The Brian Lehrer Show

Elizabeth Alexander, president of The Mellon Foundation, poet, educator, memoirist and scholar and the author of Signals Across Vast Distances: Essays and Tales (WW Norton, 2026), talks about the guidance she's found from literature and how the arts can heal political divides.

Photo: Elizabeth Alexander attends The Gordon Parks Foundation Awards Dinner and Auction 2026 at Cipriani 42nd Street on May 19, 2026 in New York City. (Noam Galai/Getty Images for The Gordon Parks Foundation via Getty Images)

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Mike Hayes, WNYC/Gothamist reporter covering the New Jersey governor's race and the author of The Secret Files: Bill De Blasio, The NYPD, and the Broken Promises of Police Reform (Kingston Imperial, 2023), talks about a key issue from Sunday's debate between U.S. Rep. Tom Kean, Jr and his Democratic challenger Rebecca Bennett.

Image: Debate screenshot via C-SPAN

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Nikole Hannah-Jones, domestic correspondent for The New York Times Magazine, co-founder of the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting and founder of the Center for Journalism & Democracy at Howard University, talks about the personal decisions she made regarding her daughter's education, and what her daughter's years in New York City public schools have revealed about the city's segregated and unequal schools.

Photo: Hannah Jones and her daughter walk into the first day of school in 2016. (Screenshot via WNYC/YouTube)

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Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of several books, including his latest, The American Way of Killing: The Invention of an Epidemic (Little, Brown and Company, 2026), asks why the U.S. suffers from higher rates of gun violence than any other wealthy country.

Photo: A display of guns for sale is seen at Coliseum Gun Traders Ltd. in Uniondale, New York on September 25, 2020. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images)

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Downed trees, flooding, lost power: Listeners call in to share how they made out in this weekend's slow-moving nor'easter, as well as how they entertained themselves and the kids while stuck inside.

Photo: A nor'easter passes over lower Manhattan and One World Trade Center, seen from the 86th-floor observation deck of the Empire State Building on September 26, 2026, in New York City. (Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)

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Three of our favorite segments from the week, in case you missed them.

30 Issues in 30 Days: Child Care in NYS  (First) | Mayor Mamdani's 'Broken Windows' Promise (Starts at 30:19) | The Professionals Cleaning AI Slop (Starts at 56:07)

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Ishaan Tharoor, global affairs columnist at The New Yorker and Edward Murrow Press Fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, talks about this week's UN General Assembly, the meeting between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jingping and President Trump's take on globalism.

Photo: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during the 81st session of the United Nations (U.N.) General Assembly at U.N. Headquarters on September 22, 2026 in New York City. (Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images)

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WNYC's senior political correspondent Brigid Bergin, host of "Who's Running This Place," and Shoshana Hershkowitz, campaign manager, Empire State Campaign for Child Care, discuss the landscape of child care in New York State, and the policy proposals on the issue that each of the gubernatorial candidates, Governor Kathy Hochul and Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, have put forth.

Photo: Gov. Kathy Hochul speaks during a press conference on Universal Childcare at the Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art & Storytelling on March 03, 2026 in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago via Getty Images)

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Akbar Shahid Ahmed, diplomatic correspondent at The Washington Sun and the author of Crossing The Red Line: Biden, His Advisors, and Israel’s War in Gaza (W.W. Norton, 2026), talks about the Biden administration's support for Israeli attacks on Gaza in retaliation for October 7th.

Photo: U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House on February 8, 2024 in Washington, DC (Nathan Howard via Getty Images)

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The tri-state region has its eyes on this season’s first nor'easter. John Davitt, chief meteorologist for Spectrum News NY1, tells us about the conditions to expect, what makes it a "nor’easter," and how to prepare.

Photo: Flash flooding from 4 to 7 inches of rain in Flatbush, Brooklyn on September 29th, 2023. (Wil540 art, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International via Wikimedia)

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