Free Library Podcast

In conversation with Rev. Dr. Jonathan Lee Walton

A postwar coming-of-age memoir about life in a conservative family in segregated Virginia, Drew Gilpin Faust's Necessary Trouble recounts her break from the racial and gender norms of the era and the means by which her involvement in the civil rights and antiwar movements led to her career as a historian of those very fights. The Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard University and its president from 2007 to 2018, Faust formerly served as dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and taught at the University of Pennsylvania for 25 years. Her many books include This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, winner of the Bancroft Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize; and Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War, winner of the Francis Parkman Prize.

Rev. Dr. Jonathan Lee Walton is the president of the Princeton Theological Seminary. He is the author of Watch This! The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Telelevangelism and A Lens of Love: Reading the Bible in Its World for Our World. His other work has appeared across a range of media, including The New York Times, CNN, Time magazine, and PBS.

Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 10/11/2023)

In conversation with Asali Solomon

Ayana Mathis is the author of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, ''a remarkable page-turner of a novel'' (Chicago Tribune) that follows the harrowing fortunes of a 15-year-old from Georgia to Philadelphia during the Great Migration. A New York Times bestseller, an NPR Best Book of 2013, and a selection for Oprah's Book Club 2.0, it has been translated into 16 languages. Mathis is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has published fiction in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Guernica, and Rolling Stone, among other places. She teaches writing in Hunter College's MFA program. Set in turbulent 1980s Philadelphia and the small town of Bonaparte, Alabama, The Unsettled tells the tale of a mother, grandmother, and son struggling to save their identities, birthright, and future.

Asali Solomon's latest novel, The Days of Afrekete has been called ''a feat of engineering'' by the New York Times. She is also the author of Disgruntled and Get Down: stories. Her previous novel, Disgruntled, was named a best book of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle and The Denver Post. She is the recipient of a Pew Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, and the National Book Foundation's ''5 Under 35'' honor. Her work has appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine, Vibe, Essence, The Paris Review Daily, McSweeney's, on NPR, and in several anthologies including The Best Short Stories of 2021: The O. Henry Prize Collection. Solomon is the Bertrand K. Wilbur Chair in the Humanities at Haverford, where she is a Professor of English and director of Creative Writing.

Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 10/10/2023)

In conversation with Carl H. June, MD, Director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies, University of Pennsylvania

Siddhartha Mukherjee won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction for The Emperor of All Maladies, a ''meticulously researched, panoramic history'' (The Boston Globe) of humankind's fight against cancer. It was awarded the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, was named to numerous media outlets' ''Best of the Year'' lists, and was adapted by Ken Burns into a PBS documentary. Mukherjee is also the author of the No. 1 New York Times bestseller The Gene: An Intimate History. An assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University and a staff cancer physician at the New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, he is a physician and researcher whose laboratory focuses on discovering new cancer drugs. His articles and commentary have been published in such places as Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, The New York Times, and The New Republic. In The Song of the Cell, Mukherjee takes readers through the centuries-spanning quest to understand cells, the tiny self-contained units that make up all life.

Carl June is the Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also the director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at the Perelman School of Medicine and director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at the University of Pennsylvania. Acclaimed for his research into the treatment of leukemia, he has published more than 350 medical papers and has received numerous awards and honors.

Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 10/5/2023)

In conversation with comedian Chanel Ali

Referred to by Amy Schumer as ''the funniest, smartest person I know,'' Sarah Cooper is best known for her hilarious lip-syncing videos of Donald Trump sound bites. The author of 100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings and How to Be Successful without Hurting Men's Feelings, she is the star of the Netflix comedy special, Sarah Cooper: Everything's Fine; has appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live, The Tonight Show, and Ellen; and is currently working on an upcoming Netflix comedy, titled Unfrosted, written and directed by Jerry Seinfeld. Named one of Variety's 10 Comics to Watch, she has more than 3.3 million followers across social media. In Foolish, Cooper brings a lifetime of obsessive perfectionism to bear in a starkly revealing and humorous memoir about such varied topics as her upbringing in a tight-knit Jamaican family, divorce, and career pivots.

Chanel Ali is a standup comedian who blossomed on the Philadelphia circuit before taking her commanding stage presence to NYC. She has two Comedy Central specials, she was featured on MTVs Girl Code, and she can drink more than you.

Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 10/4/2023)

In conversation with Michael Eric Dyson

One of pro football's all-time defensive greats, Malcolm Jenkins won Super Bowls with the Philadelphia Eagles and New Orleans Saints, and appeared in three Pro Bowls. He won the prestigious Jim Thorpe Award as a senior at the Ohio State University before entering the NFL as a first-round draft pick, where he would ultimately play for an impressive 13 seasons. The now-retired Jenkins has since become a media personality, executive producer, writer, racial justice advocate, and entrepreneur whose business ventures include the Listen Up Media conglomerate and an eponymous company called Malcolm Inc. His philanthropic organization, The Malcolm Jenkins Foundation, assists young people in underserved communities. A memoir about life on the playing field, advocating for Black Americans, and the highs and lows of his personal life, What Winners Won't Tell You is a meditation on what it means to find balance in that thin space between victory and defeat.

Michael Eric Dyson is the author of the acclaimed and bestselling books Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America, Unequal: A Story of America, and Long Time Coming: Reckoning with Race in America. His many other works address Barack Obama's presidency, Hurricane Katrina, Jay-Z, and the effects of MLK's assassination, among other wide-ranging topics. A frequent New York Times opinion writer, MSNBC political analyst, and a professor at Vanderbilt University, his many honors include an American Book Award and two NAACP Image Awards. Dyson has also been an ordained pastor for the last 40 years and has preached, spoken, and lectured at religious and secular institutions around the world.

Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 10/3/2023)

In conversation with Heather Marold Thomason, Butcher & Founder of Primal Supply

''The cookbook author who changed the way Americans cook Italian food'' (The New York Times), Lidia Matticchio Bastianich is the author of 15 beloved culinary guides, as well a 2019 memoir, titled My American Dream. She is also the owner and co-owner of celebrated Italian restaurants in Manhattan, Pittsburgh, and Kansas City, and she hosts the Emmy-winning Lidia's Kitchen on PBS and co-hosts Nonna Senti Che Fame...Pensaci Tu, which airs on Discovery+ in Italy. Her honors include recognition from the National Italian American Foundation, several James Beard Awards, induction into the Culinary Hall of Fame, and the American Public Television Silver Award. In Lidia's From Our Family Table to Yours, Bastianich serves up traditional recipes from her childhood alongside new favorites she makes for her children and grandchildren.

Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 9/28/2023)

The Presidential Distinguished Professor and Director of the Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania, climatologist and geophysicist Michael E. Mann has greatly contributed to science's understanding of humanity's 1,000-year role in global warming. His many honors include the Award for Public Engagement with Science from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Climate Communication Prize from the American Geophysical Union, and in 2002 he was named by Scientific American as one of the 50 leading visionaries in science and technology. He is the author of the acclaimed books Dire Predictions, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, and The Madhouse Effect. In Our Fragile Moment, Mann seeks to inform readers of the historically unique ecological conditions that have allowed humans to thrive and to embolden them to stave off the threat the climate crisis poses to human existence. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU!

(recorded 9/27/2023)

In conversation with Sheila Murnaghan, chair of the classics department at the University of Pennsylvania

''A cultural landmark'' (The Guardian), Emily Wilson's 2017 translation of The Odyssey was hailed for its fresh and unpretentious rendition of the classical poem in modern parlance. A professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Wilson has also published translations of the works of Sophocles, Euripides, and Seneca, and is the author of books on the death of Socrates and the life of Seneca. She is the recipient of fellowships from the American Academy in Rome, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation. In her latest work, Wilson presents a grounded yet galloping translation of The Iliad, Homer's other epic work and one of history's most revered war poems.

Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 9/26/2023)

In conversation with Marc Lamont Hill

Bettina L. Love is the author of the bestseller We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom, winner of the 2020 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award. The William F. Russell Professor at Columbia University's Teachers College, she is a co-founder of the Abolitionist Teaching Network and a founding member of the task force that launched the program In Her Hands, an initiative that has distributed funds to Black women in Georgia and abolitionists across the country. She is one of the Kennedy Center's 2022 Next 50 Leaders and is a sought-after public speaker on such varied topics as anti-racism, queer youth, and educational reparations. In Punished for Dreaming, Love presents an unflinching account of the result of 40 years of racist public school policy on Black lives.

The Steve Charles Chair in Media, Cities and Solutions at Temple University, Marc Lamont Hill is the host of BET News and the Coffee and Books podcast. The recipient of honors from the National Association of Black Journalists, GLAAD, and the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, he is the author of six books, including Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life; Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond; and Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics.

Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 9/25/2023)

Pine Tree Foundation Endowed Lecture

In conversation with Maiken Scott

''A historian of prodigious and varied gifts'' (San Francisco Chronicle), Simon Schama is the author of 20 books, including The Embarrassment of Riches; Scribble, Scribble, Scribble; and the National Book Critics Circle Award winner Rough Crossings, an account of the enslaved people who escaped to fight for the British during the American Revolutionary War. A professor of art history and history at Columbia University, he has written and presented more than 40 documentaries for the BBC, PBS, and The History Channel, including the seminal 15-part series A History of Britain, the Emmy-winning Power of Art, and The Story of the Jews, based on his two-volume millennia-spanning work. Schama is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in 2018, he was knighted for his contributions to historical scholarship. In Foreign Bodies, he offers a vigorous cultural history of the complex relationship between pandemics and the crusaders who battle them.

Maiken Scott is the host and executive producer of WHYY's The Pulse - a weekly, national health and science radio show and podcast that explores the people and places at the heart of health and science. Since its launch in December 2013, The Pulse has crafted a unique, ''ground-level'' approach to telling compelling stories and breaking down complicated issues. The show airs on more than 100 public radio stations across the country and its podcast is presented by NPR

Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 9/20/2023)