Join Michael in his conversation with Jane Leavy about her new book, Make Me Commissioner, I Know What’s Wrong with Baseball and How to Fix It which is a behind the scenes road trip through the far corners of the baseball world as she sets out to uncover how the game broke, and to find the people and the ideas that just might bring it back.

Jane Leavy is an award-winning former sportswriter and feature writer for the Washington Post, known for diving into a subject and emerging with work that is both meticulously researched and narratively rich. She is the author of the national bestsellers The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created, The Last Boy Book: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy and the comic novel, Squeeze Play, called “the best novel ever written about baseball” by Entertainment Weekly. She lives in Washington, D.C. and Truro, Massachusetts.

https://janeleavy.com/

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Join Michael in his conversation with DeMaurice Smith about his new book, Turf Wars, The Fight for the Soul of America’s Game which chronicles his 14-year tenure as the head of the National Football League Players Association.

DeMaurice Smith is the former executive director of the National Football League Players Association. Prior to the NFLPA, De was an assistant United States attorney, counsel to the US deputy attorney general, and a partner in major law firms. He is now a visiting professor of law at Pepperdine University.

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Join Michael in his conversation with DeMaurice Smith about his new book, Turf Wars, The Fight for the Soul of America’s Game which chronicles his 14-year tenure as the head of the National Football League Players Association.

DeMaurice Smith is the former executive director of the National Football League Players Association. Prior to the NFLPA, De was an assistant United States attorney, counsel to the US deputy attorney general, and a partner in major law firms. He is now a visiting professor of law at Pepperdine University.

This is Part 1.

Part 2 will be out soon!

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Join Michael in his conversation with Alex Vernon about his new book Peace is a Shy Thing, The Life and Art of Tim O’Brien which chronicles the life and writings of Tim O’Brien best known for his beloved book The Things They Carried.

Alex is the M.E. and Ima Graves Peace Distinguished Professor of English at Hendrix College. Alex Vernon graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point (the only literature major in his class of over a thousand), served in combat as a tank platoon leader in the Persian Gulf War, and earned a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. This is his eleventh book.

Alex Vernon

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Join Michael in his conversation with Will Bardenwerper about his new book Homestand, Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America which tells the story of Will’s efforts to find the heart of Americana through the lens of minor league baseball. 

Will has contributed to The New York Times, The Washington Post, Harper’s and other outlets and is the author of The Prisoner in His Palace: Saddam Hussein, His American Guards, and What History Leaves Unsaid. He served as an Airborne Ranger infantry officer in Iraq and was awarded a Bronze Star. Before working in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, he received a B.A. from Princeton and M.A. from Johns Hopkins University.

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Join Michael Zeldin for this extraordinary 90-minute conversation with Max Weinberg, Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame drummer from Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, as they discuss Max’s musical career, his thoughts on music and drumming, his recollections of other great drummers, especially the late Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts, and much more. Guest Max Weinberg, Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame drummer from Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band Max “the Mighty Max” Weinberg. A bundle of drive, neurosis and wily suburban street smarts, and source of great humor, Max found a place where Bernard Purdie, Buddy Rich and Keith Moon intersected and made it his own. The soul of dedication and commitment, each night in the midst of the continuous hurricane our sets are designed to be, the sheer physical pressure of three hours of nonstop, steamrolling rock music lies upon his shoulders more heavily than anyone else’s.

Onstage, Max goes beyond listening to what I’m saying, signaling; he “hears” what I’m thinking, feeling. He anticipates my thoughts as they come rolling full bore toward the drum riser. It’s a near telepathy that comes from years of playing and living together. It’s a real-world miracle and it’s why people love musicians. They show us how deeply we can experience one another’s minds and hearts, and how perfectly we can work in congress. With Max at my back, the questions are answered before they’re asked. There are twenty thousand people, all about to take a breath; we’re moving in for the kill, the band, all steel on an iron track, and that snare shot, the one I’m just thinking about but haven’t told or signaled anyone outside of this on-fire little corner of my mind about, the one I want right . . . and there it is! Rumble young man, rumble! -Bruce Springsteen “Born To Run” (2016) Max Weinberg's Jukebox A truly interactive experience, Weinberg invites the audience to create the set list, in real time, that he and his crack four piece group will play that night. Performing songs from the glory days of rock and roll your guests get to choose from a video menu of over 200 songs — everything from the Beatles to the Stones to Bruce and The E Street Band’s biggest hits — and hear the group play ‘em the way they want to hear them played! That’s right—the crowd gets to yell out their choices and Max plays them! This unique approach is fun and satisfying.

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Stevie Van Zandt while, perhaps, best known as a founding member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street band and leader of Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul, he is also a writer, producer, actor (having starred in the Sopranos and Lilyhammer), radio host on Sirius/XM’s Little Steven’s Underground garage, political activist, founder of TeachRock.org, and much more. He is also a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Join me and Stevie Van Zandt as we discuss his terrific new memoir, Unrequited Infatuations, which traces his odyssey from a teenager in suburban New Jersey to the Rock and Hall of Fame. Guest Stevie Van Zandt's story begins in a bedroom in suburban New Jersey in the early ‘60s, unfolds on some of the country's largest stages, and then ranges across the globe, demonstrating over and over again how Rock and Roll has the power to change the world for the better? This story. The first true heartbeat of UNREQUITED INFATUATIONS is the moment when Stevie Van Zandt trades in his devotion to the Baptist religion for an obsession with Rock and Roll.

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Join Michael in his discussion with Cody Keenan as they discuss his book, Grace: President Obama and Ten Days in the Battle for America.  The book recounts the most remarkable eulogy delivered by President Obama in Charleston, South Carolina after the hate crime murders of Reverend Pickney and eight parishioners in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Guest Cody Keenan

Cody Keenan rose from a campaign intern in Chicago and deputy pirate to become chief speechwriter at the White House and Barack Obama’s post-presidential collaborator. He’s been named the “Springsteen” of the Obama White House, even though he can’t play an instrument, and Obama calls him “Hemingway” for reasons that have little to do with his talent or seasonal beard (ask him sometime). Even British GQ once named Cody one of the “35 Coolest Men under 38 (and a Half),” ahead of Ryan Gosling, but behind Tom Hardy.

n truth, Cody is more comfortable behind the scenes, helping to shape the stories of our time. He got his start as a young aide to the legendary senator Edward M. Kennedy before earning a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. A sought-after expert on politics, messaging, and current affairs, he is now a partner at leading speechwriting firm Fenway Strategies and teaches a popular course on political speechwriting to undergraduates at his alma mater Northwestern University. 

Born in Wrigleyville, Cody finally got to write his dream speech just four days before Obama left office—one welcoming the World Champion Chicago Cubs to the White House. To his wife Kristen’s enduring embarrassment, their White House courtship was documented on CNN. Today, they live in New York City with their daughter, Grace.

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Join Michael in his conversation with Kevin Sack about his new book Mother Emanuel, Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church which is an epic account of perseverance not just the Mother Emanuel congregation in Charleston, SC but of a people  who withstood enslavement, Jim Crow, and all matter of violence with an unbending faith.

Kevin Sack is a veteran journalist who has written broadly about national affairs for more than four decades and has shared in three Pulitzer Prizes. Sack spent 30 years on the staff of The New York Times, where he was a senior writer. Previously, he worked for the Los Angeles Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Bio

https://www.kevinsack.com/bio

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Join Michael in his conversation with Janet Singer Applefield about her new book Becoming Janet, Finding Myself In The Holocaust which tells the story of her survival as a child in Poland during the Holocaust.

Janet is one of the 11% of Jewish children who survived the Holocaust thanks to the kindness of righteous Christians. Since coming to America, Janet earned her undergraduate degree from Rutgers University and a Master of Social Work from Boston University and has over 30 years’ experience as a licensed clinical social worker.

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