Why do we do what we don’t want to do? And why can’t we make ourselves do what we want?
Humans have puzzled over this one for ages. But science is starting to clear a window into the motives and biology behind self-control.
Science journalist John Tierney teamed up with psychologist and researcher Roy F. Baumeister in 2011 to write about it in their book “Willpower.” For this week’s archive broadcast, you’ll hear a conversation between Tierney and MPR News host Kerri Miller from early 2012 where they talk about how to understand this coveted human virtue.
It hints at the discussion coming this Friday on Big Books and Bold Ideas — a chat with cognitive behaviorist and former professional poker player Annie Duke about the science of quitting.
Guest: 

John Tierney is a science journalist and one-half of the duo behind the book, “Willpower,” published in 2011. 



To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above. 
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From the archives: John Tierney on the science behind willpower

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Birds, bats, freshwater mussels and a small catfish. They all slipped away in 2023, among the 21 species declared extinct by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 
Grief is a rational response. So are the questions novelist and conservationist Lydia Millet articulates in her new book, “We Loved It All.” A blend of memoir and ecological truth-telling, Millet’s first nonfiction work examines what the vanishing will mean for the coming generations and for our sense of self. 
“No one wants to tell our children how glorious it was before you were around,” she writes. 
Millet joins host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about how she carries hope, even as she mourns the destruction in the natural world. 
Guest: 

Lydia Millet is a novelist and conservationist. Her new book is, “We Loved It All: A Memory of Life.” 



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Lydia Millet writes a devotion to the species disappearing from our planet

Big Book and Bold Ideas talks with authors from around the globe. 
But our favorite moments come when host Kerri Miller sits down with Minnesota writers to talk about story, craft and how calling this state home influences both. 
This week, we took a look back at some conversations with notable Minnesota authors, including Shannon Gibney, who just won her third Minnesota Book Award, Hmong writer Kao Kalia Yang and not-ashamed-to-be-a-mystery-writer William Kent Krueger. 

Minnesota’s best writers on Big Books and Bold Ideas

Jamie Figueroa’s new memoir, “Mother Island” is stylistically unique. She combines prose and creative nonfiction, myth and short stories to explore her memories. 
But the heart of the book — her push-pull relationship with her mother and her process of uncovering a true self — is as old as time. 
Figueroa’s mother was taken from Puerto Rico as a young child and raised in a New York City orphanage, separated from her native language, culture and ancestry. As many immigrants before her, she learned to keep her heritage distant, as a way to assimilate into a new country.
But Figueroa chafed at the disconnect — “my mother did not know how to define herself on her own terms” — and set out to remember. 
As she tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, “[My mother] was concerned about how we were seen. She wanted to be included. Anything she could do to get closer to ‘white identity’ made it easier for her.”
“As a daughter, I respect those were the choices she was forced to make — and I feel like my life is lived in opposition to that.”
Guest:

Jamie Figueroa is the author of the acclaimed novel, “Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer.” Her new book is “Mother Island.” 



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Author Jamie Figueroa on reclaiming an identity her mother tried to shed

Alexandra Fuller’s new memoir begins with the death of her 21-year-old son, Fi, and chronicles her attempts to grieve well in the searing aftermath of his loss. 
Among other things, that meant acknowledging her kinship with others who had gone before her.
In her gorgeous new book, “Fi: A Memoir of My Son,” she writes: “The way a pilot sees wind and clouds, or a sailor reads currents and water, I look unconsciously for stories to remind me where I am, to remind me that, whatever I’m going through, millions have been here before, are here now, will be here again.”
She talks about finding solace in that continuity on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. As she tells host Kerri Miller: “As I was running to my son’s body …  I knew that I would be ‘over the grief’ when I was able to find gratitude for the grief. I knew I would find out the quality of my God, for real. And I knew I had joined the vast throng of women who had raised me on the Southern African continent who had been here before.”
Don’t miss this thoughtful, tender and vulnerable conversation about non-linear grief — grief that is “a braid and a spiral and a knot.” 
Guest: 

Alexandra Fuller is the author of many books, including “Don’t Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight,” and "Quiet Until the Thaw.” Her new memoir is “Fi: A Memoir of My Son.”



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Alexandra Fuller on ‘the braid, the spiral, the knot of grief’

Danny Ryan doesn’t see himself as ambitious — which is surprising, seeing as he’s both stolen and made millions. But in his mind, he’s just an average guy trying to survive in a world that would rather he not. 
Ryan is the central character of Don Winslow’s sweeping crime trilogy that draws parallels to movies like “The Godfather” and “Goodfellas.” Readers first met Ryan as a mid-level Irish-American mobster in New England in “City on Fire,” which came out in 2022. One year later, Winslow released “City on Dreams,” which follows Ryan to Hollywood. And now, in 2024, Ryan is a Las Vegas casino mogul struggling to leave his life of crime in “City in Ruins.” 
It brings both the series and Winslow’s writing career to a close.
But not before he joins host Kerri Miller one more time on Big Books and Bold Ideas. 
Don’t miss this warm and intimate conversation that pulls at the fascinating threads of Winslow’s past — including his years spent as a Shakespeare director at Oxford, his stint as a private investigator and his abiding love of Africa. They also talk about how surfing taught Winslow to trust the writing process, why it took him 30 years to write the Danny Ryan series, and why he is confident that “City in Ruins” is his last book. 
Guest: 

Don Winslow has written 21 novels, including “The Border, “The Force, and “Savages.” His new book, “City in Ruins” completes his Danny Ryan trilogy and his writing career.  



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From the archives: John Tierney on the science behind willpower

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