Smartest Person in the Room

It's finally here! Our best books of the year episode.

Host Laura Tremaine and her real life book club friends Stephanie Newman-Smith and Yasmin Dunn discuss their favorite books of the year and some of the most buzzed about books of 2018.

Books mentioned on this episode:

Becoming by Michelle Obama

The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies by Ben Fritz

You Think It, I'll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld

Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Florida by Lauren Goff

Lethal White by Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling)

Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires

Dark Sacred Night by Michael Connelly

The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce

Alone Together by Sherry Turkle

The Yes Brain by Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson

Heavy by Kiese Laymon

Good and Mad by Rebecca Traister

Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes's Hollywood by Karina Longworth

(30:40) Circe by Madeline Miller

(34:50) 9 Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty

(44:36) The Witch Elm by Tana French

(54:55) An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

(1:00:10) The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

(1:04:04) Educated by Tara Westover

(1:12:30) The Line That Held Us by David Joy

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You've probably heard Rachael MacFarlane speak at some point in her 20 year acting career. She's given voice to characters from Johnny Bravo, Tom & Jerry, Fancy Nancy, Family Guy, and she has played Hayley on American Dad since 2005.

Now Rachael has written a children's book titled Eleanor Wyatt, Princess and Pirate. Laura talks with Rachael about her career, her new book, parenting in L.A., and why the message of Eleanor Wyatt is so important.

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On today's episode, Laura is the smartest person in the room because she is the ONLY person in the room. That's right, it's a first for this podcast: a solo show! Laura shares the best books she's read so far in 2018.

Click here for the full show notes.

Follow Laura on Instagram where she shares what she's reading in real time, or sign up for her Secret Post emails here.

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This is the final episode in the BIAS series. We're sharing our thoughts on creating and releasing this series, and answering some of the questions we've received over the last few weeks.

We're also making an announcement about the future of this conversation in this space, since of course this work doesn't stop here. Please check out our ever-evolving resource page here.

Thanks for joining us for the BIAS series of Smartest Person in the Room!

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Over the past several episodes, we've mentioned several times that my friend and co-host for this series Yasmin is married to a white man. Yasmin has talked about how being part of an interracial marriage has given her a unique perspective on the dynamics of race in our culture, and I couldn't think of a better way to conclude our series on bias than by asking her husband Jason to sit down and talk with us about his perspectives on the reality of racial bias in our country.

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This episode is different from any episode of Smartest Person in the Room that I've ever recorded. Months ago, when Yasmin and I were planning this series, I mentioned that though I've lived in Los Angeles for 17 years now, I've hardly ever been to the historically black neighborhoods of South LA. And so, Yasmin decided to take me on a little field trip in our own city.

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This is an unplanned episode. Yasmin and Laura were talking off the record, but the mic was recording. With Yasmin's permission, we are sharing this story.

The blog post we reference from Luvvie Ajayi can be found here.

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Early in our friendship, Yasmin and I realized that we had pretty different perspectives on most things pop culture. So many factors (and especially our racial makeup) affects how we see everything from music to movies to the Great American Novel.

In this episode, we talk about Beyonce, Black Panther, Get Out, Michael Jackson, and more. And Yasmin has a SHOCKING (to me) opinion about one of America's most beloved novels.

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This episode is all about racial identity, and how it matters.

I'm speaking with my friends Jason & Yvonne Lee, actors and producers here in Los Angeles.

I met Jason & Yvonne through our children, and in our very first conversation we ended up talking for hours about Jason's story of being a black man adopted and raised by a white family. He and his wife Yvonne have really interesting things to say about racial identity, and why it matters.

There are so many layers to this conversation. Make sure you listen all the way until the end.

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Continuing our series on racial bias, a black and white conversation between friends.

In this episode, Yasmin and I talk to her friend and former colleague Melissa Kaplan, the Deputy Superintendent of Education at Bright Star Schools. Melissa tells the story of how she was inspired to take her life experiences of growing up poor with an addict for a father and struggling with a learning disorder to the classroom where she believed she could help her students overcome their challenges the way she had been able to: through hard work and education. But she experienced an unexpected awakening to the realities of race in our country that, as a white woman, she had been unprepared to encounter.

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