Free Library Podcast

In conversation with Ashley Fox, Writer. Speaker. Entrepreneur. Athlete. Mom. ESPN alumna.

In 2012, Maria Kefalas's daughter, Calliope, was diagnosed with a rare, degenerative, and incurable genetic disease called metachromatic leukodystrophy. Rather than succumbing to grief, Kefalas and her husband harnessed this powerful emotion in order to save other children and, ultimately, themselves. What followed was an incredible odyssey that included a fundraising bake sale of more than 50,000 cupcakes, a blog that blossomed into articles published in the likes of Slate and the Huffington Post, two groundbreaking charitable foundations, and advocacy in America's loftiest halls of power. Harnessing Grief maps this journey and how it affected 13 other families with similarly afflicted children. A sociology professor at Saint Joseph's University, Kefalas is also the author of the books Hollowing Out the Middle, Working-Class Heroes, and Promises I Can Keep.

Books may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 2/16/2021)

In conversation with Nomi Eve, author of Henna House and The Family Orchard, Director of the Creative Writing MFA program, Drexel University.

Melissa Broder is the author of The Pisces, a darkly erotic yet tender tale of academia, break-ups, and compulsive merman love. She is also the author of an essay collection, So Sad Today, and four collections of poetry. Her poems have appeared in a multitude of publications, including Tin House and Guernica, and she is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize. Following a calorie-obsessed lapsed Jew who falls under the spell of a zaftig Orthodox frozen yogurt store employee, Broder's new novel is a ''sensuous and delightfully delirious tale'' (O, The Oprah Magazine) of variously forbidden appetites.

Books with signed book plates may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 2/11/2021)

Barbara Gohn Day Memorial Lecture

In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award-winning broadcaster and journalist

''An astute observer, excellent explainer, and superb synthesizer'' (Seattle Times), Elizabeth Kolbert is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. An amalgam of field reporting, scientific discovery, and natural history, it follows the ongoing legacy of the manmade global cataclysm that threatens the very existence of life on earth. A longtime staff writer at the New Yorker and a member of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Science and Security Board, she has earned a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Magazine Awards, and a Heinz Award, among other honors. In Under a White Sky, Kolbert returns to her study of humanity's impact on the world to examine how we might change nature in order to save it.

Books with signed book plates will ship after the event

(recorded 2/10/2021)

In conversation with novelist and musician Wesley Stace

A founding member of jazz fusion super group Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, bass guitarist Victor Wooten is a five-time Grammy winner and has been called ''the Michael Jordan of the bass.'' A producer, songwriter, and solo touring artist, he is the only person to thrice be voted Bassist of the Year in Bass Player Magazine's readers' poll and was named one of the top ten bassists of all time by Rolling Stone. He is also the author of the novel The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music. His new book tells the story of three strangers who are mystically summoned to Nashville to save the sound of live music.

Books may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 2/9/2021)

In conversation with Ambassador John Limbert, US Deputy Secretary of State for Iran (2009-10); former hostage in the US Embassy in Tehran (1979-81)

An author, historian, and former journalist, John Ghazvinian is the Executive Director of the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Untapped: The Scramble for Africa's Oil, a ''riveting account and superb analysis'' (Boston Globe) of the competition between world powers for the emerging market of crude oil from a dozen African countries. The coeditor of American and Muslim Worlds before 1900 and a contributor to periodicals such as Newsweek, The Nation, and the Huffington Post, he has taught Middle East history at a number of colleges and universities. In his new book, Ghazvinian charts the tangled relationship between America and Iran from the Persian Empire of the 18th century to the often icy diplomacy of today.

Books may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 2/4/2021)

In conversation with writer and librarian Maisy Card, author of These Ghosts Are Family

Nadia Owusu won a 2019 Whiting Award for her work on Aftershocks. ''A memoir that broods on lost identity and statelessness'' (Elle), this debut book tells the story of the nomadic childhood she spent following her Ghanaian diplomat father across Africa and Europe and her arrival in New York in the wake of his death. Her other writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the New York Times, Literary Review, and Epiphany, among other publications. 

Books may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 2/3/2021)

In conversation with Eric Foner, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery and Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, winner of the Bancroft, Parkman, and Los Angeles Times Book prizes.

James Oakes won the 2008 and 2013 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize for his scholarly work on the 16th President and the politics of abolition. His many books include Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South, The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics, and Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861–1865. He is the longtime Graduate School Humanities Chair at City University of New York. The Crooked Path to Abolition diagrams the Constitution-based course of Lincoln's antislavery strategies.

Books may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 2/2/2021)

Due to a technical issue, the first 15 minutes of the recording were inaudible. The podcast joins Dr. Farmer a little later in his presentation.

A recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Genius Award, Dr. Paul Farmer is the U.N. Deputy Special Envoy for Haiti and Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is also the co-founder of Partners In Health, a nonprofit organization that addresses the healthcare needs of the developing world by pioneering locally driven solutions. In Haiti After the Earthquake, Dr. Farmer-who has worked in Haiti for nearly 30 years-examines the devastating aftermath of the 2010 quake and explores the complex social issues that make the impoverished nation especially vulnerable to natural disaster.

Dr. Farmer will be interviewed by Dr. Steven Larson, Assistant Dean for Global Health Programs and an Associate Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

  (recorded 12/6/2011)

A senior fellow and the director of technology and development at the Center for Global Development, Charles Kenny has extensively contributed to policy reforms in global health, UN peacekeeping, and international financial corruption, among many other urgent issues. A contributing editor at Foreign Policy magazine and a contributor to Business Week, he is the author of Getting Better: Why Global Development Is Succeeding and How We Can Improve the World Even More and The Upside of Down: Why the Rise of the Rest Is Great for the West. In The Plague Cycle, Kenny reveals the precarious relationship between civilization and infectious disease over the past 5,000 years. 

Books may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 1/28/2021)

In conversation with Yvette Nicole Brown, star of screens big and small and known to audiences for her roles in Community, The Mayor, Supermansion, The Odd Couple, and many other films and TV shows. 

The president of EMILY's List since 2010, Stephanie Schriock has helped steer the five-million-member organization to some of the greatest victories seen in its 35-year history. These victories included the election of many pro-choice women Democratic U.S. senators, U.S. representatives, governors, and state and local officials. Currently on the Board of Advisors of the anti-voter suppression group Let America Vote, Schriock served as the national finance director of Howard Dean's presidential campaign and managed the Senate races of Jon Tester in 2006 and Al Franken in 2008. In Run to Win, she offers strategies women can use to succeed in politics and other male-dominated fields. Stacey Abrams writes, ''Run to Win demystifies how to tackle the challenges of campaigns, using authentic voices to welcome readers with honesty, compassion and humor.''

Books may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 1/27/2021)