Free Library Podcast

In conversation with Karen M. McManus, author of the number one New York Times bestseller One of Us Is Lying and The Cousins 

David Yoon is the author of Frankly in Love, a "funny, profane and poignant'' (Wall Street Journal) tale of cultural expectations, racism, and first love. An instant New York Times bestseller, it was a William C. Morris Young Adult Debut Award Finalist and an Asian Pacific American Librarians Association Honor Book. Yoon is also the author of the celebrated young adult novel Super Fake Love Song and drew the illustrations for his wife Nicola Yoon's #1 New York Times bestseller Everything, Everything. Version Zero, his debut adult novel, follows three twenty-something computer experts who want to literally break the internet.

Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 5/27/2021)

In conversation with Michael Smerconish

Five-time Pennsylvania Sportswriter of the Year, Ray Didinger covered the NFL for The Philadelphia Bulletin and the Philadelphia Daily News for over 25 years. He has authored or coauthored 11 books about sports and sportswriting, including The Eagles Encyclopedia, which he cowrote with the late Robert S. Lyons. The ''definitive book for any Eagles fan'' (Philadelphia Daily News), a revised and expanded edition was published in 2018 to reflect the 87-year-old team's victory in Super Bowl LII. Didinger currently hosts a talk show on 94 WIP Sports Radio and serves as a football analyst for NBC Sports Philadelphia. Didinger's new memoir explores his childhood in Southwest Philadelphia, his five-decade career covering a wide variety of sports across multiple media platforms, and the art of balancing being a long-suffering Eagles fan and an objective journalist.

Michael A. Smerconish is the host of The Michael Smerconish Program on SiriusXM POTUS Channel 124, the host of CNN's Smerconish on Saturday mornings, a Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer columnist, and a New York Times bestselling author.

Books with signed book plates available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 5/26/2021)

In conversation with Salamishah Tillet, the Henry Rutgers Professor of African American Studies and Creative Writing and author of In Search of The Color Purple: The Story of an American Masterpiece

Kaitlyn Greenidge is the author of We Love You, Charlie Freeman, a ''wonderfully audacious debut novel'' (Essence) that examines the nuances of race, gender, and history through the story of a family teaching sign language to a young chimpanzee. Greenidge was a finalist for the 2016 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the 2017 Young Lions Fiction Award, and has earned fellowships from the Whiting Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. A contributor to the New York Times, Greenidge has also written for Glamour, The Wall Street Journal, and Vogue, among other publications. Named one of 2021's most anticipated books by many publications, Libertie follows the journey of a Reconstruction–era Black doctor searching for equality in place, profession, and her family.

Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 5/24/2021)

In conversation with Reggie Shuford, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Pennsylvania.

The Executive Director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation, Marc Bookman is an internationally renowned expert on death penalty law. He served for 17 years in the Homicide Unit of the Defender Association of Philadelphia, providing legal representation to many clients facing the possibility of the death penalty. A sought-after speaker at numerous legal conferences and trainings across the country, he has published essays on various aspects of capital punishment in The Atlantic, Mother Jones, and VICE, among other places. In A Descending Spiral, Bookman offers 12 essays that expose the tragic absurdities, unfortunate human instincts, and systemic criminal justice failings that undercut the logic and fairness of the death penalty in the United States.

Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 5/20/2021)

In conversation Trapeta Mayson, Philadelphia Poet Laureate

A reflection of the heartrending turmoils of racial injustice and brutality against Black Americans amidst the fear and uncertainty of a pandemic, There's a Revolution Outside, My Love is a kaleidoscopic collection of letters, poems, and essays penned by a diverse field of writers. 

Camille T. Dungy is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Trophic Cascade, winner of the Colorado Book Award. Her debut collection of personal essays is Guidebook to Relative Strangers, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019.

Gregory Pardlo won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for his poetry collection Digest. Also the recipient of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize, he is the poetry editor for the Virginia Quarterly Review and teaches at the MFA program at Rutgers University, Camden.

A professor of creative writing at Dartmouth College University, Joshua Bennett is the 2020-2021 Visiting Scholar at Friends Seminary in New York City. He is the author of three books of poetry and literary criticism, including The Sobbing School and Owed.

Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 5/19/2021)

In conversation with Joan Maloof, Professor Emeritus at Salisbury University and founder of the Old-Growth Forest Network. Her most recent book is Treepedia: A Brief Compendium of Arboreal Lore

One of the world's leading forest ecologists, Dr. Suzanne Simard is most famous for revolutionizing our understanding of how trees communicate with each other. She and her team discovered that complex systems move water and nutrients between the trees in social networks that are in some ways much like our own. A Professor of Forest Ecology in the University of British Columbia's Faculty of Forestry, Simard has shared her research in both academic and popular forums, including three TED talks and two documentary appearances. In Finding the Mother Tree, she guides us into the intimate world of trees not only through her observations and data, but also through the story of her upbringing in the logging rainforests of British Columbia and her unique perception of these surprisingly mysterious living things.

Can't wait? Watch a TED talk by Dr. Simard

Books with signed book plates will be available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 5/18/2021)

In conversation with Mark Zandi, Chief Economist, Moody's Analytics

The senior United States Senator from Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar chairs the Senate Rules Committee; the Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights; and the Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee. A 2020 Presidential candidate, she is a graduate of Yale University and the University of Chicago Law School, a former partner at two corporate law firms, and led Minnesota's largest prosecutor's office for eight years. Ranked by a 2019 Vanderbilt University study as the most effective Democratic senator in the 115th Congress, she has worked to pass bipartisan legislation on a wide range of issues, including consumer product safety, agricultural issues, and civil rights, among many others. In Antitrust, Klobuchar offers a history of America's fight against monopolies as a guide to curtailing contemporary monoliths like Facebook, Google, and Amazon.

(recorded 5/17/2021)

In conversation with Megha Majumdar, bestselling author of A Burning

British–-Ghanaian writer Caleb Azumah Nelson's debut novel Open Water is, ''an intense, elegant'' (Guardian) tale of two young Black British artists who find love as they struggle to succeed in an environment that simultaneously elevates and rejects them. It was named to scores of publications' most–-anticipated–-books–-of–-2021 lists, including Esquire, Vulture, ONYX Magazine and Vogue (UK). Nelson has contributed writing to the The White Review and Litro, and he recently won the People's Choice prize and was shortlisted for the BBC Short Story Award. Also an acclaimed photographer, he was shortlisted for the Palm Photo Prize.

Books with signed book plates available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 5/13/2021)

In conversation with Reginald Dwayne Betts, essayist, poet, and author of the award-winning collection, Felon

When Ian Manuel was 13 years old he shot a young mother of two in the face during a botched robbery. Sentenced to life imprisonment, he spent the next 26 years in prison, 18 of them in solitary confinement. He was released at the age of 40 through both the help of his victim-with whom he had struck up a friendship as profound as it was unlikely-and through the legal assistance of Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative. In My Time Will Come, Manuel tells not just his story of a childhood spent in deprivation, his incarceration, and his ultimate redemption, but a larger story of the power of the human spirit over a justice system that too often sentences young offenders of color to life without parole.

Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 5/11/2021)

Martha C. Nussbaum is the author of numerous watershed books and articles concerning moral, legal, and political philosophy, including The Fragility of Goodness, Sex and Social Justice, and Cultivating Humanity. The Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, her scores of honors include the 2016 Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy, 62 honorary degrees, and the Berggruen Prize, perhaps the greatest accolade a public intellectual can receive. In her latest book, Nussbaum explores the pride-driven sexual violence and misogyny perpetrated by the men who hold power in institutions like courts, sports, and the arts.

Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 5/12/2021)