Read Beat (...and repeat)

In a world beset by supervillains, now we have a guidebook: “How To Take Over the World” by Ryan North. 

It’s familiar territory for North, a comic (as in book not hah-hah funny) writer who’s been working on the graphic front for more than 20 years.

The premise of this book is: what if the supervillain didn’t have to lose? So we have it—practical schemes and scientific solutions for the aspiring supervillain, all niftily illustrated by Carly Monardo.

“Who among us hasn’t thought about the best way to construct a secret, technologically advanced lair from which we might conquer all humanity? North assumes we all have, and in doing so he zaps the fun back into one of pop culture’s most enduring archetypes.” That was an NPR report.
 
 Other glowing reviews refer to “North’s trademark sarcasm and humor” or “I never knew reading about becoming a supervillain could feel so wholesome.”

There’s a lot of science injected into this effort so be prepared to take the whole thing, if not seriously, at least with an open mind.

In his interview with Steve Tarter, North reveals a quick wit and a businesslike manner which is what most of us are looking for in our supervillains.

“No regrets.” You hear people say that as a positive philosophy of life. But that’s nonsense, even dangerous, notes Daniel Pink in his latest book, “The Power of Regret.”. 

Everybody has regrets, says the author. He has survey results to prove it. Pink and his team asked 15,000 people in 105 countries if they ever looked back on their lives and wished they’d done things differently. 

Eighty-two percent said regret was at least an occasional part of their lives. Regrets are a fundamental part of our lives, Pink states. 

But here’s the good news: if we reckon with them in fresh and imaginative ways, we can use our regrets to make smarter decisions and perform better at work and school, he says.

In his book, Pink provides some steps to help people deal with their regrets. Rather than be haunted by regret, make a list of your regrets, he suggests. “You will find that a list is a lot less frightening than a ghost," suggested Pink.

In his interview with Steve Tarter, Pink relates that his survey uncovered four basic kinds of regrets that people have—not worrying about whether they should have bought this car or that or ordered something else from the menu.

The four included connection regrets over things like a failed romance or neglecting a bond with a parent or moral regrets where you failed to live up to a personal commitment. Foundation regrets might involve wishing you’d stayed in school or worked harder in school while boldness regrets involve inaction: I should have gone ahead and…

A book about index funds? Passive investing? Snooze time, right? Not with Robin Wigglesworth, the man with the "Harry Potteresque" last name.
As the global financial correspondent for the Financial Times, Wigglesworth covers financial history with a reporter's skill  and the flair of a good storyteller. His cast of  characters are individuals who came up with financial wisdom that's changed all our lives.
Of course, there's Warren Buffett, the oracle of Omaha, but you also have Nate Most, the former submariner was instrumental in the invention of the ETF (exchange-traded funds); Eugene Fama, the University of Chicago economist (still teaching in his 80s) who helped inspire passive investing; Jack Bogle who founded Vanguard; Larry Fink who built BlackRock into the world's biggest investment empire; and many more.
In this interview with Steve Tarter, Wigglesworth helps the common man understand some of the mysteries of Wall Street by making a subject easier to understand and entertaining as well. 

Take a cartoonist who holds a PhD in robotics from Stanford University and team him with a professor of physics and astronomy and you’ve got the successful podcast team of Jorge Cham and Daniel Whiteson whose new book is “Frequently Asked Questions About the Universe.”

If that sounds familiar, it should. Their podcast is “Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe” so tackling big questions, big, out-of-this-world questions, is nothing new for them.

The banter regarding serious issues may be light-hearted, peppered with puns, but they don’t let the comedy get in the way of the science.

What’s with dark matter? Is it related to the dark web? And the biggest misconception about space?

In addition to books and podcasts, Jorge and Daniel are also the co-creators of the animated PBS series, “Elinor Wonders Why.”

Get ready for a fast-moving interview as Steve Tarter tries to keep up with these two high-flying explainers of the universe.

Michelle Huneven is the author of “Search,” a novel about a restaurant critic and a longtime member of the Unitarian Universalist church in Southern California who’s asked to join the church’s search committee for a new minister. That memoir follows the travails of the committee and their candidates—and becomes its own media sensation.
 
The central figure in the novel had good material to work with: the committee is a wide-ranging mix of people, and their candidates range from a baker and microbrew master/pastor to a reverend who identifies as both a witch and an environmental warrior. Ultimately, the committee faces a choice between two very different paths. Although she may have been ambivalent about joining the committee, she finds that she cares deeply about the fate of this institution and she will fight the entire committee, if necessary, to win the day for her side.
 
 Huneven, a former restaurant critic for the L.A. Times, said “Search,” her fifth novel, became her hardest writing challenge to date. She rewards readers with more than her prose, however. At book’s end, she includes some of the recipes the search committee enjoyed.

Talk about your famous families or is it infamous? John Wilkes Booth, after all, goes down as one of the most loathsome villains in history but Fowler maintains this isn't a book about the assassin but rather about the theatrical Booth family.

You have Junius Booth, the father and a Shakespearean actor; Edwin Booth, the son (and John Wilkes' younger brother) who successfully followed in his father's footsteps. Telling the story, Fowler has the two Booth girls, Rosalie and Asia.

The scene is America, a country boiling with dissension that explodes into civil war. "Booth" is the portrait of a country in the throes of change and a family faced with conflict.

In her interview with Steve Tarter, Fowler revealed the conundrum she faced in the book. "I did not want to write a book about John Wilkes Booth. This is a man who craved attention and has gotten too much of it; I didn't think he deserved mine. And yet there is no way around the fact that I wouldn't be writing about his family, if he weren't who he was, if he hadn't done what he did."

Don't let the title throw you. Cassandra Quave is an ethnobotanist  but her quest is easy to understand. She wants to develop new ways to fight illness and disease. And she wants to do it through the healing powers of plants.

Plants are the basis for an array of lifesaving and health-improving medicines we all now take for granted. Ever taken an aspirin? Thank a willow tree for that. What about life-saving medicines for malaria? Some of those are derived from cinchona and wormwood.

Quave, who teaches at Emory University, suggests that in today’s world of synthetic pharmaceuticals, people have lost their connection to the natural world. By ignoring the potential of medicinal plants, however, we are losing out on the opportunity to discover new life-saving medicines, she says.
 
Antibiotic-resistant microbes are already a problem. Each year, 700,000 people die due to untreatable infections but by 2050, 10 million annual deaths are expected unless we take action.
 
In her interview with Steve Tarter, Quave weaves together science, botany, and memoir to tell the extraordinary story of her own journey. Traveling by canoe, ATV, mule, airboat, and on foot, she has conducted field research in the flooded forests of the remote Amazon, the murky swamps of southern Florida and isolated mountaintops in Albania and Kosovo—all in search of natural compounds, long-known to traditional healers.

She's also the co-creator and host of "Foodie Pharmacology," a podcast dedicated to exploring links between food and medicine. 

Named by The Washington Post as one of the best feel-good books of 2021, "The Comfort Book" is the ideal read for your next plane trip, especially in the travel explosion of 2022 when you may be forced to settle down and wait in some airline terminal.

“It is a strange paradox, that many of the clearest, most comforting life lessons are learnt while we are at our lowest," notes Haig, who said the pandemic was a factor in his collection of notes, lists and stories that make up "The Comfort Book."

Haig compiled the material over a period of several years,  Haig uses sources from across the world, history, science, and his own experiences.
 
In his interview with Steve Tarter, Haig demonstrates both humor and concern. The author of "Reasons to Stay Alive" and "Notes on a Nervous Planet," along with six novels and several award-winning children's books, the critically-acclaimed Britisher is likely to become better known as some of his works come to the big screen.

Among the blurbs on the back of Kelefa Sanneh's "Major Labels," a book about popular music, is this from David Letterman: "Kelefa Sanneh has achieved the impossible. 'Major Labels' somehow manages to unspool everything you need to know about 50 years of music, but more impressively, he makes you care about all of it. Even the stuff you don't care about."

The pop music critic of the New York Times for six years before joining the staff of the New Yorker in 2008, Sanneh provides musical history in a variety of genres. It's a book that, as Letterman says, crams a lot in.

Here are just a few of the things I learned from 'Major Labels':
--Waylon Jennings was a pinball fanatic.
--George Strait had 85 top 10 country singles.
--An early form of smooth jazz, known as the "quiet storm" format, was inspired by Smokey Robinson's "Quiet Storm" album of 1975.
--The album version of the Temptations' "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" ran 12 minutes long.
--Eric Church had a country hit called "Springsteen."
--Alanis Morissette, the Canadian pop star, sold 15 million copies of her album, "Jagged Little Pill."

Sanneh, whose first rock concert came in 1988 when, as a seventh-grader, he attended a birthday party that involved the Poison/David Lee Roth concert in Worcester, Mass., wasn't around for all the breakthrough rock of the 1960s but covers it, nevertheless, often with the judicious use of passages from Rolling Stone critics of the day.

But Sanneh has a critic's touch of his own: "'Soft rock' described, more or less, the duo Steely Dan, whose slick compositions were buoyed by astonishing musicianship, and enhanced by arch lyrics that hinted, softly, at perversion."

As far as rock goes, "the genre has faded in cultural importance, even as the music remains ubiquitous," states Sanneh. But he covers more than rock in "Major Labels." There's grunge, punk, soul music and hip hop as well as views on the breakup album and what alternative music really means.

In his interview with Steve Tarter, Sanneh reveals respect for the music he covers. I only wish he'd found a better title for what has to be one of the best musical histories of our time.
 

Erich Schwartzel details the rise of the Chinese film industry and how the Asian nation has been able to dictate to Hollywood.
"Red Carpet" shows that American interests, hungry to take advantage of the huge  market, have been forced to yield to Chinese demands when it comes to anything that might put that country in a bad light.
In his interview with Steve Tarter, Schwartzel points out how criticism of the Chinese has been muted on the big screen due to the riches Hollywood sees in gaining access to Asian movie screens.