Free Library Podcast

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Lawrence O'Donnell is the host of MSNBC's The Last Word, one of cable television's most watched news and political commentary programs. In addition to writing for a variety of periodicals, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times, he won an Emmy Award as executive producer and writer for The West Wing, was a senior advisor to Sen. Daniel Moynihan, and worked on a number of Senate committee staffs. In Playing with Fire, O'Donnell offers an account of one of the most dramatic presidential elections in U.S. history; the roles played by Richard Nixon, Robert Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and a slew of other lastingly consequential figures; and the election's relevance to today's dirty politics and cutthroat political races. 

Meelya Gordon Memorial Lecture

(recorded 11/28/2017)

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Released just weeks after the tech guru's death, Walter Isaacson's ''staggering'' (The New York Times) portrait of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs instantly became an international bestseller. Isaacson has also penned bios of Benjamin Franklin, Henry Kissinger, and Albert Einstein, and he is the author of The Innovators, a century-spanning saga of the people who created the computer and the internet. Former CEO of the Aspen Institute, chairman of CNN, managing editor of Time magazine, and chairman emeritus of Teach for America, he currently is the University Professor of History at Tulane University. Isaacson's new biography of history's quintessential Renaissance man uses new discoveries and Leonardo's own notebooks to paint a portrait that connects his life to his art. 

Pine Tree Foundation Endowed Lecture

(recorded 11/29/2017)

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In conversation with Marty Moss-Coane, host of Radio Times on WHYY

In a publishing career that stretches back more than four decades, Tina Brown has been editor-in-chief of the popular and acclaimed magazines Tatler, Vanity Fair, Talk, and The New Yorker. She is also the author of the bestselling 2007 biography The Diana Chronicles, an ''amazingly detailed'' and ''jam-packed, juicy'' (Washington Post) portrait of the Princess of Wales. The founding editor of The Daily Beast and creator of Tina Brown Live Media, she is also the founder of the Women in the World summit. In her new book, Brown draws upon the diaries she kept during her meteoric years at Vanity Fair to provide a personal and cultural chronicle of a fascinating era. 

(recorded 11/30/2017)

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Bill McKibben gave one of the earliest cautions about global warming with his 1989 book The End of Nature. His myriad other bestselling books about the environment include Deep Economy, Eaarth, and Oil and Honey, a call to arms in the fight for a sustainable planet. Recipient of the 2013 Gandhi Peace Award, McKibben is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In his debut novel, ''the world's best green journalist'' (Time) draws upon the current state of politics to imagine a band of Vermont patriots who decide to secede from the United States. (recorded 11/30/2017)

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Following a viral 2016 Buzzfeed article featuring the assorted musings of his four daughters-the oldest is 7 years old-comedy writer James Breakwell's jokes have appeared in USA Today, US Magazine, and Huffington Post, among other places. In addition to his near-million Twitter followers, his articles have appeared in Reader's Digest, The Federalist, and AskMen. Synthesizing practical parenting techniques with survival advice, Breakwell provides a step-by-step guide for raising successful, happy kids in a world beleaguered by hoards of the undead in Only Dead on the Inside. (recorded 12/4/2017)

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''Few people write about art as beautifully'' (Wall Street Journal) as Jed Perl, a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and the former 20-year art critic for The New Republic. A longtime contributing editor at Vogue, he has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Leon Levy Center for Biography, and his many books include Magicians and Charlatans, Antoine's Alphabet, and New Art City, an Atlantic Book of the Year and a New York Times Notable Book. Deeply researched and including more than 350 illustrations, his latest book is the first biography of Alexander Calder, perhaps America's most revered 20th-century sculptor.

Please allow extra time to get to Parkway Central, due to extensive road work in the area.

(recorded 12/5/2017)

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In conversation with Dick Polman, "Writer in Residence" at the University of Pennsylvania, and national political columnist at WHYY News

A ''funny, knowing, clear-eyed, candid and altogether exhilarating'' (The New Yorker) chronicler of the confluence of media, technology, and business for the last quarter century, Michael Wolff is the author of Burn Rate, Television Is the New Television, and The Man Who Owns the News, a deep dive into the secretive life of Rupert Murdoch. A longtime contributor to Vanity Fair, the Guardian, Adweek, The Hollywood Reporter, and a host of other periodicals, Wolff was a weekly columnist at New York magazine for six years. Fire and Fury is based on more than 200 interviews with Trump and senior members of his team and tells the inside story of the daily chaos, backstabbing, and discord of the volatile Trump administration.

(recorded 1/16/2018)

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Join featured author Jacqueline Woodson for an evening of conversation, reading, and performance. In conversation with WHYY's Katie Colaneri, Ms. Woodson will discuss identity, shifting cultural landscapes, and other themes in her writing. The event will conclude with a performance inspired by Another Brooklyn from 2016-17 Philadelphia Poet Laureate Yolanda Wisher with members of her band, The Afroeaters. Book signing to follow. 

(recorded 1/17/2018)

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In conversation with Marc Lamont Hill, Steve Charles Chair in Media, Cities and Solutions at Temple University, and author of  Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond.

An L.A.-based artist, activist, and advocate for criminal justice reform, Patrisse Khan-Cullors is one of the co-founders of the Black Lives Matter movement. She is also a Fulbright scholar, a 2015 NAACP History Maker, and one of Fortune's 2016 World's Greatest Leaders. A former features editor for Essence magazine and a senior director at the Drug Policy Alliance, asha bandele is the author of the memoirs The Prisoner's Wife and Something Like Beautiful, as well as two poetry collections. When They Call You a Terrorist is an impassioned rebuttal to those who call Black Lives Matter a threat to America, praised by Michael Eric Dyson for portraying its genesis in ''love-love of self, community, people, and, ultimately, the very soul of a democratic nation."

Poet Miriam Harris begins the evening with a powerful reading of two of her poems.

(recorded 1/18/2018)

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Pioneering physician Dr. Nadine Burke Harris is a longtime crusader for targeting care to vulnerable and traumatized children. Her prolific work on the link between toxic stress and chronic illnesses includes more than 17,000 surveys of adult patients' adverse childhood experiences. She is the founder and CEO of San Francisco's Center for Youth Wellness, the subject of a widely read New Yorker profile, and presenter of the popular TED talk ''How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime.'' Through scientific evidence and affecting stories of individual impact, The Deepest Well presents a vital argument for how childhood stresses create lifelong neural system changes.

Introduced by Dr. Ruth Shaber

Sandra Shaber Memorial Lecture

(recorded 1/23/2018)