Read Learn Live Podcast

Learning America – Ep 96 with Luma Mufleh Mar 31, 2022

It was a wrong turn that changed everything. When Luma Mufleh—a Muslim, gay, refugee woman from hyper-conservative Jordan—stumbled upon a pick-up game of soccer in Clarkston, Georgia, something compelled her to join. The players, 11- and 12-year-olds from Liberia, Afghanistan, and Sudan, soon welcomed her as coach of their ragtag but fiercely competitive group. Drawn into their lives, Mufleh learned that few of her players, all local public school students, could read a single word. She asks, “Where was the America that took me in? That protected me? How can I get these kids to that America?”

Learning America traces the story of how Mufleh grew a group of kids into a soccer team and then into a nationally acclaimed network of schools for refugee children. The journey is inspiring and hard-won: Fugees schools accept only those most in need; no student passes a grade without earning it; the failure of any student is the responsibility of all. Soccer as a part of every school day is a powerful catalyst to heal trauma, create belonging, and accelerate learning. Finally, this gifted storyteller delivers provocative, indelible portraits of student after student making leaps in learning that aren’t supposed to be possible for children born into trauma–stories that shine powerful light on the path to educational justice for all of America’s most left-behind.

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The Kaiju Preservation Society – Ep 95 with John Scalzi Feb 27, 2022

When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver for food delivery apps. That is, until Jamie makes a delivery to an old acquaintance, Tom, who works at what he calls “an animal rights organization”. Tom’s team needs a last-minute grunt to handle things on their next field visit. Jamie, eager to do anything, immediately signs on.

What Tom doesn’t tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at at least. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm and human-free world. They’re the universe’s largest and most dangerous panda and they’re in trouble.

It’s not just the Kaiju Preservation Society who’s found their way to the alternate world. Others have, too. And their carelessness could cause millions back on our Earth to die.

John Scalzi is the New York Times best selling author of Old Man’s War, The Collapsing Empire and Redshirts, the latter of which won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. His short stories have been adapted for the Netflix animated series Love Death + Robots. He’s known across the internet for his horrific burritos.

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The Sleep Fix – Ep 94 with Diane Macedo Jan 23, 2022

Roughly thirty percent of the population is estimated to be living with insomnia, while many more suffer from other sleep disorders. ABC anchor/correspondent Diane Macedo—a former insomniac herself—understands the struggle. Now, in The Sleep Fix, Macedo presents perspective-shifting research and easy-to-implement solutions to help millions of people finally get the shut-eye they need.

Macedo’s mission is crucial to our health and well-being. Everything from our heart health to our mental acuity to our blood pressure is influenced by how much—or little—we sleep. As an early morning reporter and an overnight news anchor, Macedo learned this the hard way, struggling for years to get the sleep she so desperately needed, and watching her health deteriorate along the way. But Macedo found the more she embraced typical sleep tips, the worse she slept. So she decided to attack the problem from the ground up, interviewing sleep experts from all over the world to get to the bottom of what really keeps us from sleeping—and the various ways to fix it.

Diane Macedo is currently an anchor and correspondent for ABC News, appearing on Good Morning America, World News Tonight, Nightline, World News Now, and America This Morning, as well as breaking news reports. She’s also an anchor for ABC News Live, where she hosts ABC New Live Update, The Breakdown, and covers breaking news and special events. An alum of Boston College, she lives in New York City with her family.

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Read Until You Understand – Ep 93 with Farah Jasmine Griffin Dec 14, 2021

Farah Jasmine Griffin is the William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University where she also served as the inaugural Chair of the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department. She is the author of five books including Who Set You Flowin?: The African American Migration Narrative (1995), If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday (2001), Clawing at the Limits of Cool: Miles Davis, John Coltrane and the Greatest Jazz Collaboration Ever (with Salim Washington, 2008), and Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive Politics During World War II (2013).

Farah Jasmine Griffin has taken to her heart the phrase “read until you understand,” a line her father, who died when she was nine, wrote in a note to her. She has made it central to this book about love of the majestic power of words and love of the magnificence of Black life. Griffin entwines memoir, history, and art while she keeps her finger on the pulse of the present, asking us to grapple with the continuing struggle for Black freedom and the ongoing project that is American democracy. She challenges us to reckon with our commitment to all the nation’s inhabitants and our responsibilities to all humanity. Griffin has spent years rooted in the culture of Black genius and the legacy of books that her father left her. A beloved professor, she has devoted herself to passing these works and their wisdom on to generations of students.

Buy Read Until You Understand

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The Power of Nothing to Lose – Ep 92 with William L. Silber Sep 07, 2021

Following books by Malcolm Gladwell and Dan Ariely, noted economics professor William L. Silber explores the Hail Mary effect, from its origins in sports to its applications to history, nature, politics, and business.

A quarterback like Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers gambles with a Hail Mary pass at the end of a football game when he has nothing to lose – the risky throw might turn defeat into victory, or end in a meaningless interception. Rodgers may not realize it, but he has much in common with figures such as George Washington, Rosa Parks, Woodrow Wilson, and Adolph Hitler, all of whom changed the modern world with their risk-loving decisions.

In The Power of Nothing to Lose, award-winning economist William Silber explores the phenomenon in politics, war, and business, where situations with a big upside and limited downside trigger gambling behavior like with a Hail Mary. Silber describes in colorful detail how the American Revolution turned on such a gamble. The famous scene of Washington crossing the Delaware on Christmas night to attack the enemy may not look like a Hail Mary, but it was. Washington said days before his risky decision, “If this fails I think the game will be pretty well up.” Rosa Parks remained seated in the White section of an Alabama bus, defying local segregation laws, an act that sparked the modern civil rights movement in America. It was a life-threatening decision for her, but she said, “I was not frightened. I just made up my mind that as long as we accepted that kind of treatment it would continue, so I had nothing to lose.”

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Catch the Rabbit – Ep 91 with Lana Bastašić Aug 07, 2021

Winner of the 2020 European Union Prize for Literature, Lana Bastašić’s powerful debut novel Catch the Rabbit is a modern-day Alice in Wonderland set in post-war Bosnia, in which two young women plunge into the illusive landscape of their shared history.

It’s been twelve years since inseparable childhood friends Lejla and Sara have spoken, but an unexpected phone call thrusts Sara back into a world she left behind, a language she’s buried, and painful memories that rise unbidden to the surface. Lejla’s magnetic pull hasn’t lessened despite the distance between Dublin and Bosnia or the years of silence imposed by a youthful misunderstanding, and Sara finds herself returning home, driven by curiosity and guilt. Embarking on a road trip from Bosnia to Vienna in search of Lejla’s exiled brother Armin, the two travel down the rabbit hole of their shared past and question how they’ve arrived at their present, disparate realities.

As their journey takes them further from their homeland, Sara realizes that she can never truly escape her past or Lejla—the two are intrinsically linked, but perpetually on opposite sides of the looking glass. As they approach their final destination, Sara contends with the chaos of their relationship. Lejla’s conflicting memories of their past, further complicated by the divisions brought on by the dissolution of Yugoslavia during their childhoods, forces Sara to reckon with her own perceived reality. Like Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, Catch the Rabbit lays bare the intricacies of female friendship and all the ways in which two people can hurt, love, disappoint, and misunderstand one another.

Ridgeline – Ep 90 with Michael Punke Jul 06, 2021

Ridgeline is the thrilling, long-awaited return of the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Revenant

In 1866, with the country barely recovered from the Civil War, new war breaks out on the western frontier—a clash of cultures between the Native tribes who have lived on the land for centuries and a young, ambitious nation. Colonel Henry Carrington arrives in Wyoming’s Powder River Valley to lead the US Army in defending the opening of a new road for gold miners and settlers. Carrington intends to build a fort in the middle of critical hunting grounds, the home of the Lakota. Red Cloud, one of the Lakota’s most respected chiefs, and Crazy Horse, a young but visionary warrior, understand full well the implications of this invasion. For the Lakota, the stakes are their home, their culture, their lives.

As fall bleeds into winter, Crazy Horse leads a small war party that confronts Colonel Carrington’s soldiers with near constant attacks. Red Cloud, meanwhile, wants to build the tribal alliances that he knows will be necessary to defeat the soldiers. Colonel Carrington seeks to hold together a US Army beset with internal discord. Carrington’s officers are skeptical of their commander’s strategy, none more so than Lieutenant George Washington Grummond, who longs to fight a foe he dismisses as inferior in all ways. The rank-and-file soldiers, meanwhile, are still divided by the residue of civil war, and tempted to desertion by the nearby goldfields.

Throughout this taut saga—based on real people and events—Michael Punke brings the same immersive, vivid storytelling and historical insight that made his breakthrough debut so memorable.

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A Master of Djinn – Ep 89 with P. Djèlí Clark Jun 16, 2021

Forty years ago in Egypt, the mystic and inventor Al-Jahiz pierced the veil between realms, sending magic into the world before vanishing into the unknown. Think steampunk meets history meets detective novel meets magic!

Now in 1912 Cairo, humans brush elbows with djinn in crowded tramcars and airships sail the skies. In this new world the Egyptian Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities maintains an uneasy peace. When someone claiming to be Al-Jahiz “returned” murders a secret brotherhood dedicated to his legacy, however, that peace dissolves into disarray.

The Ministry’s youngest agent Fatma el-Sha’arawi has saved the world before. But this case is a special challenge. The imposter’s dangerous magical abilities and revolutionary message threaten to tear apart the fabric of this new Egyptian society, and spill over onto the global stage. Can Agent Fatma unravel the mystery of Al-Jahiz in time to save the world—again? Read A Master of Djinn today!

Born in New York and raised mostly in Houston, P. DJÈLÍ CLARK spent the formative years of his life in the homeland of his parents, Trinidad and Tobago. A Hugo and Sturgeon Award finalist, he is the author of The Black God’s Drums and The Haunting of Tram Car 015. His short story “The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington” (Fireside Fiction) has earned him both a Nebula and Locus Award. Clark lives in Connecticut.

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From PA to LA – Ep 88 with Yogi Roth May 19, 2021

From PA to LA isn’t like anything you’ve read before. Expect this book to cut deeper than your traditional tell-all. Built around a detailed, inside look at the Pitt and USC football programs, it is at heart a story about a small town kid from Pennsylvania who uses sports, travel and adventure as a way to develop his own winning philosophy of life. The underlying themes reveal a different, yet exhilarating path to getting the most out of each day in both our personal and professional lives. Anyone open to inspiration from someone who has worked tirelessly to get everything he has, while helping others and competing each step of the way, needs to read this book.

Yogi Roth is a storyteller who seeks and uncovers the humanity in sports around the globe. He’s a Pac-12 Networks college football analyst, Emmy award-winning Filmmaker, Scholar, New York Times Best-Selling Author, accomplished Coach, Motivational Speaker, Media Personality, and Host and World-Traveler. Over the past 20 years Yogi has been driven by the power of sports and story.

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Beloved Beasts – Ep 87 with Michelle Nijhuis Apr 04, 2021

A vibrant history of the modern conservation movement―told through the lives and ideas of the people who built it.

In the late nineteenth century, as humans came to realize that our rapidly industrializing and globalizing societies were driving other animal species to extinction, a movement to protect and conserve them was born. In Beloved Beasts, acclaimed science journalist Michelle Nijhuis traces the movement’s history: from early battles to save charismatic species such as the American bison and bald eagle to today’s global effort to defend life on a larger scale.

She describes the vital role of scientists and activists such as Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson as well as lesser-known figures in conservation history; she reveals the origins of vital organizations like the Audubon Society and the World Wildlife Fund; she explores current efforts to protect species such as the whooping crane and the black rhinoceros; and she confronts the darker side of conservation, long shadowed by racism and colonialism.

As the destruction of other species continues and the effects of climate change escalate, Beloved Beasts charts the ways conservation is becoming a movement for the protection of all species―including our own.

Michelle Nighhouse is a project editor at the Atlantic, a contributing editor at High Country News, and an award-winning reporter whose work has been published in National Geographic and the New York Times Magazine. She is coeditor of The Science Writers’ Handbook and lives in White Salmon, Washington.

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**A Beginner’s Guide to America – Ep 86 with Roya Hakakian** Mar 12, 2021
**A stirring, witty, and poignant glimpse into the bewildering American immigrant experience from someone who has lived it. Also, a mirror held up to America.**

Into the maelstrom of unprecedented contemporary debates about immigrants in the United States, this perfectly timed book gives us a portrait of what the new immigrant experience in America is really like. Written as a “guide” for the newly arrived, and providing “practical information and advice,” Roya Hakakian, an immigrant herself, reveals what those who settle here love about the country, what they miss about their homes, the cruelty of some Americans, and the unceasing generosity of others. She captures the texture of life in a new place in all its complexity, laying bare both its beauty and its darkness as she discusses race, sex, love, death, consumerism, and what it is like to be from a country that is in America’s crosshairs. Her tenderly perceptive and surprisingly humorous account invites us to see ourselves as we appear to others, making it possible for us to rediscover our many American gifts through the perspective of the outsider. In shattering myths and embracing painful contradictions that are unique to this place, *A Beginner’s Guide to America* is Hakakian’s candid love letter to America.

Roya Hakakian is the author of two books of poetry in Persian and numerous essays and articles in leading publications, including the New York Times, Washington Post and NPR. She is a founding member of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center and has been a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars.

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The Women’s History of the Modern World – Ep 85 with Rosalind Miles Feb 06, 2021

The internationally bestselling author of Who Cooked the Last Supper? presents a wickedly witty and very current history of the extraordinary female rebels, reactionaries, and trailblazers who left their mark on history from the French Revolution up to the present day.

Now is the time for a new women’s history — for the famous, infamous, and unsung women to get their due — from the Enlightenment to the #MeToo movement.

Recording the important milestones in the birth of the modern feminist movement and the rise of women into greater social, economic, and political power, Miles takes us through through a colorful pageant of astonishing women. The women range from heads of state like Empress Cixi, Eugenia Charles, Indira Gandhi, Jacinda Ardern, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to political rainmakers Kate Sheppard, Carrie Chapman Catt, Anna Stout, Dorothy Height, Shirley Chisholm, Winnie Mandela. Also included are STEM powerhouses Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Rosalind Franklin, Sophia Kovalevskaya, Marie Curie, and Ada Lovelace, revolutionaries Olympe de Gouges, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Patyegarang, and writer/intellectuals Mary Wollstonecraft, Simon de Beauvoir, Elaine Morgan, and Germaine Greer. Women in the arts, women in sports, women in business, women in religion, women in politics—this is a one-stop roundup of the tremendous progress women have made in the modern era.

A testimony to how women have persisted — and excelled — this is a smart and stylish popular history for all readers.

Rosalind Miles is the award-winning author of the international best-seller I, Elizabeth, a novel recreating the life of Queen Elizabeth I in her own words, and twenty-five other books of fiction and non-fiction, including the highly acclaimed Who Cooked The Last Supper?

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Mental Illness and Graphic Novel as Memoir – Ep 84 with Joshua Kemble Jan 05, 2021

Josh thought he was living the artist’s dream. The young, ambitious comic book creator had a hip Portland apartment, an affectionate fiancé, and his whole life ahead of him. Until the night he finds himself on Burnside Bridge, willing himself to jump. How did he get here? Two Stories is a confessional graphic memoir that grapples with questions of faith, mental illness, depravity, and, ultimately, redemption in a fallen world.

Here’s a great trailer for the book:

Joshua Kemble is a full-time art director, freelance illustrator, and Xeric Award-winning cartoonist. His illustration clients have ranged from Scholastic to Random House. Joshua was born in 1980 in Tarzana, California, and grew up in the Antelope Valley. He received his BFA and MFA in Illustration from California State University of Long Beach and resides in Lancaster, CA, with his wife and fellow artist, Mai S. Kemble, and son Benjamin. He has taught college art courses in design and illustration, and co-hosts both The Artcasters and 48-Hour Art Check. You can see Josh’s work at www.joshuakemble.com.

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Don’t Judge a College Athlete by Their Cover – Ep 83 with Corey Sobel Dec 02, 2020

The Redshirt challenges tenacious stereotypes, shedding new light on the hypermasculine world of American football. Over the course of their first year playing for a Division One college football program that is willing to win at all costs, roommates Miles Furling and Reshawn McCoy are forced to choose between their true selves and the selves that have been imposed on them by the game.

Corey Sobel’s debut novel, The Redshirt, was published by the New Poetry & Prose Series at the University Press of Kentucky on October 13, 2020. The Redshirt is a finalist for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and is one of NPR’s Favorite Books of 2020. Sobel also has non-fiction published by or forthcoming from The Wall Street Journal’s book section, Esquire, Largehearted Boy, and HuffPost, and he edits the column “Music for Desks” at Epiphany Magazine.

Corey was born in Colorado and spent his childhood moving around the United States with his family of seven. He attended Duke University on a football scholarship and has since researched HIV/AIDS in North Carolina and Kenya, documented wartime human rights abuses on the border of Burma and Thailand, and served as a researcher for international development organizations around the world. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and their dog and cat.

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A Mayan Creation Story – Ep 82 with Ilan Stavans Nov 01, 2020

Popul Vuh: A Retelling is an inspired and urgent prose retelling of the Mayan myth of creation by acclaimed Latin American author and scholar Ilan Stavans, gorgeously illustrated by Salvadoran folk artist Gabriela Larios and introduced by renowned author, diplomat, and environmental activist Homero Aridjis.

The archetypal creation story of Latin America, the Popul Vuh began as a Maya oral tradition millennia ago. In the mid-sixteenth century, as indigenous cultures across the continent were being threatened with destruction by European conquest and Christianity, it was written down in verse by members of the K’iche’ nobility in what is today Guatemala. In 1701, that text was translated into Spanish by a Dominican friar and ethnographer before vanishing mysteriously.

Cosmic in scope and yet intimately human, the Popul Vuh offers invaluable insight into the Maya way of life before being decimated by colonization-their code of ethics, their views on death and the afterlife, and their devotion to passion, courage and the natural world. It tells the story of how the world was created in a series of rehearsals that included wooden dummies, demi-gods, and eventually humans. It describes the underworld, Xibalba-a place as harrowing as Danta’s hell-and relates the legend of the ultimate king, who, in the face of tragedy, became a spirit that accompanies his people in their struggle for survival.

Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities, Latin America and Latino Culture at Amherst College and the publisher of Restless Books. He is a prolific translator, author, and public intellectual.

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Stories From a Syrian Refugee – Ep 81 with Perween Richards Oct 15, 2020

Drawn from her experiences of growing up as a young woman in the ‘world’s largest prison’—Gaza—Nayrouz Qarmout’s stories in The Sea Cloak (translated by Perween Richards) stitch together a stirring patchwork of perspectives exploring what it means to be a Palestinian today. Whether following the daily struggles of orphaned children fighting to survive in the rubble of recent bombardments, or mapping the complex tensions between political forces vying to control Palestinian lives, these stories offer a rare insight into one of the most talked about but least understood cities in the Middle East. Taken together, they afford us a local perspective on a global story, always rooted firmly in that most cherished of things, the home.

Perween Richards is a literary translator of Arabic-language stories. She attended translating classes at City summer school in London in 2016, and was one of the two winners of the school’s annual translation competition, sponsored by Comma Press. She was awarded an English PEN Translates grant to translate The Sea Cloak.

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You Ought To Do A Story About Me – Ep 80 with Ted Jackson Aug 22, 2020

You Ought To Do A Story About Me: Addiction, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Endless Quest for Redemption is the heartbreaking, timeless, and redemptive story of the transformative friendship binding a fallen-from-grace NFL player and a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist who meet on the streets of New Orleans, offering a rare glimpse into the precarious world of homelessness and the lingering impact of systemic racism and poverty on the lives of NOLA’s citizens.

Author Ted Jackson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist and the author of YOU OUGHT TO DO A STORY ABOUT ME, an unlikely tale that began thirty years ago when a homeless man boasted about playing in three Super Bowls. The story was true.

Beginning in 1984, Ted started photographing assignments for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans and globally, exploring politics, environmental issues, conflict and the indomitable human spirit. He has appeared on CBS, ABC, CNN, Fox News, NBC and NPR. He and his wife live in Covington, Louisiana.

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E.E. Cummings And The Great War – Ep 79 with Alison Rosenblitt Aug 01, 2020

An incisive biography of E. E. Cummings’s early life, including his World War I ambulance service and subsequent imprisonment, inspirations for his inventive poetry.

E. E. Cummings is one of our most popular and enduring poets, one whose name extends beyond the boundaries of the literary world. Renowned for his formally fractured, gleefully alive poetry, Cummings is not often thought of as a war poet. But his experience in France and as a prisoner during World War I (the basis for his first work of prose, The Enormous Room) escalated his earliest breaks with conventional form?the innovation with which his name would soon become synonymous.

Intimate and richly detailed, The Beauty of Living begins with Cummings’s Cambridge upbringing and his relationship with his socially progressive but domestically domineering father. It follows Cummings through his undergraduate experience at Harvard, where he fell into a circle of aspiring writers including John Dos Passos, who became a lifelong friend. Steeped in classical paganism and literary Decadence, Cummings and his friends rode the explosion of Cubism, Futurism, Imagism, and other “modern” movements in the arts. As the United States prepared to enter World War I, Cummings volunteered as an ambulance driver, shipped out to Paris, and met his first love, Marie Louise Lallemand, who was working in Paris as a prostitute. Soon after reaching the front, however, he was unjustly imprisoned in a brutal French detention center at La Ferté-Macé. Through this confrontation with arbitrary and sadistic authority, he found the courage to listen to his own voice.

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Our Moral Character – Ep 78 with Christian B. Miller Jul 16, 2020

We like to think of ourselves, our friends, and our families as decent people. We may not be saints, but we are still honest, relatively kind, and mostly trustworthy. Author and philosopher Christian B. Miller argues in his new book, “The Character Gap: How Good Are We?” that we are badly mistaken in thinking this. Hundreds of recent studies in psychology tell a different story: that we all have serious character flaws that prevent us from being as good as we think we are – and that we do not even recognize that these flaws exist. But neither are most of us cruel or dishonest.

Instead, Miller argues, we are a mixed bag. On the one hand, most of us in a group of bystanders will do nothing as someone cries out for help in an emergency. Yet it is also true that there will be many times when we will selflessly come to the aid of a complete stranger – and resist the urge to lie, cheat, or steal even if we could get away with it. Much depends on cues in our social environment. Miller uses this recent psychological literature to explain what the notion of “character” really means today, and how we can use this new understanding to develop a character better in sync with the kind of people we want to be.

Christian B. Miller is the A. C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University. He is the Past Director of the Character Project, funded by $5.6 million in grants from the John Templeton Foundation and Templeton World Charity Foundation.

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In Praise of Walking – Ep 77 with Shane O’Mara Jun 27, 2020

In this captivating book, neuroscientist Shane O’Mara invites us to marvel at the benefits walking confers on our bodies and brains, and to appreciate the advantages of this uniquely human skill. From walking’s evolutionary origins, traced back millions of years to life forms on the ocean floor, to new findings from cutting-edge research, he reveals how the brain and nervous system give us the ability to balance, weave through a crowded city, and run our “inner GPS” system. Walking is good for our muscles and posture; it helps to protect and repair organs, and can slow or turn back the aging of our brains. With our minds in motion we think more creatively, our mood improves, and stress levels fall. Walking together to achieve a shared purpose is also a social glue that has contributed to our survival as a species.

As our lives become increasingly sedentary, O’Mara makes the case that we must start walking again—whether it’s up a mountain, down to the park, or simply to school and work. In Praise of Walking illuminates the joys, health benefits, and mechanics of walking, and reminds us to get out of our chairs and discover a happier, healthier, more creative self.

Shane O’Mara is the principal investigator in the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, where his research explores the brain systems supporting learning, memory, and cognition, and the brain systems affected by stress and depression. He has published over 140 peer-reviewed papers.

He is a graduate of the National University of Ireland – Galway, and University of Oxford; was elected both as a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and Member of the Royal Irish Academy.

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How To Get things DONE – Ep 76 with Ellen Goodwin Jun 14, 2020

DONE: How To Work When No One is Watching is a hands-on guidebook that teaches, through stories, examples, and activities how working with (and around) your brain, can make all the difference in what can be accomplished every day; the importance of being in action (and not motion); the best way to prevent obstacles from stopping you; how to easily build stronger and better habits; why it’s more important to manage you energy instead of your time, and why one-size does not fit all when it comes to productivity. It’s also kind of funny.

Ellen Goodwin is a Productivity Trainer, TEDx speaker, and author who uses neuroscience-based principles to enable individuals and businesses to overcome procrastination, build stronger habits, and be more focused so that they can be more efficient and effective with their time. When it comes to productivity, Ellen believes there is no one-size-fits-all solution, so she advocates for experimentation to find the tools and techniques that work best with your life and your business. She recently released her book, DONE: How To Work When No One Is Watching, and is the co-host of The Faster, Easier, Better Show podcast.

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Baseball’s Swing Kings – Ep 75 with Jared Diamond May 25, 2020

From the Wall Street Journal’s national baseball writer, the captivating story of the home run boom, following a group of players who rose from obscurity to stardom and the rogue swing coaches who helped them usher the game into a new age.

Swing Kings is both a rollicking history of baseball’s recent past and a deeply reported, character-driven account of a battle between opponents as old as time: old and new, change and stasis, the establishment and those who break from it. Jared Diamond has written a masterful chronicle of America’s pastime at the crossroads.

JARED DIAMOND has been the national baseball writer for the Wall Street Journal since 2017. Prior to that, he spent a season as the Journal’s Yankees beat writer and three seasons as their Mets beat writer. In his current role, he leads the newspaper’s baseball coverage. This is his first book.

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Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space – Ep 74 with Amanda Leduc May 08, 2020

If every disabled character is mocked and mistreated, how does the Beast ever imagine a happily-ever-after? Amanda Leduc looks at fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm to Disney, showing us how they influence our expectations and behaviour and linking the quest for disability rights to new kinds of stories that celebrate difference.

Amanda Leduc is a disabled writer and author of the non-fiction book DISFIGURED: ON FAIRY TALES, DISABILITY, AND MAKING SPACE (Coach House Books, 2020) and the novel THE MIRACLES OF ORDINARY MEN (2013, ECW Press). Her next novel, THE CENTAUR’S WIFE, is forthcoming from Random House Canada in the spring of 2021. She has cerebral palsy and lives in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, where she works as the Communications Coordinator for the Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD), Canada’s first festival for diverse authors and stories.

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Jimmy and the Kid – Ep 73 with Lee Silber Apr 22, 2020

When a twelve year-old girl wants to play baseball with the boys, she’s lucky to have the help of Jimmy Parks, a former Major Leaguer and someone with the power to change her life forever.

Escaping to the empty baseball fields across the street from the military housing in which she lives, Billie is content to throw a ball against the wall, pitching imaginary games with no one around—until she meets Jimmy Parks, the man who maintains the fields.

Not only does the long-retired Major Leaguer teach Billie and her new friends how to play baseball the right way, he and the other older coaches also teach the team about life in this story of breaking barriers, and breaking through to do what you were always meant to do.

Lee Silber is an author who started self-publishing his books (with success!) in the 1990s, he then signed with Random House for four books, followed by St Martin’s Press, Career Press, and others to release a total of 20 books. Then, he went back to putting out his own books (winning several awards) including his latest title, “Jimmy and the Kid“.

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The Amateurs – Ep 72 with Liz Harmer Mar 14, 2020

“The Amateurs” is a speculative novel of rapture and romance in the vein of Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood and Tom Perotta’s The Leftovers. In the near future, the world’s largest tech company unveils the “Port”, a personal time travel device. It becomes a phenomenon. But soon it is clear that those who pass through its portal won’t be coming back–either unwilling to return or, more ominously, unable to do so.

After a few short years, the population plummets. A small group of the one percent still remain in the present, having been left trying to rebuild a very lonely and dwindling world.

Liz Harmer is a Canadian writer living in Southern California with her many pets, three children, and philosopher husband. Her stories, essays, and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Walrus, Image Journal, the Globe and Mail, The Malahat Review, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. In 2014 she won gold in Personal Journalism at the National Magazine awards, after being awarded the Constance Rooke Award for Creative Nonfiction. In 2018 she was a finalist for the Journey Prize as well as appearing in Best Canadian Stories. Her debut novel, The Amateurs, released in 2018 with Knopf Canada, was a finalist for the Amazon Canada First Novel Award.

Find Liz on Social Media and the Web:

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A Flag of No Nation – Ep 71 with Tom Haviv Feb 27, 2020

A meditation on world invention and collapse, A Flag of No Nation traces the stories of Turkish Jews in the 20th century, blind colonists in a white ocean, and performers enacting new rituals around a nationless flag. Through forms of storytelling that range from allegory to oral history, Tom Haviv investigates the history of Israel/Palestine and the mythologies of nationalism. A warning against imperfect dreams, and invitation to imagine something new, A Flag of No Nation reminds us how the act of remembrance can help us re-envision the future.

Tom Haviv is a writer, multimedia artist, and organizer based in Brooklyn and born in Israel. His debut poetry collection, A Flag of No Nation, is being published by Jewish Currents Press in the fall of 2019. His first children’s book, Woven, was published in the fall of 2018 by Ayin Press. He is also is the founder of the Hamsa Flag project, an international performance project designed to create conversation about the future of Israel/Palestine, Sephardi/Mizrahi culture, and Jewish/Muslim solidarity. He works with NYC-based community organization JFREJ (Jews for Racial and Economic Justice) where he is an active member of their Sephardi/Mizrahi Caucus.

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The Lost Book of Adana Moreau – Ep 70 with Michael Zapata Feb 13, 2020

The Lost Book of Adana Moreau is the mesmerizing story of a Latin American science fiction writer and the lives her lost manuscript unites decades later in post-Katrina New Orleans.

In 1929 in New Orleans, a Dominican immigrant named Adana Moreau writes a science fiction novel. The novel earns rave reviews, and Adana begins a sequel. Then she falls gravely ill. Just before she dies, she destroys the only copy of the manuscript.

Decades later in Chicago, Saul Drower is cleaning out his dead grandfather’s home when he discovers a mysterious manuscript written by none other than Adana Moreau. With the help of his friend Javier, Saul tracks down an address for Adana’s son in New Orleans, but as Hurricane Katrina strikes they must head to the storm-ravaged city for answers.

What results is a brilliantly layered masterpiece an ode to home, storytelling and the possibility of parallel worlds.

Michael Zapata is the author of The Lost Book of Adana Moreau. He is a founding editor of the award-winning MAKE Literary Magazine. He’s also the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Award for Fiction; the City of Chicago DCASE Individual Artist Program award; and a Pushcart Nomination. As an educator, he taught literature and writing in high schools servicing dropout students. He is a graduate of the University of Iowa and has lived in New Orleans, Italy, and Ecuador. He currently lives in Chicago with his family.

You can find Michael the following ways:

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Even That Wildest Hope – Ep 69 with Seyward Goodhand Jan 09, 2020

Even That Wildest Hope bursts with vibrant, otherworldly characters—wax girls and gods-among-men, artists on opposite sides of a war, aimless plutocrats and anarchist urchins—who are sometimes wondrous, often grotesque, and always driven by passions and yearnings common to us all. Each story is an untamed territory unto itself: where characters are both victims and predators, the settings are antique and futuristic, and where our intimacies—with friends, lovers, enemies, and even our food—reveal a deeply human desire for beauty and abjection.

Seyward Goodhand’s work has been shortlisted for the Writers’ Trust/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize and a National Magazine Award. Her first collection of stories, Even That Wildest Hope, is now out with Invisible Publishing.

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Always Blue – Ep 68 with John Dermot Woods Dec 19, 2019

Always Blue is a work of literary science fiction that explores how our day-to-day struggles and inconveniences—irritating colleagues, entitled students, aloof administrators, uninspired lunch choices—can make it impossible to see the real threats to our world.

John Dermot Woods writes stories and draws comics in Brooklyn, NY. His books include the novel, The Baltimore Atrocities, published by Coffee House Press, and a collection of comics with the title Activities (published by Publishing Genius Press). He recently published a science fiction chapbook, Always Blue, as part of Radix Media’s FUTURES series. He is a founder of the online arts journal Action, Yes and a professor of English and Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College.

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The Friar’s Lantern – Ep 67 with Greg Hickey Dec 06, 2019

You may win $1,000,000. You will judge a man of murder.
An eccentric scientist tells you he can read your mind and offers to prove it in a high-stakes wager. A respected college professor exacts impassioned, heat-of-the-moment revenge on his wife’s killer—a week after her death—and you’re on the jury. Take a Turing test with a twist, discover how your future choices might influence the past, and try your luck at Three Card Monte. And while you weigh chance, superstition, destiny, intuition and logic in making your decisions, ask yourself: are you responsible for your actions at all? Choose wisely—if you can.

Greg Hickey is a former international professional baseball player and current forensic scientist, endurance athlete, author and screenwriter. His debut novel, Our Dried Voices, was a finalist for Foreword Reviews’ INDIES Science Fiction Book of the Year Award. His latest novel, The Friar’s Lantern, is a grown-up take on interactive fiction. He lives in Chicago with his wife, Lindsay.

You can find Greg on GoodReads, LinkedIn, Amazon, Twitter, and Facebook.

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My Penguin Year – Ep 66 with Lindsay McCrae Nov 21, 2019

For 337 days, award-winning wildlife cameraman Lindsay McCrae intimately followed 11,000 emperor penguins amid the singular beauty of Antarctica. This is his masterful chronicle of one penguin colony’s astonishing journey of life, death, and rebirth―and of the extraordinary human experience of living amongst them in the planet’s harshest environment.

My Penguin Year recounts McCrae’s remarkable adventure to the end of the Earth. He observed every aspect of a breeding emperor’s life, facing the inevitable sacrifices that came with living his childhood dream, and grappling with the personal obstacles that, being over 15,000km away from the comforts of home, almost proved too much. Out of that experience, he has written an unprecedented portrait of Antarctica’s most extraordinary residents.

Lindsay McCrae is an award winning television wildlife camera operator and photographer. Lindsay’s passion for wildlife began at an early age. Growing up in the rural Lake District in the north of England, Lindsay has been captivated by all aspects of the natural world since he can remember. Lindsay has been filming wildlife professionally for over 10 years and has travelled all over the world filming everything from wolves in deep Alaska, to orangutans in the Indonesian jungle. In 2017 for almost an entire year, Lindsay lived in Antarctica isolated from the rest of the world, documenting the lives of a colony of emperor penguins.

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Caregiving and Caretaking – Ep 65 with Germ Lynn Oct 16, 2019

What You Call is a glimpse into the future and part of the Radix Media science fiction chapbook series, Futures. It’s the story of a rogue “support unit” that is desperate for a charge and along the way they try to cobble together a sense of purpose in a crumbling world.

Germ Lynn is a writer and cellist living in Brooklyn. As a journalist, they have been published by Playboy, Broadly, and Slate. Their short fiction has been published by Hypergraphic Press in the queer literature anthology Spaces We Have Known and their poetry has been published by Trapart Books in the collection Rendering Unconscious: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, Politics, and Poetry. Their science fiction chapbook What You Call is out now on Radix Media.

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Landscape Architecture, California Style – Ep 64 with Kelly Comras Sep 25, 2019

Landscape architect Ruth Shellhorn helped define the distinctive mid-century regional aesthetic of Southern California. Most well known for her work with Walt Disney on the original design of Disneyland, she also designed original landscape plans for the Bullock’s department stores and Fashion Square shopping centers, a landscape master plan for the University of California at Riverside, and a number of private gardens and estates for post-war movie stars, and the business and financial leaders of the Los Angeles region. She developed a distinctive palette of plant materials and her landscape designs refined an indoor-outdoor living concept that perfectly expressed the exuberance and optimism of the “Southern California look.”

Kelly Comras is a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects and a member of the State Bar of California. Her landscape architectural practice focuses on community-based open space design, research, and publication in the field of cultural landscape. She is a founding member of the The Cultural Landscape Foundation’s Stewardship Council, Past-President of the California Garden & Landscape History Society, and Chaired the Editorial Board for the journal, Eden. She lectures at such institutions as Harvard Graduate School of Design, Society of Architectural Historians, California Preservation Foundation, and others. Her book, Ruth Shellhorn, was released in 2016.

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French Youth Resistance in World War II – Ep 63 with Ronald Rosbottom Sep 18, 2019

The author of the acclaimed When Paris Went Dark, longlisted for the National Book Award, returns to World War II once again to tell the incredible story of the youngest members of the French Resistance—many only teenagers—who waged a hidden war against the Nazi occupiers and their collaborators in Paris and across France. Sudden Courage: Youth in France Confront the Germans, 1940-1945 is available now.

Ronald Rosbottom is the Winifred L. Arms Professor in the Arts and Humanities and a professor of French, European Studies, and Architectural Studies at Amherst College. Previously he was the dean of faculty at Amherst. His previous book, When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation, 1940-1944 was long listed for the National Book Award in Nonfiction and was acclaimed as a landmark study, “an intimate, sweeping narrative” (Stacy Schiff) that reshaped our conception of the period. He divides his time between Amherst, Massachusetts, and Paris.

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Unlonely Planet – Ep 62 with Jillian Richardson Sep 05, 2019

You can live the loneliest life while being surrounded by people. You can be the busiest person and still feel unfulfilled. In an age when individualism and self-reliance are prized above all other traits, how can we feel connected? Where are our healthy congregations? Do we even know what those are anymore?

Enter, Unlonely Planet. This book is your roadmap to defining joy in your life and reconnecting with the community around you — whether that’s through traditional events and gatherings or by shaking things up and making one of your own. If you’re ready to live a happier, more connected life, Unlonely Planet is here for you.

Jillian Richardson is committed to creating connection and community by organizing places where people feel seen, heard, and valued. As a professional community builder, public speaker, and writer, Jillian is most known for being the founder of The Joy List, a weekly newsletter with the mission of reducing loneliness in New York City and eventually the world. She’s been sending it out every Monday morning for over two years, helping people build connection to both place and each other. In addition to her successful career in freelance writing and event design, Jillian has just released her first book, titled Unlonely Planet.

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Family and Identity – Ep 61 with Hal Y. Zhang Aug 21, 2019

In this episode Jon speaks with Hal Y. Zhang, author of Hard Mother, Spider Mother, Soft Mother. Hard Mother, Spider Mother, Soft Mother is a story about the imprecise nature of memories and how they affect our relationships. You can read an excerpt here.

The story follows Ellery Lang, whose mother Valerie has abruptly left
their home after several days of spouting increasingly strange
conspiracy theories. In a near future world where citizens are always
watched and where “personalization” is part of every day life, Valerie
has managed to stay in an era long gone. This makes her a mystery to
Ellery, who realizes how little she actually knows about her, and the
search for her stirs up painful childhood memories that Ellery can now
choose to erase.

Hal Y. Zhang is an international transplant and former physicist who writes science, science fiction, and fiction, in no particular order. Her prose and poetry have appeared in publications such as Uncanny, Strange Horizons, and Fireside. She splits her time between the East Coast and the Internet. Follow her at halyzhang.com.

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The Cape Cod National Seashore – Ep 60 with Ethan Carr Jul 03, 2019

In the mid-nineteenth century,
Thoreau recognized the importance of preserving the complex and fragile
landscape of Cape Cod, with its weathered windmills, expansive beaches,
dunes, wetlands, harbors, and the lives that flourished here, supported
by the maritime industries and saltworks. One hundred years later, the
National Park Service―working with a group of concerned locals,
then-senator John F. Kennedy, and other supporters―took on the challenge
of meeting the needs of a burgeoning public in this region of unique
natural beauty and cultural heritage.

To those who were settled in
the remote wilds of the Cape, the impending development was
threatening, and as the award-winning historian Ethan Carr explains, the
visionary plan to create a national seashore came very close to
failure. Success was achieved through unprecedented public outreach, as
the National Park Service and like-minded Cape Codders worked to
convince entire communities of the long-term value of a park that could
accommodate millions of tourists. Years of contentious negotiations
resulted in the innovative compromise between private and public
interests now known as the “Cape Cod model.”

The Greatest Beach is essential reading for all who are concerned with protecting the nation’s gradually diminishing cultural landscapes. In his final analysis of Cape Cod National Seashore, Carr poses provocative questions about how to balance the conservation of natural and cultural resources in regions threatened by increasing visitation and development.

Ethan Carr, PhD, FASLA, is a professor of landscape architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the director of the MLA program. He is a landscape historian and preservationist specializing in public landscapes, particularly municipal and national park planning and design.

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Dauntless Women – Ep 59 with Caitlin Grace McDonnell Jun 19, 2019

Introducing “Fierce”, thirteen powerful, entwined biographies and memoirs that describe a staunchly Feminist approach: “To thine own self be true.” Historical documentation of human affairs informs the past, but what of the understated and overlooked herstories of half of the world’s population? Fierce explores the lives of “masterless women” in education, entrepreneurship, religion, the armed forces, the arts, adventuring, and activism, celebrating their strengths and achievements while questioning the systems that erased the significance of their influence and importance. The writers range in age from their 20s to their 60s, and they hail from diverse heritages and orientations. By sharing the rich context of their unique life experiences, the authors emphasize their connection to each of their herstorical subjects, whose various provenances span continents and centuries. These essays shine a light on the shadowy, lesser-known impact that women have had on global history through the importance of each of these herstories.

Caitlin Grace McDonnell was a New York Times Fellow in poetry at NYU and has received fellowships from Yaddo, Blue Mountain Center and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Her poems and essays have been published widely, most recently in FIERCE, Essays for and about Dauntless Women from Nauset Press. She published a chapbook of poems “Dreaming the Tree” (Belladonna 2003) and a book “Looking for Small Animals” (2012). Currently, she teaches English at CUNY, lives in Brooklyn with her ten-year-old daughter, and is at work on a novel.

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**Aloha Rodeo – Ep 58 with David Wolman** Jun 05, 2019
In the spirit of The Boys in the Boat comes the captivating true story of the native Hawaiian cowboys who traveled to Wyoming in 1908 to compete at the “world championships” of rodeo, overcoming prejudice to beat the greatest white cowboys at their own game and return home American legends.

David Wolman is a Contributing Editor at Outside and a longtime contributor at Wired. He has written for the New York Times, New Yorker, Nature, BusinessWeek, and many other publications, and his work has been anthologized in the Best American Science and Nature Writing series. David is the author of The End of Money, Righting the Mother Tongue, and A Left-Hand Turn Around the World. Aloha Rodeo is his newest book. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his family.

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The Casket of Time – Ep 57 with Andri Magnason May 22, 2019

The world, according to Grace, is under an ancient curse. There once was a princess named Obsidiana, who was trapped in time by the greedy king of Pangea. To protect Obsidiana from dark and gloomy days, the king put her in a crystal casket made of spider silk woven so tightly that time itself couldn’t penetrate. The king’s greed for power doomed his kingdom and the trapped princess. Sigrun sees eerie parallels between the tale of Obsidiana and the present-day crisis, and realizes it’s up to her and her friends to break the ancient curse and fix the world.

Andri Magnason is an Icelandic writer, poet and film maker. Author of poetry, fiction, non fiction and his newest: The Casket of Time. He is the winner of the Philip K. Dick special citation and has won the Icelandic Literary Award in all categories.

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Waking Up To The Dark, Part 2 – Ep 56 with Clark Strand May 08, 2019

Waking Up to the Dark is a book for those of us who awaken
in the night and don’t know why we can’t get back to sleep, and a book
for those of us who have grown uncomfortable in real darkness—which we
so rarely experience these days, since our first impulse is always to
turn on the light. Most of all, it is a book for those of us who wonder
about our souls: When the lights are always on, when there is always
noise around us, do our souls have the nourishment they need in which
to grow?

Clark Strand is the author of WAKING UP TO THE DARK: Ancient Wisdom for a Sleepless Age and co-author, with his wife Perdita Finn, of THE WAY OF THE ROSE: The Radical Path of the Divine Feminine Hidden in the Rosary.
Strand has written for Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The
Washington Post, Huffington Post, Salon, and numerous other newspaper
and online venues. He is the co-founder of Way of the Rose, an
international eco-feminist rosary fellowship open to people of any
spiritual background. He lives in the Catskill Mountains with his wife
and family.

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Waking Up To The Dark, Part 1 – Ep 55 with Clark Strand Apr 24, 2019

Waking Up to the Dark is a book for those of us who awaken in the night and don’t know why we can’t get back to sleep, and a book for those of us who have grown uncomfortable in real darkness—which we so rarely experience these days, since our first impulse is always to turn on the light. Most of all, it is a book for those of us who wonder about our souls: When the lights are always on, when there is always noise around us, do our souls have the nourishment they need in which to grow?

Clark Strand is the author of WAKING UP TO THE DARK: Ancient Wisdom for a Sleepless Age and co-author, with his wife Perdita Finn, of THE WAY OF THE ROSE: The Radical Path of the Divine Feminine Hidden in the Rosary. Strand has written for Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Huffington Post, Salon, and numerous other newspaper and online venues. He is the co-founder of Way of the Rose, an international eco-feminist rosary fellowship open to people of any spiritual background. He lives in the Catskill Mountains with his wife and family.

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Leading Imperfectly – Ep 54 with James T. Robilotta Apr 10, 2019

In today’s episode, Jon interviews author James T. Robilotta about his book Leading Imperfectly: The value of being authentic for leaders, professionals and human beings.

There is a problem in today’s developing leaders-they think they need to be someone they are not to get what they want. In short, none of us is perfect, and when we pretend to be, people quit listening to us. Instead, we need to focus on trying to connect with others. Leading Imperfectly is full of examples for how to make those connections. The book is divided into a series of short, often humorous, and always-insightful essays filled with real-life stories from James’ own life. The through line for the book is the significance of practicing authentic leadership. James’ humor provides comic relief in the middle of some of the more serious stories, but the humor always makes his examples hit home and keeps his stories memorable.

James Robilotta is an author, professional speaker, coach, and entrepreneur. A few years ago James had his first book published, Leading Imperfectly: The value of being authentic for leaders, professionals, and human beings. He speaks internationally to willing and unwilling attendees about authentic leadership, giving courageous feedback and promoting memorability. His clients include American Express, General Electric (GE), and many others. His talks are infused with self-awareness and comedy stemming from his background as an improv comedian. James is also a coach. He loves helping people get out of their own way to live the lives they want.

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The Body Papers (Part 2) – Ep 53 with Grace Talusan Mar 28, 2019

Jon speaks with author Grace Talusan about her book The Body Papers.

Born in the Philippines, young Grace Talusan moves with her family to a New England suburb in the 1970s. At school, she confronts racism as one of the few kids with a brown face. At home, the confusion is worse: her grandfather’s nightly visits to her room leave her hurt and terrified, and she learns to build a protective wall of silence that maps onto the larger silence practiced by her Catholic Filipino family. Talusan learns as a teenager that her family’s legal status in the country has always hung by a thread—for a time, they were “illegal.” Family, she’s told, must be put first.

The abuse and trauma Talusan suffers as a child affects all her relationships, her mental health, and her relationship with her own body. Later, she learns that her family history is threaded with violence and abuse. And she discovers another devastating family thread: cancer. In her thirties, Talusan must decide whether to undergo preventive surgeries to remove her breasts and ovaries. Despite all this, she finds love, and success as a teacher. On a fellowship, Talusan and her husband return to the Philippines, where she revisits her family’s ancestral home and tries to reclaim a lost piece of herself.

Not every family legacy is destructive. From her parents, Talusan has learned to tell stories in order to continue. The generosity of spirit and literary acuity of this debut memoir are a testament to her determination and resilience.

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The Body Papers (Part 1) – Ep 52 with Grace Talusan Mar 13, 2019

Jon speaks with author Grace Talusan about her book The Body Papers.

Born in the Philippines, young Grace Talusan moves with her family to a New England suburb in the 1970s. At school, she confronts racism as one of the few kids with a brown face. At home, the confusion is worse: her grandfather’s nightly visits to her room leave her hurt and terrified, and she learns to build a protective wall of silence that maps onto the larger silence practiced by her Catholic Filipino family. Talusan learns as a teenager that her family’s legal status in the country has always hung by a thread—for a time, they were “illegal.” Family, she’s told, must be put first.

The abuse and trauma Talusan suffers as a child affects all her relationships, her mental health, and her relationship with her own body. Later, she learns that her family history is threaded with violence and abuse. And she discovers another devastating family thread: cancer. In her thirties, Talusan must decide whether to undergo preventive surgeries to remove her breasts and ovaries. Despite all this, she finds love, and success as a teacher. On a fellowship, Talusan and her husband return to the Philippines, where she revisits her family’s ancestral home and tries to reclaim a lost piece of herself.

Not every family legacy is destructive. From her parents, Talusan has learned to tell stories in order to continue. The generosity of spirit and literary acuity of this debut memoir are a testament to her determination and resilience.

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The Stories of Their Lives – Ep 51 with Lisa Gornick Feb 28, 2019

Jon interviews author Lisa Gornick about her newest novel, The Peacock Feast. Spanning the twentieth century and three continents, The Peacock Feast ricochets from Manhattan to San Francisco, from the decadent mansions of the Tiffany family to the death row of a Texas prison, and from the London consultation room of Anna Freud to a Mendocino commune. With psychological acuity and aching eloquence, Lisa Gornick has written a sweeping family drama, an exploration of the meaning of art and the art of dying, and an illuminating portrait of how our decisions reverberate across time and space.

Lisa Gornick is the author of Louisa Meets Bear, Tinderbox, and A Private Sorcery. Her stories and essays have appeared widely, including in The New York Times, Prairie Schooner, Real Simple, Salon, Slate, and The Sun. She holds a BA from Princeton and a PhD in clinical psychology from Yale, and is on the faculty of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. A long-time New Yorker, she lives in Manhattan with her family.

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Why Biodiversity is Good – Ep 50 with Rob Dunn Jan 31, 2019

Even when the floors are sparkling clean and the house seems silent, our domestic domain is wild beyond imagination. In Never Home Alone, biologist Rob Dunn introduces us to the nearly 200,000 species living with us in our own homes, from the Egyptian meal moths in our cupboards and camel crickets in our basements to the lactobacillus lounging on our kitchen counters. You are not alone. Yet, as we obsess over sterilizing our homes and separating our spaces from nature, we are unwittingly cultivating an entirely new playground for evolution. These changes are reshaping the organisms that live with us–prompting some to become more dangerous, while undermining those species that benefit our bodies or help us keep more threatening organisms at bay. No one who reads this engrossing, revelatory book will look at their homes in the same way again.

Rob Dunn is a professor in the department of applied ecology at North Carolina State University and in the Natural History Museum of Denmark at the University of Copenhagen. He is also the author of five books. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.

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Robert Murray Sculpture – Ep 49 with Jonathan Lippincott Jan 17, 2019

Spanning six decades, Robert Murray: Sculpture includes photographs of nearly two hundred works, seen in galleries, museums, and private collections, at public outdoor exhibitions, in his studios, and in the workshops of his fabricators. Jonathan D. Lippincott’s introduction and interview with Murray cover the sculptor’s process of working with fabricators and foundries, issues of public art and the siting of sculpture, Murray’s early years, his close friendship with Barnett Newman and relationships with other artists, his lifelong interest in flying, and more, insightfully illuminating both the work and the life of his remarkable sculptor.

Jonathan D. Lippincott is the author of Large Scale: Fabricating Sculpture in the 1960s and 1970s. Design manager at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, he also works independently as art director and designer on illustrated books about architecture, landscape, and fine art. He has written about art for The Paris Review Daily, On-Verge, and Tether: A Journal of Art, Literature, and Culture, and curated shows including the eightieth-anniversary exhibition for American Abstract Artists. He lives in New York City.

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How Hormones Control Just About Everything – Ep 48 with Randi Hutter Epstein Dec 01, 2018

A guided tour through the strange science of hormones and the age-old quest to control them. Metabolism, behavior, sleep, mood swings, the immune system, fighting, fleeing, puberty, and sex: these are just a few of the things our bodies control with hormones. Armed with a healthy dose of wit and curiosity, medical journalist Randi Hutter Epstein takes us on a journey through the unusual history of these potent chemicals from a basement filled with jarred nineteenth-century brains to a twenty-first-century hormone clinic in Los Angeles. Brimming with fascinating anecdotes, illuminating new medical research, and humorous details, Aroused introduces the leading scientists who made life-changing discoveries about the hormone imbalances that ail us, as well as the charlatans who used those discoveries to peddle false remedies. Epstein exposes the humanity at the heart of hormone science with her rich cast of characters, including a 1920s doctor promoting vasectomies as a way to boost libido, a female medical student who discovered a pregnancy hormone in the 1940s, and a mother who collected pituitaries, a brain gland, from cadavers as a source of growth hormone to treat her son. Along the way, Epstein explores the functions of hormones such as leptin, oxytocin, estrogen, and testosterone, demystifying the science of endocrinology. A fascinating look at the history and science of some of medicine’s most important discoveries, Aroused reveals the shocking history of hormones through the back rooms, basements, and labs where endocrinology began.

Randi Hutter Epstein, M.D., M.P.H., the author of Aroused and Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the garden of eden to the sperm bank, is an adjunct professor at Columbia University and a lecturer at Yale University.

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Chasing Prosperity in Mozambique (Part 2) – Ep 47 with Rowan Moore Gerety Nov 10, 2018

Go Tell the Crocodiles explores the efforts of ordinary people to provide for themselves where foreign aid, the formal economy, and the government have fallen short. I tell the story of contemporary Mozambique through the stories of people on the margins, from a street kid who flouts Mozambique’s child labor laws to make his living selling muffins, to a riverside community that has lost dozens of people to crocodile attacks. Amy Wilentz captured it well in a blurb saying Mozambique is “a country that has managed the troubling feat of failing its people while showing signs of stunning economic growth.”

Rowan Moore Gerety is a journalist in New York. His writing has appeared in outlets including The Guardian, the Atlantic, and Foreign Policy, and is a longtime contributor to NPR. The author of Go Tell the Crocodiles: Chasing Prosperity in Mozambique, he studied anthropology at Columbia University and was a Fulbright fellow in Mozambique.

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Chasing Prosperity in Mozambique (Part 1) – Ep 46 with Rowan Moore Gerety Oct 27, 2018

Go Tell the Crocodiles explores the efforts of ordinary people to provide for themselves where foreign aid, the formal economy, and the government have fallen short. I tell the story of contemporary Mozambique through the stories of people on the margins, from a street kid who flouts Mozambique’s child labor laws to make his living selling muffins, to a riverside community that has lost dozens of people to crocodile attacks. Amy Wilentz captured it well in a blurb saying Mozambique is “a country that has managed the troubling feat of failing its people while showing signs of stunning economic growth.”

Rowan Moore Gerety is a journalist in New York. His writing has appeared in outlets including The Guardian, the Atlantic, and Foreign Policy, and is a longtime contributor to NPR. The author of Go Tell the Crocodiles: Chasing Prosperity in Mozambique, he studied anthropology at Columbia University and was a Fulbright fellow in Mozambique.

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Lands of Lost Borders – Ep 45 with Kate Harris Sep 12, 2018

A brilliant, fierce writer makes her debut with this enthralling travelogue and memoir of her journey by bicycle along the Silk Road—an illuminating and thought-provoking fusion of The Places in Between, Lab Girl, and Wild that dares us to challenge the limits we place on ourselves and the natural world.

Buy Lands of Lost Borders on Amazon today.

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Dangerous Dystopias – Ep 44 with Siobhan Adcock Aug 29, 2018

After months of disturbing behavior, Gardner Quinn has vanished. Her older sister Fredericka is desperate to find her, but Fred is also pregnant—miraculously so, in a near-future America struggling with infertility. So she entrusts the job to their brother, Carter. In the tradition of The Handmaid’s Tale, The Completionist is speculative fiction at its very best: imaginative and propulsive, revealing our own world in bold and unexpected ways.

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A Room Away From The Wolves – Ep 43 with Nova Ren Suma Aug 15, 2018

Bina has never forgotten the time she and her mother ran away from home. Her mother promised they would hitchhike to the city to escape Bina’s cruel father and start over. But before they could even leave town, Bina had a new stepfather and two new stepsisters, and a humming sense of betrayal pulling apart the bond with her mother—a bond Bina thought was unbreakable.

Eight years later, after too many lies and with trouble on her heels, Bina finds herself on the side of the road again, the city of her dreams calling for her. She has an old suitcase, a fresh black eye, and a room waiting for her at Catherine House, a young women’s residence in Greenwich Village with a tragic history, a vow of confidentiality, and dark, magical secrets. There, Bina is drawn to her enigmatic downstairs neighbor Monet, a girl who is equal parts intriguing and dangerous. As Bina’s lease begins to run out, and nightmare and memory get tangled, she will be forced to face the terrible truth of why she’s come to Catherine House and what it will take for her to leave…

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Mischief and Mayhem On The Open Road – Ep 42 with Gina Wohlsdorf Aug 01, 2018

Meet Rainy Cain, a tough, smart seventeen-year-old whose primary instinct is survival. That instinct is tested when her life is upended by the sudden appearance of her father, Sam, who she thought was long dead, but instead had been in prison for his part in an armored truck robbery gone murderously wrong. Now escaped and on the run, he kidnaps Rainy, who he is convinced knows where the money from the robbery, never recovered, is hidden.
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Gina Wohlsdorf was born and raised in Bismarck, North Dakota. She graduated from Tulane University, taught English in the south of France, sold books in four states, and earned an MFA at the University of Virginia. Her debut novel, Security, was chosen as an Amazon best book of 2016. She currently lives in Colorado.

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The Simpsons and Springfield Confidential – Ep 41 with Mike Reiss Jul 18, 2018

Mike Reiss has won four Emmys and a Peabody Award during his twenty-eight years writing for “The Simpsons”. He ran the show in Season 4, which Entertainment Weekly called “the greatest season of the greatest show in history.” Mike co-created the animated series “The Critic” and created Showtime’s hit cartoon “Queer Duck” (about a gay duck). In 2006, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Animation Writers Caucus. Mike has been a contributing writer to more than two dozen animated films — including four ICE AGEs, two DESPICABLE MEs, THE LORAX, RIO, KUNG FU PANDA 3, and THE SIMPSONS MOVIE – with a worldwide gross of $14 billion. He has been happily married for thirty years. Like most children’s book authors, he has no children.

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The History and Science of Wine – Ep 40 with Kevin Begos Jul 05, 2018

After a chance encounter with an obscure Middle Eastern red, journalist Kevin Begos embarks on a ten-year journey to seek the origins of wine. What he unearths is a whole world of forgotten grapes, each with distinctive tastes and aromas, as well as the archaeologists, geneticists, chemists—even a paleobotanist—who are deciphering wine down to molecules of flavor.

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A Spiritual Autobiography – Ep 39 with Bill Kelly Jun 20, 2018

Bill Kelly studied philosophy at NYU and UC Berkeley and then left the U.S. at 26 for travel and adventure. Unexpectedly, Bill ended up living abroad for almost 25 years, five years of which was spent traveling with little money in Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. Eventually settling in Japan, Bill was active during the 1980s and early 1990s organizing groups, giving talks, writing, and teaching first English and then intercultural communication. When Bill returned to the U.S. in 1996, Bill studied for a doctorate in communication studies at the University of New Mexico and taught for 13 years at UCLA before retiring in 2014.

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The Nature Fix – Ep 38 with Florence Williams Jun 06, 2018

From forest trails in Korea, to islands in Finland, to eucalyptus groves in California, Florence Williams investigates the science behind nature’s positive effects on the brain. Delving into brand-new research, she uncovers the powers of the natural world to improve health, promote reflection and innovation, and strengthen our relationships. As our modern lives shift dramatically indoors, these ideas―and the answers they yield―are more urgent than ever.

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Eunice Kennedy Shriver – Ep 37 with Eileen McNamara May 21, 2018

In this “revelation” of a biography (USA TODAY), a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist examines the life and times of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, arguing she left behind the Kennedy family’s most profound political legacy.

While Joe Kennedy was grooming his sons for the White House and the Senate, his Stanford-educated daughter, Eunice, was hijacking her father’s fortune and her brothers’ political power to engineer one of the great civil rights movements of our time on behalf of millions of children and adults with intellectual disabilities. Her compassion was born of rage: at the medical establishment that had no answers for her sister Rosemary, at her revered but dismissive father, whose vision for his family did not extend beyond his sons, and at a government that failed to deliver on America’s promise of equality.

Now, in this “fascinating” (the Today show), “nuanced” (The Boston Globe) biography, “ace reporter and artful storyteller” (Pulitzer Prize–winning author Megan Marshall) Eileen McNamara finally brings Eunice Kennedy Shriver out from her brothers’ shadow. Granted access to never-before-seen private papers, including the scrapbooks Eunice kept as a schoolgirl in prewar London, McNamara paints an extraordinary portrait of a woman both ahead of her time and out of step with it: the visionary founder of Special Olympics, a devout Catholic in a secular age, and an officious, cigar-smoking, indefatigable woman whose impact on American society was longer lasting than that of any of the Kennedy men.

Eileen McNamara is the author of Eunice, the
Kennedy who Changed the World, to be released on April 3, 2018.

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The Human Instinct – Ep 36 with Ken Miller May 04, 2018

A radical, optimistic exploration of how humans evolved to develop reason, consciousness, and free will.

Lately, the most passionate advocates of the theory of evolution seem to present it as bad news. Scientists such as Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, and Sam Harris tell us that our most intimate actions, thoughts, and values are mere byproducts of thousands of generations of mindless adaptation. We are just one species among multitudes, and therefore no more significant than any other living creature.

Now comes Brown University biologist Kenneth R. Miller to make the case that this view betrays a gross misunderstanding of evolution. Natural selection surely explains how our bodies and brains were shaped, but Miller argues that it’s not a social or cultural theory of everything. In The Human Instinct, he rejects the idea that our biological heritage means that human thought, action, and imagination are pre-determined, describing instead the trajectory that ultimately gave us reason, consciousness and free will. A proper understanding of evolution, he says, reveals humankind in its glorious uniqueness—one foot planted firmly among all of the creatures we’ve evolved alongside, and the other in the special place of self-awareness and understanding that we alone occupy in the universe.

Equal parts natural science and philosophy, The Human Instinct is a moving and powerful celebration of what it means to be human.

—
Kenneth R. Miller is professor of biology at Brown University and the critically acclaimed bestselling author of Only a Theory, Finding Darwin’s God, and The Human Instinct.

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James Van Der Zee – Ep 35 with Andrea J. Loney Apr 14, 2018

James Van Der Zee was just a young boy when he saved enough money to buy his first camera. He took photos of his family, classmates, and anyone who would sit still for a portrait. By the fifth grade, James was the school photographer and unofficial town photographer. Eventually he outgrew his small town and moved to the exciting, fast-paced world of New York City. After being told by his boss that no one would want his or her photo taken by a black man, James opened his own portrait studio in Harlem. He took photographs of legendary figures of the Harlem Renaissance–politicians such as Marcus Garvey, performers including Florence Mills, Bill -Bojangles- Robinson, and Mamie Smith–and ordinary folks in the neighborhood too. Everyone wanted fancy portraits by James Van Der Zee. Winner of Lee & Low’s New Voices Award, Take a Picture of Me, James Van Der Zee! tells the story of a groundbreaking artist who chronicled an important era in Harlem and showed the beauty and pride of its people.

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Andrea J. Loney received her MFA in dramatic writing from New York University. Since then, she has worked various jobs, from screenwriter to teacher of computer skills, and she even ran away to live with a circus. Today Andrea spends most of her time writing the kind of books that she would have enjoyed as a child—stories that celebrate the humanity of all children. She lives with her devoted partner and their embarrassingly spoiled pets in Los Angeles, California.

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Dragon Speaker – Ep 34 with Elana A. Mugdan Mar 28, 2018

Born into a world of magic wielders without any powers of her own, Keriya Nameless isn’t exactly hero material, yet she’s chosen to save the last living dragon. She doesn’t know why it happened, and frankly she doesn’t care—this is her chance to prove her worth. Unfortunately, countless others are determined to get their hands on that dragon—everyone from smugglers to kings, from the Empress of Allentria to the most powerful warlord who ever lived—and Keriya quickly realizes she’s at the center of a war that will decide the fate of everything.
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Elana A. Mugdan is a published author and semi-retired filmmaker based in New York City. For the past few years she’s been working on her five-book YA fantasy series, entitled “The Shadow War Saga“. In 2015 she secured a deal with Pen Works Media, a small indie publisher in London. In 2016 the first book in the series, “Dragon Speaker“, was released in the UK. Its sequel, “Dragon Child”, is slated for release later this year.

Elana’s Twitter

Elana’s Instagram

Dragon Speaker on Goodreads

Elana’s LinkedIn

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Midlife: A Philosophical Guide – Ep 33 with Kieran Setiya Mar 09, 2018

How can you reconcile yourself with the lives you will never lead, with possibilities foreclosed, and with nostalgia for lost youth? How can you accept the failings of the past, the sense of futility in the tasks that consume the present, and the prospect of death that blights the future? In this self-help book with a difference, Kieran Setiya confronts the inevitable challenges of adulthood and middle age, showing how philosophy can help you thrive.

You will learn why missing out might be a good thing, how options are overrated, and when you should be glad you made a mistake. You will be introduced to philosophical consolations for mortality. And you will learn what it would mean to live in the present, how it could solve your midlife crisis, and why meditation helps.

Ranging from Aristotle, Schopenhauer, and John Stuart Mill to Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir, as well as drawing on Setiya’s own experience, Midlife combines imaginative ideas, surprising insights, and practical advice. Writing with wisdom and wit, Setiya makes a wry but passionate case for philosophy as a guide to life.
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Kieran teaches Philosophy at MIT, working mainly in ethics, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind. In addition to Midlife: A Philosophical Guide, he is the author of Practical Knowledge, Reasons without Rationalism, and Knowing Right From Wrong. His work has been featured in Aeon, Hi-Phi Nation, Why? Radio, Five Books, the Guardian, and the New York Times. He has also written about baseball and philosophy.

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All The Castles Burned – Ep 32 with Michael Nye Feb 14, 2018

Set in the early 1990s, All The Castles Burned is about Owen Webb, the son of working-class parents, receives a scholarship to the prestigious Rockcastle Preparatory Academy. He is befriended by the enigmatic Carson Bly, an upperclassman from a wealthy and powerful family. Their friendship, deepened through a love of basketball, becomes an obsession. During the summer before his sophomore year, Owen’s father is arrested for a shocking and unexpected crime. With his family torn apart, his anger and fear are carefully manipulated by Carson, whose mercurial personality becomes increasingly dangerous. Their once promising future begins to unravel in a tragic and unavoidable way.
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Michael Nye is the author of two books, the story collection Strategies Against Extinction and the novel All the Castles Burned. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in American Literary Review, Boulevard, Cincinnati Review, Crab Orchard Review, Epoch, Hobart, Kenyon Review, and the Normal School, among many others. He lives in Columbus, Ohio. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.
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Find Michael on:

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The Stowaway – Ep 31 with Laurie Gwen Shapiro Jan 31, 2018

The Stowaway is the spectacular, true story of a scrappy teenager from New York’s Lower East Side who stowed away on the Roaring Twenties’ most remarkable feat of science and daring: an expedition to Antarctica.

It was 1928: a time of illicit booze, of Gatsby and Babe Ruth, of freewheeling fun. The Great War was over and American optimism was higher than the stock market. What better moment to launch an expedition to Antarctica, the planet’s final frontier? There wouldn’t be another encounter with an unknown this magnificent until Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon.

Everyone wanted in on the adventure. Rockefellers and Vanderbilts begged to be taken along as mess boys, and newspapers across the globe covered the planning’s every stage. And then, the night before the expedition’s flagship set off, Billy Gawronski—a mischievous, first-generation New York City high schooler desperate to escape a dreary future in the family upholstery business—jumped into the Hudson River and snuck aboard.

Could he get away with it?

From the soda shops of New York’s Lower East Side to the dance halls of sultry Francophone Tahiti, all the way to Antarctica’s blinding white and deadly freeze, Laurie Gwen Shapiro’s The Stowaway takes you on the unforgettable voyage of a plucky young stowaway who became a Jazz Age celebrity, a mascot for an up-by-your bootstraps era.
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Laurie Gwen Shapiro is a native of New York City’s Lower East Side. She has most recently written articles for publications including The New Yorker, New York Magazine, The Daily Beast, Slate, Aeon, Los Angeles Review of Books, and has her own history column focusing on unsung heroes for The Forward.

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Heartland – Ep 30 with Ana Simo Jan 18, 2018

In a word-drunk romp through an alternate, preapocalyptic America, Ana Simo’s fiction debut, Heartland, turns the classic murder mystery on its head with the story of a thwarted author’s elaborate revenge on the woman who stole her lover, blending elements of telenovela, lesbian pulp noir, and dystopian satire.

Ana Simo is a New York playwright, essayist, and lesbian activist. Born and raised in Cuba, she immigrated to Paris in time to witness the May 1968 revolt, and participate in early women’s and gay and lesbian rights groups. Since moving to New York in 1973, she has written some dozen plays, collaborated with experimental artists, and co-founded literary and activist projects. She recently finished a second novel, Tannhäuser’s Dream, and is currently writing a new one, titled Divine Light.

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Darwin Carmichael Is Going To Hell – Ep 29 with Jenn Jordan Jan 03, 2018

It’s tough living in the 21st century, when mythical beings not only roam the earth, but camp out on your sofa and raid your refrigerator. Jobs are scarce; angels infest Brooklyn (the demons have taken all the good property in Manhattan) and minor gods bus tables at the local diner. The mortals of New York must balance not only their checkbooks but keep a close eye on their souls’ karmic account.

Darwin lives in Brooklyn, the borough of choice for hipsters, artists, deities and an assortment of mythological creatures. Darwin has a problem. Due to an unfortunate incident involving some intense snogging, an unbalanced high chair, and a framed image of the Buddha, he acquired a massive karmic deficit. Long story short, he’s going to go to Hell. Darwin doesn’t particularly want to go to Hell, so he’s doing everything he can to save his immortal soul.

Managing his complete karmic rehabilitation, a soul-crippling day-job in financial aid counseling, life in a ridiculously gentrified, rent-inflated neighborhood, and a pack of free-loading stoner angels is tricky, to say the least.

His best friend, Ella Fitzgerald, the daughter of saints with good karma to burn, coaches Darwin on saving his soul. His 2000 year old pet manticore, Skittles, provides moral support, the wisdom of the ancients, and fluffy hugs. Darwin must contend with his obnoxious roommate—art student and suspected alien Matt Westbury—but there’s also his friendly minotaur landlord, Patrick, who drinks Darwin’s beer and fixes the sink.

Every day is a fresh hell, but it’s a chance at redemption.

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Daughters of the Air – Ep 28 with Anca Szilágyi Dec 20, 2017

Tatiana “Pluta” Spektor was a mostly happy, if awkward, young girl–until her sociologist father was disappeared during Argentina’s Dirty War. Sent a world away by her grieving mother to attend boarding school outside New York City, Pluta wrestles alone with the unresolved tragedy and at last runs away: to the streets of Brooklyn in 1980, where she figuratively–and literally–spreads her wings. Told with haunting fabulist imagery by debut novelist Anca L. Szilagyi, this searing tale of love, loss, estrangement, and coming of age is an unflinching exploration of the personal devastation wrought by political repression.

Anca L. Szilágyi grew up in Brooklyn. Her debut novel, Daughters of the Air, releases December 2017. Her essays and short stories appear in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, Gastronomica, and Fairy Tale Review, among other publications. She is the recipient of the inaugural Artist Trust / Gar LaSalle Storyteller Award, a Made at Hugo House fellowship, and awards from the Vermont Studio Center, 4Culture, the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, and the Jack Straw Cultural Center. The Stranger hailed Anca as one of the “fresh new faces in Seattle fiction.” She lives in Seattle with her husband. Learn more about her at ancawrites.com.

Anca’s social media:

Twitter

Instagram

Goodreads

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The Paris Secret – Ep 27 with Karen Swan Dec 06, 2017

In this glittering tale of forgotten treasures and long-held secrets, international bestseller Karen Swan explores one woman’s journey to discovering the truth behind an abandoned apartment and a family whose mysteries may be better left undiscovered.

When high-powered fine art agent Flora Sykes is called in to assess objets d’art in a Paris apartment that has been abandoned since WWII, she is skeptical at first—until she discovers that the treasure trove of paintings is myriad…and priceless. The powerful Vermeil family to whom they belong is eager to learn more and asks Flora to trace the history of each painting.

Despite a shocking announcement that has left her own family reeling, Flora finds herself thrown into the glamorous world of the Vermeils. But she soon realizes there is more to this project than first appears. As she researches the provenance of their prize Renoir, she uncovers a scandal surrounding the painting—and a secret that goes to the very heart of the family. The fallout will place Flora in the eye of a storm that carries her from London to Vienna to the glittering coast of Provence.

Xavier Vermeil, the brusque scion of the family, is determined to separate Flora from his family’s affairs in spite of their powerful attraction to one another. Just what are the secrets he is desperately trying to hide? And what price is Flora willing to pay to uncover the devastating truth…?
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Karen Swan began her career in fashion journalism before giving it all up to raise her three children and a puppy, and to pursue her ambition of becoming a writer.

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Jill Tarter and The Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence – Ep 26 with Sarah Scoles Nov 23, 2017

For anyone who has ever looked up at the night sky and wondered, “Are we alone?” Sarah Scoles examines the science behind the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and its pioneer, Jill Tarter, the inspiration for the main character in Carl Sagan’s Contact.

Jill Tarter is a pioneer, an innovator, an adventurer, and a controversial force. At a time when women weren’t encouraged to do much outside the home, Tarter ventured as far out as she could―into the three-Kelvin cold of deep space. And she hasn’t stopped investigating a subject that takes and takes without giving much back.

Today, her computer’s screensaver is just the text “SO…ARE WE ALONE?” This question keeps her up at night. In some ways, this is the question that keep us all up at night. We have all spent dark hours wondering about our place in it all, pondering our “aloneness,” both terrestrial and cosmic. Tarter’s life and her work are not just a quest to understand life in the universe: they are a quest to understand our lives within the universe. No one has told that story, her story, until now.

It all began with gazing into the night sky. All those stars were just distant suns―were any of them someone else’s sun? Diving into the science, philosophy, and politics of SETI―searching for extraterrestrial intelligence―Sarah Scoles reveals the fascinating figure at the center of the final frontier of scientific investigation. This is the perfect book for anyone who has ever looked up at the night sky and wondered if we are alone in the universe.

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The Making of Les Bleus – Ep 25 with Lindsay Krasnoff Nov 08, 2017

Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff is an international sports writer, historian, and consultant, working at the intersections of sports, international affairs, and global communications. The author of The Making of Les Bleus: Sport in France, 1958-2010, her work on how identity, immigration, race, gender, and diplomacy play into our world today appears in CNN International, Sports Illustrated, Roads & Kingdoms, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Review France Forum, Vice Sport, and more.

The Making of Les Bleus traces the Fifth Republic’s quest to create elite athletes in two global team sports, football and basketball, primarily at the youth level. While the objective of this mission was to improve performances at international competitions, such programs were quickly seized upon to help ease domestic issues and tensions.

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What Are We Even Doing With Our Lives? – Ep 24 with Chelsea Marshall and Mary Dauterman Oct 25, 2017

In this episode, Jon interviews Chelsea Marshall and Mary Dauterman about their book, What Are We Even Doing With Our Lives?

In this a charming, satirical “children’s” book, BuzzFeed’s animals editor turned video producer and acclaimed art director/illustrator poke fun at our contemporary, hyper-connected, and often mundane millennial age and the absurdities of the #blessed time and place in which we all now live.

Welcome to “Digi Valley,” the epitome of twenty-first-century urban life! The animal-people who call it home do cool things: life coach, cat landlord, baby DJ teacher, app developer, iPhone photographer, new media consultant, beauty blogger, and, of course, freelancer. On the street, in the coffee shop, at the farmer’s market, or the local vegan café, you’ll meet new friends like Frances and Sadie, Freelance Frank, Realtor Rick, and Bethany the Beauty Blogger as they bike, drive, bus, hoverboard, and Uber their way around town–or just sit and enjoy a latte while doing important things on their devices.

Everybody in Digi Valley is very, very busy–texting, tweeting, video chatting, sending selfies, swiping for dates, and binging on their favorite shows. Whether you’re looking for a job at the latest media startup or want to publish your own web series, this urban mecca has something for everyone. And with the emotionally sensitive, tech-friendly Digi Valley Elementary School, it’s a great place to raise kids too!

In What Are We Even Doing With Our Lives? Chelsea Marshall and Mary Dauterman have created an authentic fictional world that illuminates the funny, silly, earnest experience of millennial life.

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Ahimsa – Ep 23 with Supriya Kelkar Sep 13, 2017

Supriya Kelkar was born and raised in the Midwest. She learned Hindi as a child by watching three Bollywood films a week. After college she realized her lifelong dream of working in the film industry when she got a job as a Bollywood screenwriter. She has credits on one Hollywood film and several Hindi films. AHIMSA, inspired by her great-grandmother’s role in the Indian freedom movement, is her debut middle-grade novel.

In 1942, when Mahatma Gandhi asks Indians to give one family member to the freedom movement, ten-year-old Anjali is devastated to think of her father risking his life for the freedom struggle.

But it turns out he isn’t the one joining. Anjali’s mother is. And with this change comes many more adjustments designed to improve their country and use “ahimsa”–non-violent resistance–to stand up to the British government. First the family must trade in their fine foreign-made clothes for homespun cotton, so Anjali has to give up her prettiest belongings. Then her mother decides to reach out to the Dalit community, the “untouchables” of society. Anjali is forced to get over her past prejudices as her family becomes increasingly involved in the movement.

When Anjali’s mother is jailed, Anjali must step out of her comfort zone to take over her mother’s work, ensuring that her little part of the independence movement is completed.

Inspired by her great-grandmother’s experience working with Gandhi, New Visions Award winner Supriya Kelkar shines a light on the Indian freedom movement in this poignant debut.

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Lightless – Ep 22 with C. A. Higgins Aug 30, 2017

C. A. Higgins writes novels and short stories. She was a runner-up in the 2013 Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing and has a B.A. in physics from Cornell University. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Jon talks with Catherine about her book, Lightless, the first in a trilogy.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BUZZFEED AND KIRKUS REVIEWS • With deeply moving human drama, nail-biting suspense—and bold speculation informed by a degree in physics—C. A. Higgins spins a riveting science fiction debut guaranteed to catapult readers beyond their expectations.

Serving aboard the Ananke, an experimental military spacecraft launched by the ruthless organization that rules Earth and its solar system, computer scientist Althea has established an intense emotional bond—not with any of her crewmates, but with the ship’s electronic systems, which speak more deeply to her analytical mind than human feelings do. But when a pair of fugitive terrorists gain access to the Ananke, Althea must draw upon her heart and soul for the strength to defend her beloved ship.

While one of the saboteurs remains at large somewhere on board, his captured partner—the enigmatic Ivan—may prove to be more dangerous. The perversely fascinating criminal whose silver tongue is his most effective weapon has long evaded the authorities’ most relentless surveillance—and kept the truth about his methods and motives well hidden.

As the ship’s systems begin to malfunction and the claustrophobic atmosphere is increasingly poisoned by distrust and suspicion, it falls to Althea to penetrate the prisoner’s layers of intrigue and deception before all is lost.

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Secret Brooklyn – Ep 21 with Michelle Young and Augustin Pasquet Aug 16, 2017

Michelle Young is a graduate of Harvard College in the History of Art and Architecture and holds a master’s degree in urban planning from Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where she is an Adjunct Professor of Architecture. She is the author of Secret Brooklyn: An Unusual Guide, New York: Hidden Bars & Restaurants, and Broadway. Michelle appears regularly as a guest speaker in documentaries, on television, and at conferences on urban issues. She has traveled to over forty countries and is always looking for the next adventure.

Augustin Pasquet is from Paris, has lived in Nigeria, Switzerland and Thailand and recently fell in love with Brooklyn, where he lives now. He has a master degree in marketing from ESSCA Business School in France and worked at L’Oreal in sales and marketing for 7 years. Augustin spends his off-time traveling, taking pictures with his Canon 5D camera or his rapidly increasing Lomo collection. He has traveled to 25 countries, including Cuba, Madagascar and Bolivia.

Untapped Cities unearths New York City’s most unique and surprising places, stories and events for the inquisitive reader. Untapped Cities is a community of over 500 passionate contributors, interested in what’s hidden and unnoticed, and how our history informs city life now and in the future.

The post Secret Brooklyn – Ep 21 with Michelle Young and Augustin Pasquet appeared first on Read Learn Live Podcast.

Political Art Diary – Ep 20 with Naomi Pitcairn Aug 02, 2017

Naomi Pitcairn is an artist and activist committed to advancing the urgent social issues of our times. She is passionate about the rights of immigrants, whistleblowers, native americans and other oppressed minorities. Using disruptive art projects and purposeful pranks along with her arts background (including her time as a Times Square billboard painter) she has masterminded over 50 gigantic street art chalks from the Bay area to Baltimore and garnered a fair amount of positive press for her causes over the years.

Naomi’s Twitter

The post Political Art Diary – Ep 20 with Naomi Pitcairn appeared first on Read Learn Live Podcast.

Finding Yourself – Ep 19 with Krystal Chong Jul 19, 2017

Krystal was the former Chief Marketing Officer and advisor to the board for Honey Bun Limited when she resigned to go on a journey to answer the questions that consumed her.

Through her Eat-Pray-Love-esque journey, she not only found the answers she was in search of, and a deepened spiritual relationship with life, but the journey healed her struggles with depression and anxiety and has given her a lasting sense of peace and joy, even in turbulent times.

She is now a motivational writer and speaker, and runs KrystalChong.com, a company which produces media that is entertaining and empowering, designed to help others live their most fulfilling lives. She has an MBA in International Business and a BSc in Psychology. She resides in Manhattan with her Norwegian husband and their unbelievably adorable dog, doing the work that she loves.

In this episode, Jon talks with Krystal about her book, What The Hell Am I Supposed To Do With My Life.

Instagram: Krystal Chong

Facebook: Krystal Chong Live Full Live Free

The post Finding Yourself – Ep 19 with Krystal Chong appeared first on Read Learn Live Podcast.

From FBI Fugitive to Freedom – Ep 18 with Malik Wade Jul 05, 2017

Malik Wade has lived three lives. As a teenager, he was an enterprising drug dealer. As a young man, he was a fugitive from the FBI and eventually a prison inmate. As an adult, Malik transformed his life to become a mentor, author, entrepreneur, and the Executive Director of Scholastic Interest Group. When not speaking at universities as a youth advocate, he likes to work out, read, write, and travel to places like Ghana. Malik lives in San Francisco.

Buy Pressure: From FBI Fugitive to Freedom on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

Social Media for Malik Wade:

Twitter

Facebook

Instagram

The post From FBI Fugitive to Freedom – Ep 18 with Malik Wade appeared first on Read Learn Live Podcast.

How Videogames Transformed Our World – Ep 17 with Andrew Ervin Jun 21, 2017

Andrew Ervin is the author of the novels Burning Down George Orwell’s House and Extraordinary Renditions. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and many other places. He lives in Philadelphia and teaches at Temple University

In Bit by Bit, a blend of history, memoir, and reportage, Andrew Ervin sets out to understand the explosive popularity of this often maligned cultural form. He travels to government laboratories, junk shops, and art museums. He scientists and hobbyists, critics and game makers. He installs a full-sized and obscenely loud Donkey Kong arcade cabinet in his basement, and plays enough Minecraft to suffer from “Minecraft syndrome,” the effect of seeing objects in real life as poorly rendered blocks.

Social Media:

Andrew’s Facebook

Andrew’s Twitter

Andrew’s Instagram

Andrew’s Amazon Author Page

The post How Videogames Transformed Our World – Ep 17 with Andrew Ervin appeared first on Read Learn Live Podcast.

The Beauty of Space – Ep 16 with Jon Ramer Jun 07, 2017

Jon Ramer is a space artist, writer, President of the International Association of Astronomical Artists, Fellow IAAA member, retired military officer, avid photographer and world traveller.

IAAA/Jon Ramer’s Patreon page for the new book, Our Alien Earth.

The post The Beauty of Space – Ep 16 with Jon Ramer appeared first on Read Learn Live Podcast.

Great Books Written In Prison – Ep 15 with Ward Regan May 24, 2017

Ward Regan has a Ph.D. in Labor and Cultural History from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He teaches history and philosophy at New York University’s Liberal Studies Program. He edited and contributed to Great Books Written in Prison, published in 2015 by McFarland Press. His chapter “Thomas Paine: life during wartime” was published in the anthology Experiencing the French Revolution, published by Oxford University in 2013. He was also a Consulting Producer for the documentary Obit, released in 2017. Dr. Regan was also the first president of UAW 7902, the adjunct faculty union at New York University and The New School.

The post Great Books Written In Prison – Ep 15 with Ward Regan appeared first on Read Learn Live Podcast.

The Crossroads of Art and Meditation – Ep 14 with John F. Simon Jr. May 10, 2017

John F. Simon, Jr. is a visual artist and author of “Drawing Your Own Path” (Parallax Press, 2016) As one of the pioneers in the development of Software Art, his seminal work “Every Icon” was included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial and his ‘art appliances’ can be found in the permanent collections of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others.

Jon speaks with John about his book, Drawing Your Own Path: 33 Practices at the Crossroads of Art and Meditation.

Relevant websites:

Drawing Your Own Path book website
John’s Daily Drawings
John’s Professional and Gallery Work

Social Media:

Facebook group for Drawing Your Own Path
Instagram for Drawing Your Own Path

The post The Crossroads of Art and Meditation – Ep 14 with John F. Simon Jr. appeared first on Read Learn Live Podcast.

How To Be A Stoic – Ep 13 with Massimo Pigliucci Apr 26, 2017

Massimo is a philosopher of science and evolutionary biologist at the City College of New York. He holds PhDs in genetics, evolutionary biology, and philosophy. His areas of research include the nature of evolutionary theory and the phenomenon of pseudoscience. He has written for many outlets, including the New York Times, and has written or edited ten books. He blogs at platofootnote.org and howtobeastoic.org.

Jon talks with Massimo about his book, How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy To Live A Modern Life.

Social media for Massimo:

Facebook

Twitter

Amazon Author

The post How To Be A Stoic – Ep 13 with Massimo Pigliucci appeared first on Read Learn Live Podcast.

Piccolo, An Artist’s Tale – Ep 12 with Eileen Merwin Apr 12, 2017

Eileen Merwin has been fortunate to write and publish fables and other assorted forms of offbeat fiction for both children and adults. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College– and has been published in acclaimed children’s magazines Cricket and Spider, as well as having received the Vermont Playwrights Award and honorariums from Highlights and TADA Youth Theater in New York City.

Currently she writes for Bearport Publishers in New York City and teaches literature & writing at ASA College in the heart of Herald Square where she credits her students with a constant stream of inspiration and encouragement.

Piccolo: an Artist’s Tale, a novella, is the author’s third work of fiction published by Braiswick of Felixstowe, England. Eileen credits Trevor Lockwood, now retired editor in chief, for sustaining her as a writer with his good-natured sarcasm and sometimes searing wit.

Web/Social Media for Eileen:

Website: Book Bogglers
Facebook: Book Bogglers
Eileen’s LinkedIn

The post Piccolo, An Artist’s Tale – Ep 12 with Eileen Merwin appeared first on Read Learn Live Podcast.

Temporary People – Ep 11 with Deepak Unnikrishnan Mar 29, 2017

Deepak Unnikrishnan is a writer from Abu Dhabi and a resident of the States, who has lived in Teaneck, New Jersey, Brooklyn, New York and Chicago, Illinois. He has studied and taught at the Art Institute of Chicago and presently teaches at New York University Abu Dhabi. Temporary People, his first book, was the inaugural winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing.

In this episode, Jon interviews Deepak about his new book, Temporary People.

In the United Arab Emirates, foreign nationals constitute over 80 percent of the population. Brought in to construct the towering monuments to wealth that punctuate the skylines of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, this labor force works without the rights of citizenship, endures miserable living conditions, and is ultimately forced to leave the country. Until now, the humanitarian crisis of the so-called “guest workers” of the Gulf has barely been addressed in fiction. With his stunning, mind-altering debut novel Temporary People, Deepak Unnikrishnan delves into their histories, myths, struggles, and triumphs.

Combining the irrepressible linguistic invention of Salman Rushdie and the satirical vision of George Saunders, Unnikrishnan presents twenty-eight linked stories that careen from construction workers who shapeshift into luggage and escape a labor camp, to a woman who stitches back together the bodies of those who’ve fallen from buildings in progress, to a man who grows ideal workers designed to live twelve years and then perish—until they don’t, and found a rebel community in the desert. With this polyphony, Unnikrishnan brilliantly maps a new, unruly global English.

The post Temporary People – Ep 11 with Deepak Unnikrishnan appeared first on Read Learn Live Podcast.

Improving Mental Health – Ep 10 with Dr. Lloyd Sederer Mar 01, 2017

Dr. Lloyd Sederer is Chief Medical Officer of the New York State Office of Mental Health, the nation’s largest state mental health system; Adjunct Professor at the Columbia/Mailman School of Public Health; Medical Editor for Mental Health at The Huffington Post; and a Contributing Writer to US News & World Report. Dr. Sederer is a monthly regular on Sirius-XM Insight Radio. He has published 7 books for professional audiences and 4 books for lay and student audiences, as well as 500 articles in medical and non-medical publications including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Commonweal Magazine, and Psychology Today.

In this episode, Jon interviews Dr. Lloyd Sederer about his book Improving Mental Health: Four Secrets In Plain Sight.

Social media for Dr. Lloyd Sederer:

The post Improving Mental Health – Ep 10 with Dr. Lloyd Sederer appeared first on Read Learn Live Podcast.

Finding Happiness – Ep 9 with Lee Silber Feb 15, 2017

Who would have guessed a former surf shop owner would ever become the award-winning author of 22 books and a corporate training working with companies large and small? Nobody. Yet, that’s what Lee Silber did—and he did it by believing in himself (even when others didn’t) and running with his wild ideas.

In this episode, Jon interviews Lee about his book Sunshine.

Social media for Lee Silber:

The post Finding Happiness – Ep 9 with Lee Silber appeared first on Read Learn Live Podcast.

American Philosophy, A Love Story – Ep 8 with John Kaag Feb 01, 2017

John Kaag is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and is the author of American Philosophy: A Love Story, published in October by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, that was recently named an New York Times Editors’ Choice and one of the Best Books of 2016 by National Public Radio. His writing has been featured in the NYT, WSJ, Harper’s, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

In this episode, Jon interviews John about his book American Philosophy, A Love Story.

Social media for John Kaag:

Twitter

GoodReads

The post American Philosophy, A Love Story – Ep 8 with John Kaag appeared first on Read Learn Live Podcast.

Our Past and Our Futures – Ep 7 with Cecilia Galante Jan 18, 2017

Cecilia Galante is the author of three middle grade novels, three young-adult novels, an 8-book chapter book series, and two adult novels. Her first book, The Patron Saint of Butterflies, published in 2008, was the recipient of numerous awards, including an Original Voices Award by Borders, an Oprah Pick for Teens, and a Best Book of the Year by the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association. Her first adult novel, The Invisibles, published by Harper Collins, was released last summer to rave reviews in USA Today and Forbes Magazine. Her second adult novel, The Odds of Me and You, also with Harper Collins, will be published in February, 2017. Cecilia teaches eighth grade English at Wyoming Seminary’s Lower School, is a member of the faculty at Wilkes University’s Creative Writing Department, and has three children.

In this episode, Jon interviews Cecilia about her book The Patron Saint of Butterflies.

Social media for Cecilia:

Facebook Author Page

Instagram

The post Our Past and Our Futures – Ep 7 with Cecilia Galante appeared first on Read Learn Live Podcast.

Cuban science fiction – Ep 6 with YOSS Jan 04, 2017

Born José Miguel Sánchez Gómez, YOSS assumed his pen name in 1988, when he won the Premio David in the science fiction category for Timshel. Together with his peculiar pseudonym, the author’s aesthetic of an impenitent rocker has allowed him to stand out amongst his fellow Cuban writers. Earning a degree in Biology in 1991, he went on to graduate from the first ever course on Narrative Techniques at the Onelio Jorge Cardoso Center of Literary Training, in the year 1999. Today, Yoss writes both realistic and science fiction works. Alongside these novels, the author produces essays, reviews, and compilations, and actively promotes the Cuban science fiction literary workshops, Espiral and Espacio Abierto.

In this episode, Jon interviews YOSS about his newest book, Super Extra Grande.

The post Cuban science fiction – Ep 6 with YOSS appeared first on Read Learn Live Podcast.

Real Estate and Real Life – Ep 5 with Francis J. Greenburger Dec 21, 2016

In this episode Jon speaks with Francis J. Greenburger, author of Risk Game: Portrait of an Entrepreneur.

Francis J. Greenburger is the founder and CEO of Time Equities, Inc., a multibillion-dollar real estate investment and development company, as well as chairman of Sanford J. Greenburger Associates, a literary agency representing some of the most successful writers of our time. He is the founder of two important not-for-profit organizations, the Omi International Arts Center and the Greenburger Center for Social & Criminal Justice. He has served on the boards of over 15 nonprofit organizations for the arts, education, and criminal justice reform. Greenburger is also an active tennis players and skier, political cheerleader, and loving father of four children, each taking their unique journeys through life.

Find Francis on social media:

Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/TimeEquitiesInc/
https://www.facebook.com/TimeEquitiesIncArtInBuildingsProgram
https://www.facebook.com/Omi-International-Arts-Center-185255923970/
https://www.facebook.com/greenburgercenter
https://www.facebook.com/GreenburgerAssociates/
https://www.facebook.com/massmoca
https://www.facebook.com/Downtown.Alliance
https://www.facebook.com/lreinyc
https://www.facebook.com/SASFNY
https://www.facebook.com/LMCCNYC/
https://www.facebook.com/LCCorporateFund

Twitter
https://www.twitter.com/timeequities
https://www.twitter.com/ArtinBuildings
https://www.twitter.com/art_omi
https://www.twitter.com/greenburgerorg
https://www.twitter.com/GreenburgerLit
https://www.twitter.com/Mass_moca
https://www.twitter.com/DowntownNYC
https://www.twitter.com/lrei
https://www.twitter.com/tegreengineers
https://www.twitter.com/SASFNY
https://www.twitter.com/LMCC

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/TimeEquities/
https://www.instagram.com/ArtinBuildings
https://www.instagram.com/art_omi
https://www.instagram.com/MassMoca
https://www.instagram.com/DowntownNYC
https://www.instagram.com/lrei
https://www.instagram.com/tegreengineers
https://www.

Secessionist Movements and Libertarianism – Ep 4 with William Irwin Dec 07, 2016

In this episode Jon speaks with William Irwin, author of Free Dakota.

William Irwin is Herve A. LeBlanc Distinguished Service Professor and Chair of Philosophy at King’s College and is the author of the Free Market Existentialist: Capitalism without Consumerism. He is also the author of Intentionalist Interpretation: A Philosophical Explanation and Defense. Irwin originated the philosophy and popular-culture genre of books with Seinfeld and Philosophy, The Simpsons and Philosophy, and The Matrix and Philosophy. Free Dakota is his first novel.

Find Bill on social media:

Facebook
Twitter

The post Secessionist Movements and Libertarianism – Ep 4 with William Irwin appeared first on Read Learn Live Podcast.

Haitian Folktales with a Twist – Ep 3 with Tracey Baptiste (Part 2) Sep 20, 2016

In this episode Jon speaks with Tracey Baptiste. This is part two of a two part discussion.

Tracey Baptiste, M. Ed. is the author of the middle grade novel THE JUMBIES and its forthcoming sequel. She is also the author of the young adult novel ANGEL’S GRACE, as well as nonfiction books for children such as THE TOTALLY GROSS HISTORY OF ANCIENT EGYPT. Ms. Baptiste is on the faculty of Lesley University’s Creative Writing MFA program, and runs the editorial company Fairy Godauthor.

Find Tracey on social media:

Amazon Author
Instagram
Twitter
Facebook

The post Haitian Folktales with a Twist – Ep 3 with Tracey Baptiste (Part 2) appeared first on Read Learn Live Podcast.

Haitian Folktales with a Twist – Ep 3 with Tracey Baptiste (Part 1) Sep 20, 2016

In this episode Jon speaks with Tracey Baptiste. This is part one of a two part discussion.

Tracey Baptiste, M. Ed. is the author of the middle grade novel THE JUMBIES and its forthcoming sequel. She is also the author of the young adult novel ANGEL’S GRACE, as well as nonfiction books for children such as THE TOTALLY GROSS HISTORY OF ANCIENT EGYPT. Ms. Baptiste is on the faculty of Lesley University’s Creative Writing MFA program, and runs the editorial company Fairy Godauthor.

Find Tracey on social media:

Amazon Author
Instagram
Twitter
Facebook

The post Haitian Folktales with a Twist – Ep 3 with Tracey Baptiste (Part 1) appeared first on Read Learn Live Podcast.

Existentialism and Romantic Love – Ep 2 with Skye Cleary Sep 20, 2016

In this episode Jon speaks with Skye Cleary.

Skye C. Cleary PhD MBA is a philosopher and author of Existentialism and Romantic Love published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2015. Skye teaches at Columbia University, Barnard College, the City University of New York, and the New York Public Library. She is also the managing editor of the American Philosophical Association’s blog, an advisory board member of Strategy of Mind, a co-founder of the Manhattan Love Salon, and a certified fellow with the American Philosophical Practitioners Association. Her work has been published with TED-Ed, LA Review of Books, The Huffington Post, The Conversation, Business Insider, New Republic, The Philosopher’s Zone, YourTango, Aeon and others.

Follow the book on Facebook

Skye’s Amazon Author Link

Find Skye on social media:

Twitter
Facebook
Instagram
Goodreads
LinkedIn

The post Existentialism and Romantic Love – Ep 2 with Skye Cleary appeared first on Read Learn Live Podcast.

Growing Up, Relationships, and Arrested Development – Ep 1 with Nate Waggoner Sep 16, 2016

In this episode Jon speaks with Nate Waggoner.

Nate Waggoner is the author of Dilettantes and Heartless Manipulators, a novel from Snow Goose Press. He is the co-editor of The-Tusk.com, on which he and his ex-girlfriend co-host the Invitation to Love podcast. He co-hosts the Funny/Sexy/Sad reading series in Brooklyn. He has written for the Shipwreck erotic fanfiction contest and elsewhere. Find Nate on Social Media: Facebook Twitter Instagram Amazon Author Good Reads

The post Growing Up, Relationships, and Arrested Development – Ep 1 with Nate Waggoner appeared first on Read Learn Live Podcast.

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