Big Books & Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller

Big Books & Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller episodes:

• 04.26.2024

  Alexandra Fuller on ‘the braid, the spiral, the knot of grief’

  Alexandra Fuller’s new memoir begins with the death of her 21-year-old son, Fi, and chronicles her attempts to grieve well in the searing aftermath of his loss. Among other things, that meant acknowledging her kinship with others who had gone...

  
• 04.19.2024

  Don Winslow’s final chapter as a novelist

  Danny Ryan doesn’t see himself as ambitious — which is surprising, seeing as he’s both stolen and made millions. But in his mind, he’s just an average guy trying to survive in a world that would rather he not. Ryan...

  
• 04.12.2024

  The feminists who built America

  Americans overwhelmingly support gender equality. But not as many see themselves as feminists. Elizabeth Cobbs says that’s because we don’t know our history. Her latest book, “Fearless Women,” chronicles how the fight for women’s rights began at the founding of...

  
• 04.05.2024

  Can the fabric of a friendship be rewoven?

  Myriam J. A. Chancy spent her childhood in Haiti and then moved with her family to Winnipeg. But those island roots shaped who she became and inspired her latest novel, “Village Weavers.” It follows a complicated female friendship that spans decades...

  
• 03.29.2024

  Kao Kalia Yang channels her mother in the memoir ‘Where Rivers Part’

  When Kao Kalia Yang’s mother was a child growing up in Laos, she lived a comfortable life. Her father was a prosperous merchant. She was the only Hmong girl in the village to go to school. She felt valued. The...

  
• 03.22.2024

  What the deepest ocean reveals and how to save it

  What do you see, hear and experience when you drop miles into the deepest parts of the ocean? For journalist Susan Casey, it was transformative — even emotional. Her latest book, “The Underworld,” is a homage to the abyss and the...

  
• 03.15.2024

  How memory works

  If you’ve ever struggled to remember where you set down your phone, or how you know the person you just ran into at the grocery store, you’re not alone. Everyday forgetfulness is a part of living — and of aging....

  
• 03.08.2024

  Tommy Orange’s new ‘Wandering Stars’ traces a long trail of trauma and belonging

  At the center of Tommy Orange’s new novel sits a family nearly destroyed. It’s suffering the long-term effects of government-ordered separation, from decades of displacement and neglect, and from the white American philosophy best summed up by the phrase: Kill...

  
• 03.01.2024

  A prescription to modernize public health

  In many ways, the COVID-19 pandemic was public health’s finest hour. Millions of lives were saved, thanks to isolation measures. Vaccines were developed in record time. Systems were developed for contract tracing and testing. But it was also an apocalyptic...

  
• 02.23.2024

  Heather Cox Richardson on 'Democracy Awakening'

  This week, Big Books and Bold Ideas is launching an election year series that asks: What is American democracy in 2024? Americans come to that question with significantly different views. And what American democracy was when this country was founded...

  
• 02.16.2024

  Memorable moments with women of faith

  MPR News host Kerri Miller has never skirted the topic of faith. On her former weekday show, she regularly dialoged with leaders like Jenan Mohajir from Interfaith America, activist and author Anne Lamott, theologian Jemar Tisby, Sister Joan Chittister, and evangelical...

  
• 02.09.2024

  Family lore becomes rich historical fiction in 'The Storm We Made'

  Choices made in a moment reverberate for generations, despite best intentions. Vanessa Chan adeptly explores this concept in her debut novel, “The Storm We Made” — a work of historical fiction set in her home country of Malaysia, which was inspired...

  
• 02.02.2024

  How women of the CIA changed history

  Women spies pop up in Hollywood movies all the time. But as Liza Mundy’s new book reveals, it took determined persistence, personal risk and a lot of sacrifice for women to be welcomed as CIA operatives. “The Sisterhood” is a...

  
• 01.26.2024

  Tracy K. Smith delivers a plea for the American soul

  Tracy K. Smith is known for her powerful poetry. She's a Pulitzer Prize winner and former U. S. Poet Laureate. Yet her newest book, “To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul,” is memoir — a classification she...

  
• 01.19.2024

  Can higher education be saved from itself?

  Americans’ faith in the value of higher education is faltering. Unlike our global peers, the U.S. is seeing a steady decline in college enrollment and graduation rates, especially among young men. Since 1992, the sticker price for four-year private colleges has almost doubled...

  
• 01.12.2024

  The inside story of the government’s search for alien life

  Are you convinced the U.S. government knows more than it will reveal about UFOs? After doing a deep dive into the history, journalist Garrett Graff is too. But he doesn’t think the cover-up is a necessarily hiding alien life. “There...

  
• 01.05.2024

  Three historians and authors reflect on this American moment

  This year, Big Books and Bold Ideas is introducing an occasional series that will feature books on democracy. That series begins as we mark the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection. To gain context, we invited three historians and...

  
• 12.29.2023

  How a pastor's faith survived 'Beautiful and Terrible Things'

  “Here is the world,” writes theologian Frederick Buechner. “Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.” Those words rooted Amy Butler through some of the darkest moments of her life. As Butler slowly embraced her call to be a pastor,...

  
• 12.22.2023

  Can a 5,000-mile journey help a mother and son survive their differences?

  For years, author Jedidiah Jenkins and his mother, Barbara, have flirted with the idea of a cross-country road trip together. The goal: to retrace Barbara’s route across America which she walked with her husband, travel writer Peter Jenkins, in the...

  
• 12.15.2023

  Poet Major Jackson on writing poetry that connects

  Members of MPR and supporters of The Slowdown came together in mid-October to celebrate poetry with Major Jackson. The poet was in the Twin Cities to speak at the Twin Cities Book Festival, which is where he also learned that...

  
• 12.08.2023

  Rethinking roads

  To humans, roads are so ubiquitous, they are almost invisible. They crisscross every continent and allow for travel, exploration and connection. But to wildlife, roads are dangerous divisions of habitat. Around a million animals are killed by cars every day. Roads...

  
• 12.07.2023

  Decoding the 'familect'

  What word or phrase conjures immediate understanding in your family — but puzzled looks from everyone else? In one family, pizza crust is known as “pizza bones.” In another, children who weren’t allowed to say fart were instructed to use...

  
• 12.01.2023

  Safiya Sinclair liberates herself in 'How to Say Babylon'

  To the strict Rastafari father of Jamaican poet Safiya Sinclair, Babylon was not just an ancient city. It was a symbol for corruption, for wickedness, for decadence and depravity. And it was everywhere. So he kept his family tightly controlled,...

  
• 12.01.2023

  Kerri Miller and two book lovers share their favorite books of 2023

  What book did you read this year that you immediately recommended to all your friends? That was the topic MPR News host Kerri Miller tackled Monday at 9 a.m. for a special live edition of her regular Friday show, Big Books...

  
• 11.17.2023

  Tour the galaxy with the 'Bad Astronomer'

  Can you imagine a day when families visit the moon for summer vacation? When travel to see Saturn’s rings up close is a romantic getaway? When humans living on Mars schedule tours of Olympus Mons — a volcano roughly the...

  
• 11.10.2023

  Talking Volumes: Margaret Renkl on 'The Comfort of Crows'

  The season finale of Talking Volumes brought author and columnist Margaret Renkl to Minnesota, hours after the first snow carpeted our Northern landscape. She declared it “magical” — a theme familiar to those who’ve read her New York Times columns or...

  
• 11.03.2023

  A hard look at gun violence in 'The Bodies Keep Coming'

  On July 7, 2016, a Black gunman ambushed Dallas police officers working a peaceful protest, shooting 14 and killing five. The trauma surgeon who worked to save many of those officers — Dr. Brian H. Williams — made headlines when...

  
• 10.27.2023

  Talking Volumes: Viet Thanh Nguyen on being 'A Man of Two Faces'

  Viet Thanh Nguyen has a critical mind. He’s critic of populist politics. He’s a critic of history. He’s a critic of the country where he was born, Vietnam, and he’s a critic of the country he calls home, the United...

  
• 10.20.2023

  'Land of Milk and Honey' depicts a future without the pleasure of food

  In C Pam Zhang’s dystopian not-too-distant future, the planet is covered in a crop-killing smog. Food as we know it is rapidly disappearing to be replaced by a gray, mung bean flour. Zhang’s protagonist, a young unnamed Asian chef, decides...

  
• 10.13.2023

  Authors with banned books talk about protecting access to stories

  The American Library Association observed Banned Books Week at the beginning of October — an especially poignant marker this year. A report by PEN America found more than 1,200 books were censored or removed from U.S. public school classrooms and...

  
• 10.06.2023

  Talking Volumes: Ann Patchett on 'Tom Lake'

  Ann Patchett is a perennial favorite at Talking Volumes. So it’s no surprise that she sold out the Fitz for her conversation with host Kerri Miller on Sept. 28. What ensued was a raucous two hours of honest conversation. Just...

  
• 09.29.2023

  A young girl runs from Jamestown in Lauren Groff's new book, 'The Vaster Wilds'

  Lauren Groff’s new novel, “The Vaster Wilds,” begins in the bleak winter of 1609, when the residents of the early American colony of Jamestown are diseased and starving. A young servant girl, who was brought to the new world by a...

  
• 09.22.2023

  Talking Volumes: Abraham Verghese on 'Covenant of Water'

  When Dr. Abraham Verghese released his debut novel in 2009 it was an literary marvel. “Cutting for Stone” captivated readers, sold more than 1.5 million copies in the U.S. alone and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for...

  
• 09.15.2023

  Healing from trauma in the northern Wisconsin woods

  Carol Dunbar didn’t set out to be an writer. For more than a decade, she was an actress based in the Twin Cities. She told stories by embodying them. But then she and her husband — also an actor — decided...

  
• 09.08.2023

  Minnesota novelist Julie Schumacher on 'The English Experience'

  Jason Fitger is not a likeable character. A creative writing professor at the fictitious Payne University, an aptly named small liberal arts college in the Midwest, Fitger is cantankerous and acid-tongued, beleaguered and inappropriate. He doesn’t really like students —...

  
• 09.01.2023

  Nostalgia becomes a weapon in the sci-fi thriller 'Prophet'

  The first time Helen Macdonald and Sin Blaché met, it was to finish the book they had been cowriting for a year. Macdonald, author of the best-selling “H is for Hawk,” and Blaché, an artist living in Ireland, first met...

  
• 08.18.2023

  Novel asks: ‘What if your two favorite people hate each other with a passion?’

  A pair of best friends determine to leave behind their conservative families and societal expectations, and live by a new motto: By Myself, For Myself. What happens when one of those friends marries, and the other friend sees the new...

  
• 08.10.2023

  Christian Cooper on what it means to be a Black man in the natural world

  Christian Cooper’s visibility as a lifelong birder exploded after a woman in Central Park refused to leash her dog and reported, wrongly, that she was being threatened. Three years later, Cooper is out with a powerful new memoir and a National...

  
• 08.04.2023

  Minnesota's supper clubs set the table for a delicious family drama

  J. Ryan Stradal knows supper club culture. Growing up in Hastings, Minn., his family milestones were marked by dressing up, sitting in a leather booth at the Wiederholt's Supper Club, picking at a relish tray and watching the grown-ups enjoy a...

  
• 07.28.2023

  Luis Urrea's new novel is inspired by his mother's wartime experiences

  Until writer Luis Alberto Urrea inherited his mother’s journals, he knew very little about what she’d seen and done in World War II. He knew she served on a team of Donut Dollies, women who volunteered with the Red Cross...

  
• 07.21.2023

  In 'Shy,' a troubled teenage boy gets a last chance

  Shy, the teenage boy at the heart of Max Porter’s latest novel, defies classification. He is moody and violent, traits which heartbreak his mother and get him sent to the Last Chance boarding school. He is also sensitive and vulnerable,...

  
• 07.14.2023

  'Of White Ashes' brings the WWII Japanese-American experience to life

  When Ruby Ishimaru and her family are sent away from Hawaii to a mainland internment camp in 1942, Ruby packs her treasures — photographs, seashells and the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder. She finds comfort in Laura’s adventures even as...

  
• 07.07.2023

  Rachel Louise Snyder's memoir is as beautifully complex as her life.

  “Cancer took my mother. But religion would take my life.” So writes journalist Rachel Louise Snyder in her new memoir, “Women We Buried, Women We Burned.” It recounts with brutal honesty how the death of her mother upended her previously peaceful...

  
• 06.30.2023

  A historical swashbuckler from author David Grann

  The latest book from journalist and bestselling author David Grann details the true story of a 1741 shipwreck that he believes has "surprising resonance … with our own contemporary, turbulent times.” When a squadron of ships left England in the fall of...

  
• 06.23.2023

  Women bootleggers in the time of Prohibition

  Editor’s note: This program was originally preempted by breaking news coverage. The post has been updated to reflect the new broadcast date. Jeannette Wells’ 2009 memoir “The Glass Castle” has been a New York Times bestseller for more than eight years....

  
• 06.09.2023

  What it really means to be all-American

  Joe Milan Jr.’s debut novel, “The All-American,” is about immigration — but it’s not a story about what it means to leave a foreign land and start over in America. Instead, it’s about what it means to leave America, unwillingly,...

  
• 06.02.2023

  Minnesota writer William Kent Krueger on the importance of place

  Minnesota author William Kent Krueger has written 19 books that star his primary protagonist, private investigator Cork O’Connor. But just as central to his writing is the landscape of Northern Minnesota. It’s more than a setting. It’s a character. “I...

  
• 05.30.2023

  From the archives: William Kent Krueger on 'Lightning Strike'

  Minnesota writer William Kent Krueger is a fan favorite, thanks largely to his series of crime novels featuring private investigator Cork O'Connor. Krueger joined host Kerri Miller in Duluth earlier this week for a special spring edition of Talking Volumes. You’ll...

  
• 05.26.2023

  Journalist Jeff Sharlet on America's slow civil war

  When Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene proposed the United States would benefit from a “national divorce,” many scoffed and labeled her statements as incendiary pot-stirring. Journalist Jeff Sharlet was not one of them. After traveling the country for more than a dozen...

  
• 05.19.2023

  Drew Brockington takes fans into 'meowter' space at Talking Volumes

  Cats … in space? It’s not a crazy notion for fans of Drew Brockington’s “CatStronauts,” who’ve devoured his graphic novels the way pilot Waffles eats a tuna fish sandwich. After six books detailing the adventures of Waffles, Blanket, Pom-Pom and...