democracy groups to unite and push back against authoritarianism. Her thesis is built upon hundreds of focus groups she’s conducted since President Trump was elected — with Republicans, Democrats, Independents and the politically homeless — where she’s heard voters say that character just isn’t the deal breaker that it used to be.

“But I do think for America to have a better moral line of what we’ll tolerate,” she says. “It will require a [candidate] to come in and — not pretend to be perfect — but they should lean hard into the idea that we can be better than this.”

Guest:

Sarah Longwell is publisher of The Bulwark and host of The Focus Group podcast. Her new book, “How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time,” is already a New York Times bestseller.

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Talking Volumes: Marlon James on his deeply personal novel ‘The Disappearers’ Sep 18, 2026

Show notes

Marlon James new novel, “The Disappearers,” was published just 18 days ago, and already, this deeply personal novel about gay men in Jamaica has been declared “the novel of the decade, if not the century” by the New York Times. It has also been longlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize National Book Award.

James, a part-time Macalester College professor and full-time literary phenomenon, kicked off the 2026 season of Talking Volumes last week.

He joined Kerri Miller on the stage of the O’Shaughnessy Auditorium at St. Catherine University in St. Paul on Sept. 12. James told Miller, many of the themes in the book — violence, survival, shame, perseverance, masculinity — are culled from his own life.

Talking Volumes: Marlon James

Minneapolis singer-songwriter Annie Mack rounded out this moving and intimate evening.

Tickets for the rest of the 2026 season of Talking Volumes are still on sale. Up next: Lucy Foley joins Miller on Sept. 25, to talk about her new novel, “Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel,” the brand-new Miss Marple mystery that brings Agatha Christie’s iconic sleuth to a glamorous, snowbound resort in the Swiss Alps.

Author Edwidge Danticat examines what it means to live after trauma in 'Dèy' Sep 11, 2026

Show notes

In December of 2017, Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat was a mall in south Florida when a loud gunshot broke through the holiday shopping chatter. Believing that a mass shooting was underway, Danticat ran with her fellow shoppers in utter terror. Eventually, she learned the shooting was a hoax. But the trauma that experience provoked was very real.

She works some of that trauma out in her new novel, "Dèy." Taken from the Creole word for “mourning,” the story follows a young mother, Magnolia, who survives an actual mass shooting. But the story is more about what happens next. How do you carry on when your life is marked by a before and an after? How can trauma be contained when life, inextricably, goes on?

“Surviving isn’t the end of the story,” Danticat writes. “It’s where a different one begins.”

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Danticat returns to Big Books and Bold Ideas this week to talk with Kerri Miller about why she wanted to weave joy into a book about grief and how trauma is processed best with those you love.

Guest:

Edwidge Danticat is the author of many books, including “Breath, Eyes, Memory” and “Claire of the Sea Light.” Her new novel is “Dèy.”

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A new coming-of-age novel by Chang-rae Lee examines how we become who we are Sep 04, 2026

Show notes

If you remember the first time you left your family to go to summer camp, you probably remember how that time marked you. You leave as a child, but after spending a week or two away from home and all that’s familiar, you return changed.

Chang-rae Lee’s new novel, “A Tender Age,” follows a young boy, almost 11, as he begins the shift toward adolescence. A few tumultuous events make Jeon-Gi very aware of his new and growing personhood — and then he leaves for summer camp, where he experiments with different wants to be seen and to act in his suddenly widening world.

Told through the now-adult Jeon-Gi’s memories, the story asks questions who how we become who we are.

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“We’re not just formed by the world,” Lee tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. “There’s part of us that’s ready to be forming on its own. So the world doesn’t only form us, it reveals us. There’s an interplay between those things, that sometimes can go in a direction we didn’t expect.”

Guest:

Chang-rae Lee is the author of many books, including “Native Speaker,” which won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for first fiction. His new book is “A Tender Age.” When he’s not writing his own work, Lee teaches writing to students at Stanford University.

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What makes something invasive? A new book explores that, and environmental loss Aug 28, 2026

Show notes

If you’ve been near a boat landing in Minnesota this summer, you’ve probably seen dire warnings about zebra mussels. The Department of Natural Resources says about five percent of Minnesota’s more than 11,000 lakes are infested with the fingernail-sized mollusk, and they are always trying to limit spread.

That word — infested — hints at what the DNR thinks of invasive zebra mussel. It’s the language of contamination, infection and ruin. In her new book, “Undesirable: Invasive Species, Humans, and Where We All Belong,” science writer Amy Crawford examines how we came to see certain plants and animals as invading and marauding. She writes that, in his age of anxiety, “stories about invasive species tap into widely held feelings about environmental loss.”

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This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Kerri Miller talks with Crawford about invasion biology and the hard questions that surround it: What’s considered native to an ecosystem? What do we do when our own damage of a habitat gives way to new plants, insects and animals? And is it time to reconsider our attempts to control these environments?

Guest:

Amy Crawford is a Michigan-based freelance journalist. Her new book is, “Undesirable: Invasive Species, Humans, and Where We All Belong.”

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Paul Yoon's novel 'Etna' is told from a dog's point of view, thanks to Oscar Aug 21, 2026

Show notes

There’s a before and an after to Paul Yoon’s writing life, and at the center is Oscar — a floppy, gentle, food-loving, 70-pound yellow Lab.

Yoon didn’t grow up with dogs, so it was really his wife — fellow writer Laura van den Berg — who insisted on the addition. She might have known what would happen to their buttoned-up writing life when a puppy entered it. Paul didn’t.

But he quickly fell in love with this disruptive and magical creature. It gave him a new way of looking at the world. His sixth novel is the result of that transformation.

“Etna” is about a combat dog searching for home after war ravages his unnamed country — and the whole story is told from the dog’s point of view.

It’s something Yoon wouldn’t have attempted outside of Oscar.

“Part of it was imagining what Oscar might sound like,” Yoon tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. ”I imagine him to be a dignified and empathetic creature. To me, he’s the best — so it was trying to capture what I thought were his best qualities and bring that onto the page.”

Guest:

Paul Yoon is a writer and a professor who lives in Hudson, New York, with his wife and their dog, Oscar. His new novel is “Etna.”

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In search of true wilderness with Cal Flyn Aug 14, 2026

Show notes

Minnesotans have long debated the meaning of “Up North.” Is it everything north of Duluth, or north of Mille Lacs? Are pine trees and lakes a prerequisite? What about loons? Or is it more of a perception — a place defined not so much by location but by mindset?

Sigurd Olson wrote his beloved book, “The Singing Wilderness,” to describe the beauty and wildness he saw in what came to be known as The Boundary Waters Canoe Area. He wrote: “The singing wilderness has to do with the calling of loons, with northern lights, and the great silences of land lying northwest of Lake Superior. It is concerned with the simple joys, the timelessness and perspective found in a way of life which is close to the past.”

Cal Flyn has never been to the Boundary Waters, but she resonates with Olson’s definition. A writer based in the isles off the coast of Scotland, Flyn climbed mountains, plunged into forests and helicoptered to volcanoes for her new book, “The Savage Landscape.” But more than the nature itself, she’s intrigued by how we recognize and preserve these wild places.

“There is no obvious visual marker that announces one’s arrival in a wilderness,” she writes, “and thus, the search never truly ends.”

Flyn joins Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about what we mean when we say wilderness and why that definition matters.

Guest:

Cal Flyn is a Scottish journalist and writer. Her new book is “The Savage Landscape: How We Made the Wilderness.”

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Naturalist Robert Macfarlane on the wonder — and warning — of birds Aug 07, 2026

Show notes

Every fall, thousands of bird lovers stand far above Lake Superior, on Duluth’s Hawk Ridge, and watch as thousands of raptors soar overhead on their way south.

But for all of their abundance, even majestic osprey, hawks, eagles and falcons are affected by the steep declines in bird populations across the western hemisphere.

In his gorgeous new book, naturalist and conservationist Robert Macfarlane asks, “What is lost when birds are lost? Above all, the creatures themselves, in their own splendor and right. And for humans — language, story, beauty, possibility, imagination, lifts of the spirit, ways of being otherwise. Birds are our place-makers, memory-keepers, calendars and clocks. They stitch the world’s parts together: earth to sky, river to woodland, mountain to sea, country to country, hemisphere to hemisphere.”

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Macfarlane’s new book, “The Book of Birds,” finds him collaborating once again with artist Jackie Morris for a beautifully illustrated ode to birds. This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Macfarlane joins Kerri Miller to talk about the birds he loves — even though he says he’s not really a birder — and lament the disappearance of so many birds from our planet. His hope is that “The Book of Birds” will reignite a sense of wonder because “we will not save what we do not love.”

Guest:

Robert Macfarlane is an award-winning writer, who has authored many books about nature and our interconnectedness. His new book, “The Book of Birds: A Field Guide to Wonder and Loss” was co-created with artist Jackie Morris.

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Our road trip series concludes with 'The Last American Road Trip' Jul 31, 2026

Show notes

When Sarah Kendzior packed up her family for a road trip across America, she made sure her kids kept their eyes wide open. She wanted them to see this country’s wonders and its flaws.

Her new memoir, “The Last American Road Trip,” recounts the dozens of drives she and her family have taken since 2016. They leave their home in Missouri and crisscross the country, even as earth-shaking events remake it.

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Along the way, she disentangles venerated American ideals from the mythology of American exceptionalism. She gapes in wonder at the majesty of the national parks and celebrates the forethought that created them — while acknowledging the threat facing them today.

Even the great St. Louis Gateway Arch in her hometown represents both “a triumph and a tragedy,” she writes. It’s “a gateway and a memorial, a monolith with no practical purpose that looks dramatically different depending on where you stand.”

Kendzior joined host Kerri Miller in July 2025 to take us all on a road trip across America — which is a fitting conversation to revisit now as we close our 2026 road trip series. Grab your favorite snacks, buckle your seatbelt and come along for the final leg of our travels.

Guest:

Sarah Kendzior is a journalist and best-selling author. “The Last American Road Trip” is her most recent book.

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Lauren Hough road trips across America and finds a 'Monster of a Land' Jul 24, 2026

Show notes

Lauren Hough has worn many hats. She’s been an Air Force airman, a bartender, a bouncer, a construction laborer, a driver, a barista and a cable guy.

But through it all, she’s written. In 2021, a collection of essays that together formed a memoir — “Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing” — shot up the New York Times bestseller list.

Her new book, “Monster of a Land,” is a worthy follow-up. Reminiscent of John Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley,” Hough hits the road in a battered Dodge Ram to see America, her trusty dog Woody Guthrie riding shotgun.

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What she finds is more honest, more gritty and less divisive than headlines would have you believe.

“Monster of a Land” is part of our July deep dive into the history and culture of America. Come along with Hough and Kerri Miller on this week’s show as they explore who we are right now and why traveling with a dog is the best decision ever.

Guest:

Lauren Hough is a writer who lives in Austin, Texas with her dog, Woody. Her new road trip memoir is “Monster of a Land: On the Road in Search of a Modern America.”

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