Free Library Podcast

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In conversation with Tracey Matisak

The first African American principal dancer in the 75-year history of the elite American Ballet Theatre, Misty Copeland is one of the world's most accomplished and recognizable artists. A recipient of the Leonore Annenberg Fellowship in the Arts, an inductee in the Boys and Girls Club Alumni Hall of Fame, and one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people, she is the author of the ''thorough, sensitive...clear-eyed'' (The Washington Post) memoir Life in Motion. In her first health and fitness book, Copeland offers tips and encouragement to help people  achieve lean, powerful physiques.

Due to a flaw in the recording medium, the full audio is not available in the podcast. Watch the entire event here: https://livestream.com/flp/Copeland

Pine Tree Foundation Endowed Lecture

(recorded 4/13/2017)

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An internationally acclaimed yoga teacher whose body-positive approach encourages students to ask ''How do I feel?'' rather than ''How do I look?,'' Jessamyn Stanley has been featured on Good Morning America, Shape, People, and New York Magazine, among many other media outlets. She also is a regular contributor to Mind Body Green, Wanderlust, Elephant Journal, and is an award-winning Instagram star. Every Body Yoga illustrates and explains 50 yoga poses and 10 sequences to accomplish at home, and shares Stanley's paradigm-shifting philosophy of spirit and body acceptance. (recorded 4/18/2017)

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Joan Nathan is the author of 11 bestselling culinary guides, including The New American Cooking and Jewish Cooking in America, both of which won James Beard and IACP awards. The latter book was adapted into a PBS series produced by Nathan. A frequent contributor to the New York Times and Bon Appétit, she has appeared on Good Morning America, the Food Network, and NPR's All Things Considered. In King Solomon's Table, Nathan gathers more than 170 recipes that span the millennia and the far reaches of the global Jewish diaspora in a compendium of cooking and culture.  (recorded 4/20/2017)

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In conversation with Andrew Knowlton, Bon Appétit

Joe Beddia is the owner and chef of Philly's own Pizzeria Beddia, named by Bon Appétit as the best pizza in America. This distinction is not surprising, considering that he devoted the last 10 years solely to the pursuit of the perfect pie. James Beard Award winner and fellow Philly chef Michael Solomonov says, ''Never have I encountered an individual so singularly focused on his craft. Joe Beddia is hilarious, intelligent, and lovingly produces the best pizza in the f*cking universe.'' In Pizza Camp, this pizza maestro begins with the pizza basics and moves on to more than 50 iconic and inventive recipes to bake at home. 

(recorded 4/24/2017)

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David Grann is the no. 1 New York Times bestselling author of The Lost City of Z, the ''brilliant...impressively researched and crafted'' (Los Angeles Times) nonfiction tale of the deadly search for a fabled Amazonian civilization. His second book, The Devil and Sherlock Holmes, was named by Men's Journal one of the best true crime books ever written. An award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker, Grann has previously contributed to The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic, among other periodicals. Killers of the Flower Moon tells the chilling true-life story of one of the most sinister conspiracies in American history.

(recorded 4/25/2017)

A ''tough-minded'' but ''nuanced and persuasive'' (The New York Times Book Review) expert on history, politics, and religion in America, Jon Meacham won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for his biography American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House. His other bestselling nonfiction includes American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation and Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power. Currently executive editor and executive vice president at Random House, Meacham was formerly editor-in-chief of Newsweek. In The Soul of America, Meacham contextualizes the country's current political climate by looking back at the critical periods in our past when what Lincoln prophetically termed ''the better angels of our nature'' defeated fear, demagoguery, and division.

Watch the video here. (recorded 7/12/2018)

A ''tough-minded'' but ''nuanced and persuasive'' (The New York Times Book Review) expert on history, politics, and religion in America, Jon Meacham won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for his biography American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House. His other bestselling nonfiction includes American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation and Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power. Currently executive editor and executive vice president at Random House, Meacham was formerly editor-in-chief of Newsweek. In The Soul of America, Meacham contextualizes the country's current political climate by looking back at the critical periods in our past when what Lincoln prophetically termed ''the better angels of our nature'' defeated fear, demagoguery, and division.

Watch the video here. (recorded 7/12/2018)

In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6ABC Action News morning edition

A White House stenographer from 2012 to 2017, Beck Dorey-Stein was serving cocktails in the D.C. area when she answered an unlikely Craigslist post that ultimately landed her in the Oval Office. As one of former President Obama's elite support-staff members, she forged close relationships with the other young professionals who accompanied him on journeys across the globe. A graduate of Wesleyan University, Dorey-Stein was a high school English teacher in New Jersey, Washington D.C., and South Korea before her big break. In From the Corner of the Oval, she pulls back the curtain on the Obama White House and details the entanglements that turned the political into the personal. 

Watch the video here.

(recorded 7/10/2018)

In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6ABC Action News morning edition

A White House stenographer from 2012 to 2017, Beck Dorey-Stein was serving cocktails in the D.C. area when she answered an unlikely Craigslist post that ultimately landed her in the Oval Office. As one of former President Obama's elite support-staff members, she forged close relationships with the other young professionals who accompanied him on journeys across the globe. A graduate of Wesleyan University, Dorey-Stein was a high school English teacher in New Jersey, Washington D.C., and South Korea before her big break. In From the Corner of the Oval, she pulls back the curtain on the Obama White House and details the entanglements that turned the political into the personal. 

Watch the video here.

(recorded 7/10/2018)

Journalist and social critic Barbara Ehrenreich, ''who for more than 40 years has been one of our most accomplished and outspoken advocacy journalists and activists'' (Los Angeles Times), is the bestselling author of 16 books, including the working-class exposé Nickel and Dimed, in which she subsisted on poverty-level wages for a year; Living with a Wild God, an intimate reconstruction of the philosophical and spiritual inquiry of her youth; and Bait and Switch, in which she investigated the economic shadow world of white-collar unemployment. In Natural Causes, Ehrenreich employs science, sociological trends, and personal experience to examine the paradox of killing ourselves to live longer lives.

Watch the video here.

(recorded 4/17/2018)