Free Library Podcast

''A marvelous storyteller'' (Chicago Tribune), Mary Morris explores some of her favorite themes-away versus home, childhood memories, and the Midwest-in such works of fiction as A Mother's Love, House Arrest, and The Jazz Palace. The winner of the Rome Prize and the Ainsfield-Wolf Award for Fiction, she is also the author of the travel classic Nothing to Declare: Memoirs of a Woman Traveling Alone. In Gateway to the Moon, Morris interweaves the stories of a secluded New Mexican town's present-day residents with those of its original settlers 500 years earlier. 

Nathaniel Popkin is the author and co-author of five books, including Lion and Leopard, Song of the City, and Philadelphia: Finding the Hidden City. He is also co-editor of the literary anthology Who Will Speak for America?, the fiction editor of Cleaver Magazine, and the writer/editor of the Emmy-winning documentary film series Philadelphia: The Great Experiment. In Everything is Borrowed, he ponders regret, history, and the intransigence of the urban landscape through the strangely parallel lives of two men separated by centuries.

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(recorded 5/10/2018)

In conversation with award winning broadcaster and journalist Tracey Matisak.

Political commentator Alex Wagner is co-host of Showtime's The Circus and a contributor to CBS News and The Atlantic. She previously hosted MSNBC's Emmy-nominated Now with Alex Wagner, among many other credits. From 2007 to 2009 she served as the executive director of Not On Our Watch, an international advocacy nonprofit dedicated to preventing mass human-rights violations and atrocities. In Futureface, she searches the globe for the secrets of her ancestry, along the way confronting foundational questions of immigration and identity.

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(recorded 5/15/2018)

In conversation with Tracey Matisak

A scion of America's most fabled political dynasty, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is a clinical professor and supervising attorney at the Environmental Litigation Clinic at Pace University's Elisabeth Haub School of Law. He is also the founder and president of the nonprofit Waterkeeper Alliance, former senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the former chief prosecuting attorney for Hudson Riverkeeper. He cohosts the syndicated talk radio program Ring of Fire and is the author of several books, including Crimes Against Nature and Framed. Kennedy's latest book is an intimate exploration of his turbulent childhood, his public and private pain, and the defining moments that shaped him.

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(recorded 5/17/2018)

Celebrated historian Nell Irvin Painter's many books include Sojourner Truth, Creating Black Americans, and, most recently, The History of White People, a national bestseller examining the dangerous socially constructed notion of whiteness. The Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita, at Princeton University, Painter directed that institution's Program in African American Studies from 1997 to 2000 and has served on a number of editorial boards and professional groups, including the Society of American Historians, the Association of Black Women Historians, and the American Antiquarian Society. Old in Art School is a memoir of Painter's surprising decision to return to the academy as a student in her sixties to earn a BFA and MFA in painting.

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(recorded 5/22/2018)

Journalist and lawyer Steven Brill is the founder of Court TV, 10 regional newspapers, and The American Lawyer magazine. His 2013 Time magazine cover story ''Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us'' won the National Magazine Award for Public Service and became the basis for a New York Times bestselling book. A regular expert analyst for the likes of CNN, NBC, and CBS, he teaches journalism at Yale. In Tailspin, he explains how bedrock American institutions function less for the vulnerable majority than for the ultra-elite minority, and he introduces people and organizations working to turn them around.

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(recorded 5/30/2018)

In conversation with State Representative Brian K. Sims, former staff counsel for policy and planning at the Philadelphia Bar Association. Sims recently stepped down as both the president of the board of directors of Equality Pennsylvania and as chairman of Gay and Lesbian Lawyers of Philadelphia (GALLOP).

Sarah McBride made history in 2016 as the first openly transgender American to address a major party convention. Also one of the first transgender people to work at the White House, she helped influence the Obama administration's stances on trans issues, served as an aide to Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, and currently serves as National Press Secretary at the Human Rights Campaign. McBride's trailblazing story has been featured in a variety of periodicals, including The New Yorker, the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, and Cosmopolitan. Tomorrow Will Be Different takes a deep dive into her tale of love, loss, and accomplishment as a doorway to a larger discussion of identity and LGBTQ rights.

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(recorded 6/7/2018)

In conversation with journalist Tracey Matisak

Ken Auletta has penned the ''Annals of Communications'' column for The New Yorker for more than 25 years. His 11 books include the bestsellers Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way, The Highwaymen: Warriors of the Information Superhighway, and Googled: The End of the World as We Know It. One of the New York Public Library's Literary Lions and a member of its Emergency Committee for the Research Libraries, he is also a member of the Author's Guild, PEN, and the Committee to Protect Journalists. In Frenemies, Auletta meets with old-guard gatekeepers and up-and-comers to account for the profound changes to the $2 trillion global advertising industry.

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(recorded 6/11/2018)

In the New York Times bestselling book The Tenth Parallel, immersive journalist Eliza Griswold spent seven years traversing the geographic and ideological fronts in Africa and Asia where Christianity and Islam collide. In I Am the Beggar of the World, she traveled to Afghanistan to anthologize poems written by diverse women who challenged the image of the voiceless figure under the burqa. Her awards include the Robert I. Friedman Award for investigative journalism. Amity and Prosperity tells the story of a Pennsylvania town devastated by fracking and the unlikely whistleblower who took the case to court.

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(recorded 6/12/2018)

The former curator of the ornithological collections at London's Natural History Museum, Katrina van Grouw is the author of The Unfeathered Bird. A sumptuous labor of love, this hybrid of art, science, and history features 385 detailed drawings representing 200 bird species poetically posed and engaged in behavior typical of the species. Van Grouw is a graduate of the Royal College of Art, a taxidermist, and an experienced bird bander who has led expeditions in Africa and South America. Once again exploring the delicate intersections of art and science, in Unnatural Selection she celebrates Charles Darwin, selective breeding, and the faunal form.

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(recorded 6/14/2018)

Michael A. Smerconish is the host of The Michael Smerconish Program on SiriusXM Channel 124, the host of CNN's Smerconish on Saturday mornings, a Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer columnist, and a New York Times bestselling author. His books include the nonfiction works Flying Blind, Morning Drive, and Muzzled, and the novel Talk. A former Philadelphia Daily News columnist, he has been a guest on seemingly every TV show that addresses politics, including The Colbert Report, The View, and Real Time with Bill Maher. His new book is a collection of his 100 most indelible columns and a rumination on 21st-century national politics and Philadelphia culture.

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(recorded 6/19/2018)