Podcasts about biographers

## The Scott Adams School — Wednesday, August 26, 2026Today we're joined by **Joel Pollak, biographer of Scott Adams**, who will be with us at the beginning of the show to give us an update on the biography: how the book is coming along, what's new, and what he's learned along the way.After that, **Erica and Owen** will take over with some current events, news, and whatever fresh nonsense the world has managed to produce overnight. **Marcela returns tomorrow.**### A little housekeepingWe've been asked by **Scott Adams, Inc.** to make everyone aware of the moderation policy going forward.We love that this community debates, disagrees, jokes around, and has strong opinions. That's part of what makes the chat fun. But **personal attacks, insults, and snide comments directed at any host or guest will no longer be tolerated.**Please think of this space the way you would think of being invited into **Scott's home**. We are his friends, our guests are invited guests, and basic respect is expected.If moderators see a personal attack or insult:**First offense:** You will be temporarily muted. You'll still be able to watch the show, but you will not be able to participate in the chat for a period of time.**If it happens again after that restriction is lifted:** You may be permanently blocked from the account.This policy comes directly from **Scott Adams, Inc.** and will be handled by the moderation team. It is not something the hosts will be debating or adjudicating during the show.We truly appreciate the overwhelming majority of you who come here every day to chat, debate, laugh, learn, and keep this community going. **Disagreement is welcome. Personal hostility is not.**Please **LIKE, SUBSCRIBE, and SHARE** the show with your friends.

Melania Trump Will 'Not Show Up' If Donald Trump's Loyal Aide Natalie Harp Is Present, Biographer Claims Amid Women's 'Power Struggle'Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Melania Trump Will 'Not Show Up' If Donald Trump's Loyal Aide Natalie Harp Is Present, Biographer Claims Amid Women's 'Power Struggle'Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This week on Q&A, it's a rare interview with one of America's leading historians. We tour the New York City office and home library of Pulitzer Prize-winning bestselling biographer Robert Caro, who is currently working on the final volume of his 5-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson. During the tour, Mr. Caro talks about his research and writing process on the LBJ series, and the impact of "The Power Broker," his bestselling 1974 biography of NYC Parks Commissioner Robert Moses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on Q&A, it's a rare interview with one of America's leading historians. We tour the New York City office and home library of Pulitzer Prize-winning bestselling biographer Robert Caro, who is currently working on the final volume of his 5-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson. During the tour, Mr. Caro talks about his research and writing process on the LBJ series, and the impact of "The Power Broker," his bestselling 1974 biography of NYC Parks Commissioner Robert Moses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this special episode of Biographers in Conversation for the 2026 National Biography Award, Dr Helen Ennis chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting Max Dupain: A Portrait. Here's what you'll discover in this episode: Helen Ennis received the prestigious 2026 National Biography Award for Max Dupain: A Portrait, the biography of Max Dupain, the most influential photographer of the 20th century. The award judges remarked: ‘Max Dupain: A Portrait was chosen for this year's National Biography Award as an exceptional example of the biographer's craft. Elegantly structured and written, it weaves Dupain's life and work into a complex whole.' ‘Interspersed microchapters accompanying carefully curated images illuminate not only the range and originality of his photography but also aspects of his character', the judges added. ‘As biographer, Helen Ennis is present but never obtrusive, questioning and interpreting while remaining non-judgmental.' ‘This biography of a major 20th-century Australian photographer will be read long into the 21st.'

In this episode of Reading Is Funktamental, we are joined again by Richie Unterberger, one of the most productive and insightful authors of rock history books, to discuss his latest, a complete history of the Velvet Underground.Blending new archival insights and first-hand accounts, Richie Unterberger illuminates the band's radical global impact on New York's progenitors of punk, who bridged pure rock'n'roll, avant-garde experimentation and literary songwriting to take rock music into previously uncharted territory. Beginning with each member's path to the band, it details their influences, successes and (many) failures, the whirlwind with Warhol, the triumph of the Banana album, the fractured and strained relationships and egos, and beyond to the end of the Velvets and the beginnings of various solo careers.Rigorously researched and packed with previously undocumented insights, this book features first-hand interviews with the group's associates, substantial material newly unearthed from the Lou Reed Archive and the Andy Warhol Archive, and never-before-seen images and ephemera.An entertaining and exhilarating narrative, Do What You Fear Most vividly captures the grit and uninhibited creativity of the 1960s New York cultural scene and is an essential portrait of one of the 20th century's most visionary and influential bands.For more, read my review of this great book over at PopMatters: https://www.popmatters.com/velvet-underground-richie-unterberger"Reading is Funktamental" is a monthly one-hour podcast and radio show about great books written about music and music-makers. In each episode, host Sal Cataldi speaks to the authors of some of the best reads about rock, jazz, punk, world, experimental music, and much more. From time to time, the host and authors will be joined by notable musicians, writers, and artists who are die-hard fans of the subject matter covered. Expect lively conversation and a playlist of great music to go with it."Reading Is Funktamental" can be heard the second Wednesday of every month from 10 – 11 AM on Wave Farm: WGXC 90.7 FM and online at wavefarm.org. It is also available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other platforms. Sal Cataldi is a musician and writer based in Saugerties. He is best known for his work with his genre-leaping solo project, Spaghetti Eastern Music, and is also a member of the ambient guitar duo Guitars A Go Go, the poetry-and-music duo Vapor Vespers, and the quartet Spaceheater. His writing on music, books, and film has been featured in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, PopMatters, Seattle Times, Huffington Post, Inside+Out Upstate NY, and NYSMusic.com, where he is the book reviewer.

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Sophia Lambton chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about The Callas Imprint: A Centennial Biography. Here's what you'll discover in this episode: Why the narrative opened with a prologue about Maria Callas's artistry. How exhaustive research revealed Callas's brilliance and flaws. How a detailed calendar of events, letters and performances tracked Callas's evolving thoughts. How Sophia built comprehensive files by transcribing and translating all of Callas's interviews. Why chapter headings include Callas's own words.  How Sophia dismantled Callas's ‘diva stereotype' and portrayed her human story. 

Conrad Black, distinguished biographer and National Post columnist, discusses the "aberrant" trade tensions between the US and Canada following the imposition of tariffs based on allegations of forced labor in Chinese imports. Black argues these tariffs are a legal workaround for the Trump administration to bypass the Supreme Court by declaring a national emergency. He characterizes the policy as arbitrary and offensive, noting it has dampened cross-border tourism and led to retaliatory tariffs on items like hockey sticks. Despite the current friction, Black remains optimistic that the dispute will be resolved through negotiation because he believes President Trump fundamentally likes Canada. (8) 1930 ONTARIO, CANADA

In this latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, Erin Vincent chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting Fourteen Ways of Looking. Here's what you'll discover in this episode: In Fourteen Ways of Looking, Erin Vincent revisits the tragic year when both her parents were killed in a motor vehicle accident. She was 14. Erin began noticing the number 14 recurring in books, films and news, prompting her to record these instances until they formed a 2,000-word essay and eventually a full manuscript. The narrative is fragmented rather than linear. Every fragment contains a reference to the number 14, drawn from history, literature, or memory, and each is deliberately paired with the fragment before and after it to create subtle, sometimes cryptic connections. Erin describes the compositional process as a ‘crazy jigsaw puzzle', holding hundreds of shards of memory and fact in her head, aided only by notebooks and a highlighter pen. Erin discusses the active, layered function of white space on the page, which she uses to represent silences, omissions and the unspeakable, letting absence do the emotional work instead of over-explaining feeling. Erin reflects on ending the book with her mother's voice from an old cassette recording Erin offers advice to aspiring fragment-writers: experiment freely, read widely in the form and use constraints as a source of creative freedom.

In this latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr Martin Thomas chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Clever Men: How Worlds Collided on the Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land of 1948. Here's what you'll discover in this episode:  Martin Thomas's research began in the ABC's sound archive, where he stumbled upon recordings made during the 1948 American Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land, an expedition he had never heard of. Martin chose the group biography form to capture the expedition's internal tensions. Frank Setzler led the collection of human remains from Indigenous mortuary sites, shipping them to the Smithsonian. Martin describes this as a kind of kidnapping: displaced spirits in a foreign land. Martin made repeated research trips to Arnhem Land, showing digitised expedition films and recordings to community elders. Old men wept with joy at seeing ancestors and ceremonies on film. Clever Men ends in the early 21st century with the repatriation of the human remains, led by the late elder Jacob Nayinggull, a man Martin describes as one of the true clever men of the story, and one of his most important mentors. The title's double meaning Clever Men is an Aboriginal English term for a shaman or spiritual healer. Martin explains how the title emerged from an incident in which local Arnhem Land people watched a mammalogist shoot, skin and stuff animals, concluding this westerner must be a powerful clever man from another world. The irony is intentional. Biography assumes a Western sense of self: names, birth dates, individual identity. In Bininj and Yolŋu culture, the dead aren't named during mourning, numerical dates aren't used, and the self is understood through a spirit that belongs to country and returns to it.

(Jul 20, 2026) A future day care center in Plattsburgh aims to help close that gap and promote workforce development; the governor is defending her executive order that bans data center development in New York for the next year; and we have a conversation about President Teddy Roosevelt's status as a political outsider and why his visits to the North Country were so significant ahead of an event in North Creek.

(Credit: Telegraph article, June 2017, J.K. Rowling at the Raisa Gorbachev Foundation party in 2007, wearing a floral diamond necklace and matching earrings, cf., Christmas Pig)Solomon Schmidt, author of A Pen to Change the World: The Life of J. K. Rowling (Skyhorse, June 2026), sat down with us again to discuss what challenges he faced in collating and synthesizing almost thirty years of interviews for his biography. He also shares the three questions he'd ask The Presence if she'd consent to an interview, questions that he thinks she might answer; Solomon turned the tables on his interviewers who had to improv questions they'd ask without being told their interview with Rowling was over.The necessary links to the book's Amazon page and to the two Hogwarts Professor reviews are here:* A Pen to Change the World: The Life of J.K. Rowling (Amazon.com)* A Pen to Change the World: The Life of J.K. Rowling (Amazon.co.uk) Uk Edition* A Pen to Change the World – the Biography of J. K. Rowling by Solomon Schmidt (Nick Jeffery)* Book Review: A Pen to Change the World - The Life of J. K. Rowling (John Granger)Five Questions for Solomon Schmidt, Author of A Pen to Change the World:5. I said you didn't get to interview Rowling, which is true, but you did have access to all her interviews that she has done 1997 to the present as well as the interviews and articles with her family, friends, fans, and business associates. How did you find, assemble, and sift through those interviews?6. If you had been allowed inside the gates of Fortress Rowling and you were only allowed three questions, what would you ask her? (This is a game John and I regularly play, and usually John's questions would get him thrown out of an interview!)7. What discoveries that you made in your research were the most exciting to you?8. Rowling has said repeatedly through the years that the critical negative events of her life that reshaped her thinking and her work were the death of her mother and the abusive relationship she had with her first husband. Agree or disagree? What do you think were the most important positive turns in her life?9. Very few people I meet don't have a fixed opinion about Rowling; the world seems to love and hate her in equal measure with little grey area between the two: adoring fans and political allies on the one hand and those that despise her work, her political efforts, or both. Where do you fall in that divide and how hard was it to represent the other point of view in your biography?10. I assume you've started researching your next biography though you'll be neck deep in this book's launch for a few months. What will you be working on next? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr Judith Mackrell, one of Britain's most eminent biographers, chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting Artists, Siblings, Visionaries: The Lives and Loves of Gwen and Augustus John. Here's what you'll discover in this episode:  Artists, Siblings, Visionaries is the first major dual biography of Gwen and Augustus John, siblings who became two of the most significant British artists of the 20th century. The death of Augusta, Gwen and Augustus's mother, left the young children emotionally bereft, creating in Augustus a compulsive pattern of falling in love with new women, and in Gwen an intense, sometimes obsessive yearning directed at unattainable figures such as the French sculptor, François Auguste René Rodin. Judith challenges the assumption that Augustus's fame damaged Gwen's career. Instead, he was his sister's most devoted advocate and correctly prophesied that history would one day remember him as Gwen's brother. By choosing a dual biography, Judith could use both siblings as a ‘marvellous laboratory', tracking year by year the social, cultural and economic forces that propelled Augustus to fame rapidly while Gwen remained largely unseen, illuminating the structural barriers facing women artists. Judith came to understand Gwen's famous reclusive shyness as a form of armour, a deliberate self-presentation that gave her control over who she engaged with, contradicted by her ferocious capacity for emotional pursuit and sustained creative work. Judith describes herself as a ‘gardener' rather than an ‘architect' of narrative. She begins drafting the manuscript almost from the start of the research, finding that structure emerges organically, with serendipitous connections between the two lives surprising her along the way. For Judith, writing about artists means foregrounding the people, not just the work, asking how two desolate children became artists, and what the interaction was between their art and their lives.

Jacob Townsend is joined by Timothy D. Johnson who has wrote a new book on General Robert Neyland, his time in the Army, his coaching tenure in Knoxville, legacy, Maxims, and more.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

(Credit: Neil Wilder, Edinburgh 1999, now in National Portrait Galley)Solomon Schmidt, author of A Pen to Change the World: The Life of J. K. Rowling (Skyhorse, June 2026), sat down with us this week to discuss what moved him to write a Rowling biography at the height of her radioactivity as a supposed “transphobe” and the obstacles that Rowling, Inc., puts in the way of unauthorized biographers. He also shares the kindness and circumspection of the people who did agree to speak with him, to include Neil Blair and Jorge Arantes.The necessary links to the book's Amazon page and to the two Hogwarts Professor reviews are here:* A Pen to Change the World: The Life of J.K. Rowling (Amazon.com)* A Pen to Change the World: The Life of J.K. Rowling (Amazon.co.uk) Uk Edition* A Pen to Change the World – the Biography of J. K. Rowling by Solomon Schmidt (Nick Jeffery)* Book Review: A Pen to Change the World - The Life of J. K. Rowling (John Granger)The second part of our conversation with Mr Schmidt will be posted next week. The first five questions he answered were:1. What moved you to start this project? You've already written a biography of Alan Dershowitz and many more in the History Bites series; what made J. K. Rowling an inviting subject to you? What made it different from the other biographies you've written?2. You wrote in the acknowledgements at book's end that you didn't write the biography as a work of "literary criticism," but you do discuss everything she has written or collaborated on, Philosopher's Stone to Ink Black Heart. What would you have included in those discussions if you had been writing "literary criticism"?3. This is an "Unauthorized" biography which means you were researching and writing outside the gates of Team Rowling, simultaneously shut off from Rowling and her circle of friends and, one would hope, outside her ability to shape the narrative you put together of her life. You did, though, get some push-back from Rowling, Inc.'s legal arm at one point; what was that about?4. You weren't able to interview Rowling, her sister, her husband, her father, her daughter Jessica, Sean Harris, the Sisters of Swing, Michael the boyfriend, Lucy Shepherd, Pearl Biddle, or 'Starsky and Cox.' You did find and scored interviews with Jorge Arantes, Barry Cunningham (the publisher who signed J. K. Rowling to Bloomsbury), Steve Eddy (one of Rowling's English teachers), Neil Blair (sort of!), and her American cousins, Ben and Bryony Rowling. How did you find these sources and what was it like sitting down to speak with them?5. I said you didn't get to interview Rowling, which is true, but you did have access to all her interviews that she has done 1997 to the present as well as the interviews and articles with her family, friends, fans, and business associates. How did you find, assemble, and sift through those interviews?Please share your thoughts below as well as follow-up questions you wish we had asked! Part Two will be up in a week… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/subscribe

In this latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr Sylvia Martin chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Double Act: Eirene Mort and Nora Kate Weston. Here's what you'll discover in this episode:  While Eirene Mort was a designer, black & white illustrator, watercolourist, etcher, tapestry worker and potter, Nora Kate Weston, whom Eirene named ‘Chips', was a carpenter, woodcarver and metalworker. They lived and worked together for 60 years early in the 20th century. Sylvia Martin crafted a dual biography because Nora had been consistently relegated to the shadows given the higher public profile of Eirene. Double Act is an act of biographical justice to bring Nora into equal focus with Eirene. The Eirene Mort archive at the National Library of Australia is almost entirely visual. It includes over 20 sketchbooks, objects and artworks, though no letters between Eirene and Nora. Sylvia read their lives through images, travel sketches and lateral sources, including shipping lists and newspaper archives on Trove. Influenced by her own experience of coming out as a lesbian in the 1980s and finding no narratives that fit, Sylvia has spent 35 years writing about women in same-sex relationships from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Double Act is Sylvia's fifth book and contains more of herself than any previous work.

In this episode of Reading Is Funktamental, we head back in time to discuss a true classic of jazz and jazz journalism. The fascinating life and legacy of the great jazz artist Rahsaan Roland Kirk, with John Kruth, the author of this first and most complete biography, Bright Moments: The Life and Legacy of Rahsaan Roland Kirk (2000).Bright Moments is the story of a truly neglected genius who eclipsed jazz itself. Rahsaan Roland Kirk was a one-of-a-kind musician and human being. As some of you may know, Rahsaan played two or three saxophones at a time and developed a unique breathing system, which some call circular breathing or spherical breathing, one that allowed him to play continuous, nonstop solos that mesmerized audiences everywhere. He was also fantastic on the clarinet and flute (with a breathy, vocalized technique that enormously influenced Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson).A blind musician, Kirk played the history of jazz, or what he called “black classical music,” from the roots to the fruits, recorded over 35 records, and extensive tours. In this wonderful biography, Kruth interviewed his peers, friends, band members, widow, and doctor. They include Quincy Jones, Sonny Rollins, Grover Washington, Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, Eric Burdon, and Ian Anderson, to name a few. Find out why Rahsaan was called by Jimi Hendrix his “favorite musician”"Reading is Funktamental" is a monthly one-hour podcast and radio show about great books written about music and music-makers. In each episode, host Sal Cataldi speaks to the authors of some of the best reads about rock, jazz, punk, world, experimental music, and much more. From time to time, the host and authors will be joined by notable musicians, writers, and artists who are die-hard fans of the subject matter covered. Expect lively conversation and a playlist of great music to go with it."Reading Is Funktamental" can be heard the second Wednesday of every month from 10 – 11 AM on Wave Farm: WGXC 90.7 FM and online at wavefarm.org. It can also be found as a podcast on Apple, Spotify, and other platforms. Sal Cataldi is a musician and writer based in Saugerties. He is best known for his work with his genre-leaping solo project, Spaghetti Eastern Music, and is also a member of the ambient guitar duo, Guitars A Go Go, the poetry and music duo, Vapor Vespers, and the quartet, Spaceheater. His writing on music, books, and film has been featured in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, PopMatters, Seattle Times, Huffington Post, Inside+Out Upstate NY, and NYSMusic.com, where he is the book reviewer.

In this latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, Cynthia Banham chats with Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Mother Shadow: A Meditation on Maternal Inheritance. Here's what you'll discover in this episode:  A hybrid of biographical reimagining, lyrical memoir and transnational family history, Mother Shadow is poetic, with whimsical detours and meditative qualities. The discovery of a torn 1898 birth certificate Cynthia found in a small packet of rescued family documents revealed that her great-grandmother Natalina wasn't an orphan but a foundling, abandoned by her mother Ersilia, an unmarried peasant woman.  Mother Shadow follows two interwoven emotional journeys: Cythnia's detective-like quest to understand why Ersilia gave up Natalina, and her own reckoning with feelings of maternal inadequacy.  Mother Shadow underwent many structural drafts before a mentor helped Cynthia to reorganise it thematically, weaving resonances between Ersilia's 19th-century story and Banham's own contemporary experience of mothering. When an anthropologist raised the possibility of family abuse as an explanation for Ersilia's circumstances, Cynthia agonised over whether to include it. Ultimately, she decided that honesty about confronting possibilities was an ethical obligation. Cynthia's advice for authors crafting hybrid forms of life writing is to understand why a story grabs them before they embark on the project because the answer is part of the story itself. ‘Start writing early, embrace many drafts, and understand that uncovering family history means navigating the question of who owns the past', Cynthia suggests. ‘Not everyone in a family will answer the same way.'

Patrick McGilligan is a biographer and film historian whose books include, Funny Man: Mel Brooks. Co-hosts: Jonathan Friedmann & Joey Angel-Field Producer-engineer: Mike Tomren Funny Man: Mel Brooksharpercollins.com/products/funny-man-patrick-mcgilligan Amusing Jews Merch Storehttps://www.amusingjews.com/merch#!/ Subscribe to the Amusing Jews podcasthttps://www.spreaker.com/show/amusing-jews Adat Chaverim – Congregation for Humanistic Judaism, Los Angeleshttps://www.humanisticjudaismla.org/ Jewish Museum of the American Westhttps://www.jmawest.org Atheists United Studioshttps://www.atheistsunited.org/au-studios

In this latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, Sheryle Bagwell chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Letter from Provence: Two Women, Two Centuries and a Village House in France. Here's what you'll discover in this episode: Sheryle Bagwell explains how the chance discovery of a dust-covered volume of Madame de Sévigné's letters in her Provençal attic became the catalyst for a story she had been unconsciously preparing to write for several decades.  Sheryle reveals that the ‘two women' of the subtitle are her mother Judith and Madame de Sévigné, a distinction that reframes the emotional architecture of the story. Sheryle describes how Madame de Sévigné, writing before the age of newspapers, effectively functioned as the world's first blogger, giving her intimate circle and ultimately history, eyewitness accounts of Louis XIV's court through letters she knew were being read aloud and passed around. Sheryle describes the discovery that her mother Judith and Madame de Sévigné had striking parallels. Both were feisty and both died without their daughters present, which became the emotional spine of the story. Sheryle reflects on writing the book later in life as an intentional choice: ‘I don't think I could have written this book in mid-career', she said. ‘I needed the wisdom that comes later in life to honestly reckon with a childhood shaped by domestic violence and a mother who never got to escape it.' Sheryle closes the story with a letter to her mother written from Provence, which she describes as the first letter she ever wrote to her mother, and the one the entire story was always travelling towards.

A book described as ‘the most devastating royal biography ever' has been reissued, with new material on the behaviour of the former Prince Andrew revealed. Author Andrew Lownie has updated his book on the former Duke and Duchess of York with a new chapter about Andrew and Sarah's behaviour based off interviews with multiple sources and numerous official information requests. Lownie says the update is designed to give people more information following Andrew's arrest in February - and speculate about the former royal's future. "We've got victims who are coming forward, we've got police investigations now, in several countries and several police forces. So I can give you another prediction - we're going to get plenty more new material." LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Vision for Governance Reform in Canada. Guest: Conrad Black. Biographer Conrad Black and billionaire Stephen Jarislowsky have proposed recommendations to streamline Canadian governance by reducing duplicated bureaucracy. They argue that Canada's public service is top-heavy and that lowering corporate and personal taxes is essential for maintaining economic growth and competitiveness with the United States. 151900 ORPHAN'S HOME, ONTARIO

Bruce Nichols. Biographer Bruce Nichols explores the complex literary relationship between Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. He discusses Melville's development of Moby Dick, their contrasting writing styles, and the mutual influence found in their journals.EMERSON OLD MANSE

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr Nigel Hamilton chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Lincoln vs. Davis: The War of the Presidents. Here's what you'll discover in this episode: Lincoln vs. Davis is the first dual biography to examine how Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis fought each other as presidents and commanders-in-chief of their respective forces, the Union and the Confederacy, during the American Civil War. Lincoln and Davis coincidentally began train journeys to their Presidential inaugurations on the same day. By framing emancipation as a military order during a national emergency rather than civilian legislation, Lincoln legally freed 3.5 million enslaved people and ensured no European power would ever recognise the Confederacy, dooming Davis's rebellion. Frustrated that historians have covered up crucial details and failed to explain why Lincoln delayed emancipation for nearly two years, Nigel Hamilton crafted Lincoln vs. Davis to correct the historical record, practising what he refers to as ‘biography as corrective'.

Sebastian Mallaby (@scmallaby) is the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, and the author of six books, including More Money Than God, The Power Law, The Man Who Knew, and The World's Banker. His latest book is The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence.This episode is brought to you by:Eight Sleep Pod Cover 5 sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating: EightSleep.com/TimAG1 Pro all-in-one nutritional supplement: DrinkAG1.com/TimWealthfront high-yield cash account: Wealthfront.com/Tim Wealthfront disclaimer: New clients get 3.30% base APY from program banks + additional 0.75% boost for 3 months on your uninvested cash (max $150k balance). Terms and conditions apply. The Cash Account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC (“WFB”) member FINRA/SIPC, not a bank. The base APY as of 1/30/26 is representative, can change, and requires no minimum. Tim Ferriss, a non-client, receives compensation from WFB for advertising and holds a non-controlling equity interest in the corporate parent of WFB, which creates a conflict of interest. Individual experiences and outcomes will differ. Instant withdrawals may be limited by your receiving firm and other factors. Investment advisory services provided by Wealthfront Advisers LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser. Securities investments: not bank deposits, not bank-guaranteed or FDIC-insured, and may lose value.*Timestamps[00:00:00] Start.[00:02:11] The twinkly eyed polymath who became Sebastian's next book.[00:06:55] Picking the next book project the way a great VC picks a startup.[00:09:41] Why God keeps crashing the superintelligence party.[00:11:13] Shane Legg's grainy 2009 prophecy — and the nervous giggle.[00:13:11] Ilya Sutskever burns an effigy.[00:13:54] Demis at 4 a.m., hunting God's algorithm.[00:18:43] Super-abundance, Mad Max, and the China shock lesson.[00:22:39] The kitchen debate with Geoff Hinton that flipped Sebastian.[00:24:06] Why a zero-percent chance of doom is indefensible.[00:24:52] Will Washington seize the labs? The Mythos wake-up call.[00:27:18] Anthropic's bull case, bear case, and a dead parent's letter.[00:33:24] Where Sebastian and Benedict Evans part ways.[00:38:16] Is the SaaS apocalypse overdone? One word: Palantir.[00:39:53] The AI friend you'll never switch.[00:41:56] Does Google win consumer AI by default?[00:44:45] Four cities, eight days: China actually talks safety.[00:47:28] A Cold War non-proliferation playbook for AI.[00:49:45] Did the chip export controls actually work?[00:51:49] Burned doves: why Washington swears China won't talk.[00:54:56] "By 2028, the race is over" — one lab boss' bet.[00:59:11] Inside Hikvision: toddlers, sensors, and US sanctions.[01:01:07] Bill Gurley's Uber bet: venture capital perfected.[01:05:18] Luke Nosek bear-hugs DeepMind into existence.[01:10:52] Thiel's heresy: never invest by committee.[01:11:59] How Founders Fund nearly fumbled the deal of the century.[01:14:30] Selling to Google for $650M: a secret British heist?[01:16:41] The Traitorous Eight, gardening leave, and the UK's to-do list.[01:20:55] Ender's Game: "That's really how I see myself."[01:23:42] Too dumb for Gödel, Escher, Bach? Maybe an LLM can help.[01:25:19] If not Demis or Sam, then Dario.[01:26:04] My royalties cliff — and what dropped in late 2022.[01:27:47] Lila Sciences and the labs that run themselves.[01:31:13] Sebastian's billboard: "Prepare your mind."[01:35:14] The one thing Sebastian will never outsource to AI.[01:40:09] Parting thoughts.For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast.For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsorsSign up for Tim's email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Discover Tim's books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissYouTube: youtube.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferrissSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr Zachary Leader chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Ellmann's Joyce: The Biography of a Masterpiece and Its Maker. Here's what you'll discover in this episode:  Richard Ellmann's biography of the novelist James Joyce is considered the greatest literary biography of the 20th century. Why Zachary Leader was inspired to craft Ellmann's Joyce. Why Ellmann's Joyce is structured in two sections: a chronological life of Richard Ellmann followed by a thematic ‘making of James Joyce's biography' section. Why Zachary opened the narrative with a chapter defending literary biography. Why Zachary portrayed Ellmann's James Joyce as both scholarship and art, foregrounding Ellmann's narrative craft, wit and realist virtues. Why Ellmann's Joyce is a practical masterclass in biography.

SHOPIFY: Sign up for a £1-per-month trial period at https://www.shopify.co.uk/shaunWatch all of our Epstein videos here:    • Epstein  GET Andrew's book Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York UK Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Entitled-Hou...For the rest of the world visit: https://amzn.to/3Hi8QYGAndrew Lownie on X: https://x.com/andrewlownieAndrew Lownie on YouTube:    / @thelowniereport  Andrew's new biography claims startling insight into the private lives of the Duke of York and his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson. From relationships with women to Andrew's mysterious finances, Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, by the historian Andrew Lownie, also dives into the prince's ill-advised friendship with the disgraced US financier Jeffrey Epstein.Sounds Beautiful Festival Jun 26-28 2026 tickets https://app.promotix.com/trade/select...Ryan D on X   / ryliberty    Ryan D's store https://anti-neocon.myshopify.com/Watch Who Is Ghislaine Maxwell? From Prince Andrew to Epstein's Baby Farm - John Sweeney - Podcast    • Who Is Ghislaine Maxwell? From Prince Andr...  WATCH King Charles' Mentor Lord Mountbatten Exposed Andrew Lownie Podcast 780    • King Charles' Mentor Lord Mountbatten Expo...  Watch full EPSTEIN Was INTELLIGENCE! Ari Ben Menashe podcast:    • EPSTEIN Was ISRAELI INTELLIGENCE! Ari Ben ...  UNTOUCHABLE - Jimmy S documentary    • UNTOUCHABLE - Jimmy Savile documentary by ...  ADOPTED KID'S CA HORROR STORY & BOYS TOWN! PASTOR Eddie https://youtube.com/live/vD3SGWpnfyMWatch Used By ELITES From Age 6 - Survivor Kelly Patterson https://youtube.com/live/nkKkIfLkRx0KELLY'S 2 HOUR VIDEO ON VIRGINIA    • Video  Watch all of Shaun's True Crime podcasts:    • Shaun Attwood's True Crime Podcast  Watch all of Shaun's Attwood Unleashed episodes:    • Attwood Unleashed  BOOK LINKS: Who Killed Epstein? Prince Andrew or Bill Clinton by Shaun Attwood UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B093QK1GS1 USA: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B093QK1GS1 Worldwide: https://books2read.com/u/bQjGQD All of Shaun's books on Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Shaun...All of Shaun's books on Amazon USA: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Shaun-A...——————————Shaun Attwood's social media:TikTok:   / shaunattwood1  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shaunattwoo...Twitter:   / shaunattwood  Facebook:   / shaunattwood1  Patreon:   / shaunattwood  Odysee: https://odysee.com/@ShaunAttwood:a#podcast #truecrime #news  #usa #youtube  #people #uk #princeandrew #royal #royalfamily

In this latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr Micaela Sahhar chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting Find Me at the Jaffa Gate: An Encyclopaedia of a Palestinian Family. Here's what you'll discover in this episode: The death of Micaela Sahhar's grandmother's last surviving sister created a sense of urgency for Micaela to capture her Palestinian family's stories before they slipped beyond living memory. With many primary sources destroyed in the 1948 Nakba, Micaela learned to read absence as a form of evidence, drawing on object memory, fragments, photographs, and ephemeral archives to reconstruct what official records could not. Micaela's grandfather's late-life oral history tapes were a vital source of historical and family information. They looped between present and past, between stories and digressions and became a structural model for the encyclopaedic, non-linear form of Find Me at the Jaffa Gate. In 2023, Micaela visited Jerusalem to retrace her family's footsteps through the Old City. She recalls that walking the actual terrain, up hills, distances and ordinary neighbourhoods, brought a present-tense vividness to the story. Find Me at the Jaffa Gate is structured as a 48-entry encyclopaedia spanning four generations of Micaela's Palestinian family, from the streets of Jerusalem and Bethlehem to the Palestinian community of Melbourne.

Sebastian Mallaby spent three years and 30+ hours interviewing Demis Hassabis in the back of a British pub to write The Infinity Machine, and the conversation uses that reporting to surface the most underexplored figure in AI. Demis founded the original AI lab in 2010, won a Nobel Prize, runs models that consistently top the leaderboards, and yet remains so unrecognized that Sebastian's own publisher worried no one would buy a book with his face on the cover.  The throughline is a paradox: Demis tried to prevent the AI race we're now all living through, and now finds himself one of its central protagonists. He used to believe a single lab could carry the safety burden to AGI; he now sees safety as a collective action problem only governments can solve. He hedged DeepMind's research bets across every promising direction, and as a result missed the two most consumer-defining moments in modern AI — ChatGPT and Claude Code. He nearly spun DeepMind out of Google with a secret $1B Reid Hoffman pledge backing him, but never used the leverage and stayed — and won a Nobel Prize the next year. The episode also zooms out to the structural forces shaping the race — why hyperscalers can't out-recruit concentrated-bet labs, why Sebastian gives OpenAI roughly 50/50 odds of being absorbed by next summer, why he thinks Anthropic should IPO right now, and what the personal histories between Demis, Elon, and Sam reveal about who actually trusts whom.   (0:00) Intro (2:04) Was the AI Race Inevitable? (4:03) The 2015 Safety Summit Backfire (7:15) Can Governments Actually Fix This? (9:26) How the World Misread DeepMind (11:27) Why Google Never Makes the Concentrated Bet (15:51) Project Mario: The Secret Spinout Plan (19:43) What Demis Actually Regrets (23:46) Venture Startups vs. Tech Behemoths (27:50) Controlling the Narrative (30:40) The Talent War and Hiring Brand (34:08) David Silver and the RL True Believers (38:21) Demis, Elon, and the Evil Genius Feud (42:39) Great Man Theory vs. Inevitability (45:00) What Demis Didn't Want Published With your host: @jacobeffron - Managing Director at Redpoint

In this latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, Professor Karen Fang chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting Background Artist: The Life and Work of Tyrus Wong. Here's what you'll discover in this episode: Karen Fang explains why only a full-length biography could do justice to Tyrus Wong's 106-year life that encompassed his achievements across fine art, animation, Hollywood storyboarding, greeting cards and kite-making. Karen reveals that the title Background Artist is Tyrus Wong's Disney credit in the original 1942 release of the movie Bambi. Among the most revealing archival discoveries was Tyrus Wong's personal correspondence that showed a wickedly funny, warm and creatively restless person that no formal interview could have captured. Karen reveals how Tyrus Wong's signature visual style, rooted in Chinese brush painting technique and aesthetic heritage, transformed racial difference from a liability into an artistic asset, enabling him to succeed in a society that otherwise offered very little opportunity to Chinese Americans. The closing passages of Background Artist tie together the themes of visibility, immigration and artistic legacy, ending with the line Karen says came directly from her conversations with Tyrus Wong's daughters: ‘Tyrus was always simply an artist.'

In this latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, award-winning author Dr Debra Adelaide chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting When I Am Sixty-Four. Here's what you'll discover in this episode:  When I Am Sixty-Four is a tender, poignant story based on Debra Adelaide's lifelong friendship with the award-winning author, Gabrielle Carey. When I Am Sixty-Four began not as a planned book but as a single vivid memory that arrived unbidden while she was working on another project; it simply refused to let go. A work of extraordinary depth and grace, When I Am Sixty-Four is crafted as autofiction, a hybrid genre that blurs the line between fiction and autobiography. Debra defines autofiction as writing memoir using the tools of narrative fiction, shaping, rearranging, condensing, and inventing to reach for a broader emotional truth. Debra explains her decision not to name Gabrielle or anyone else in the book, wanting readers to bring their own experiences of loving someone in despair to the narrative. Debra describes the story's mosaic structure of vignettes as entirely instinctive. The final tragic months of her friend's life provide a loose chronological spine, while memories from their 50 years of shared history were weaved in.  The story's dark humour, Debra explains, was both an authentic expression of who Gabrielle Carey was, a woman with an extraordinary laugh, and a deliberate way of honouring her.

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Troy Bramston chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Gough Whitlam: The Vista of the New. This is the first full biography of Gough Whitlam, a former Australian Prime Minister, since his death in 2014. Here's what you'll discover in this episode: The biography's subtitle The Vista of the New came from a poem Gough Whitlam wrote in 1934 as a student at Canberra Grammar School. In it, he imagines a bolder brighter future for Australia. The biography's central theme is political leadership. Troy Bramston is interested in how power is gained, used and lost. Gough Whitlam's school reports noted his difficulty getting along with others. These interpersonal failures would contribute to his downfall decades later. Troy argues that Whitlam was not a man of destiny but a man of history, driven not by a sense of predestination but by a hunger to change Australia's direction. Troy makes a compelling case for advancing the biographical subject. Continually asking what is new, he argues that a biography that doesn't tell us something we didn't know before, however well written, fails to fully justify itself.

Michael Seth Starr is a prolific biographer whose books include Nothin' Comes Easy: The Life of Rodney Dangerfield. Co-hosts: Jonathan Friedmann & Joey Angel-Field Producer-engineer: Mike Tomren Michael's websitehttps://www.michaelsethstarr.com/ Nothin' Comes Easyhttps://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/770877/nothin-comes-easy-by-michael-seth-starr/9780806543239/ Amusing Jews Merch Storehttps://www.amusingjews.com/merch#!/ Subscribe to the Amusing Jews podcasthttps://www.spreaker.com/show/amusing-jews Adat Chaverim – Congregation for Humanistic Judaism, Los Angeleshttps://www.humanisticjudaismla.org/ Jewish Museum of the American Westhttps://www.jmaw.org/ Atheists United Studioshttps://www.atheistsunited.org/au-studios

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Ian Hembrow chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about his choices while crafting Celsius: A Life and Death by Degrees. Here's what you'll discover in this episode: Celsius: A Life and Death by Degrees is the first full-length English biography of Anders Celsius, a modest Swedish astronomer who quietly revolutionised our understanding of the natural world. Ian Hembrow's accidental discovery of Celsius's story in 2016 sparked a years'-long quest that led him to the Arctic Circle, retracing Celsius's 1736–37 expedition to measure the shape of the Earth. Celsius's story is set against the backdrop of the European Enlightenment, illustrating how he thrived in the vibrant 18th-century scientific community while unlocking fundamental mysteries of nature. Ian Hembrow draws connections to the present, noting that Celsius, who is best known for inventing the 100-point centigrade temperature scale, now lends his name to global climate targets as humanity strives to limit warming to 1.5°C. How Ian Hembrow delves into Celsius's human story, sharing the personal struggles and triumphs behind his scientific achievements and offering a poignant reminder that even great scientific minds face immense personal challenges. The relevance of Celsius's story today, reminding us of the crucial role of scientific inquiry and our shared responsibility to use knowledge wisely as we face urgent challenges like climate change.

This week on Q&A, it's a rare interview with one of America's leading historians. We tour the New York City office and home library of Pulitzer Prize-winning bestselling biographer Robert Caro, who is currently working on the final volume of his 5-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson. During the tour, Mr. Caro talks about his research and writing process on the LBJ series, and the impact of "The Power Broker," his bestselling 1974 biography of NYC Parks Commissioner Robert Moses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on Q&A, it's a rare interview with one of America's leading historians. We tour the New York City office and home library of Pulitzer Prize-winning bestselling biographer Robert Caro, who is currently working on the final volume of his 5-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson. During the tour, Mr. Caro talks about his research and writing process on the LBJ series, and the impact of "The Power Broker," his bestselling 1974 biography of NYC Parks Commissioner Robert Moses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Author and environmental advocate Miriam Horn brings the pioneering impact of wildlife conservationist George Schaller to life in her new book “Homesick for a World Unknown: The Life of George B. Schaller.”  Since the 1950's, George, often along with his wife Kay (an anthropologist), pioneered the fieldwork of living peacefully amongst large, wild/free-living animals like snow leopards, gorillas, lions, tigers, jaguars, giant pandas, Tibetan antelope, Marco Polo sheep, and Gobi bears in remote habitats, that helped pave the way for humane conservationists like Jane Goodall and Dianne Fossey, recognizing animal agency and their "theory of mind." Schaller also created parks and preserves all around the world to save vital wilderness habitat. Why have most of us never heard of him?! It's important that the Schallers' legacy is intimately detailed through Miriam's wonderful storytelling to fully appreciate how they went to wild places few scientists had ventured, persevered in tough and often politically fraught conditions, trained a cadre of young local scientists around so many nations to protect their local wildlife, published scientific books and articles proving wild animals' vast capabilities and needs, and campaigned politically to get habitats protected. You'll enjoy this 50-minute lively discussion between author Miriam Horn and Carrie Freeman, host of In Tune to Nature.   "In Tune to Nature" is an hour-long radio show airing Wednesdays at 6pm Eastern Time on 89.3FM-Atlanta radio and streaming worldwide on wrfg.org (Radio Free Georgia, a nonprofit indie station) hosted by me, Carrie Freeman, or friend Melody Paris. The show's website and my contact info can be found at https://wrfg.org/intunetonature/  While there, consider donating to Radio Free Georgia, a 50+ year old progressive, non-commercial, indie radio station, run largely by volunteers like me and Melody. And remember to take care of yourself and others, including the other animals with whom we share the planet. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed on In Tune to Nature do not necessarily reflect those of WRFG, its board, staff, or volunteers.  

In a real treat of a bonus podcast, we get to know a stalwart of the US boxing circuit, the one and only Jack Hirsch. Jack fell in love with boxing as a youngster but after a spell as an amateur and getting beaten up by world middleweight champions in sparring, he realised his calling was on the other side of the ropes. Witness to some of the most important fights in history, Jack talks us through watching Muhammad Ali and Roberto Duran in New York, his move into journalism and getting to know the legends of the sport. One of those, the great light-heavyweight and heavyweight Michael ‘The Jinx' Spinks is the subject of Jack's first book. The process of writing that is a fascinating listen, as is his opinions on boxing journalism today. Enjoy!   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rolling Stones biographer Bob Spitz guests on the Fake Show with host Jim Tofte...enjoy!!!

brianturnershow.com, eastvillageradio.comRichard Langston, author of the new Clean biography In The Dreamlife You Need a Rubber Soul, joins The Brian Turner Show. The two will be chatting extensively about this brilliant band's 1978-2016 life, which was punctuated by periods on inactivity but inevitably continual returns that netted them deep and dedicated international fandom. Founded by brothers Hamish and David Kilgour, initial rotating lineups traversed their New Zealand homeland with budget tours, met with degrees of alienation from the established Auckland punk scene. Their psychedelic pastiche contained deep love of Barrett, The Beatles, Velvets, Hendrix, and Arthur Lee, which showed in their rudimentary DIY ethic; a heady formula out of fashionable step and thus triggering retreat back to their Dunedin hometown. However,  surprise success of their first single hitting the top 20 trigged a great leap forward for not only the Kilgours (now joined by future Bats founder Robert Scott), but a newfound communal scene in The Clean's wake that launched not only the Flying Nun label but a score of kindred spirit groups. They eventually achieved notoriety internationally despite periods of pause, and massively influenced a big slab of American indie rock units as well. Langston chronicles the great heights of this band live and on record with dutiful shoutouts to those in their circles who helped elevate them. We'll be playing a bunch of live Clean tracks as well.THE CLEAN - Point That Thing Somewhere Else (live Fulham Greyhound, 88)THE CLEAN - Quickstep (live Gladstone, 81)THE CLEAN - Art School (live Railway, Auckland, 81)THE CLEAN - Side On (live Christchurch, 82)THE CLEAN - Beatnik (live Christchurch, 82)THE CLEAN - Oddity (live Rumba Bar 82)INTERVIEW WITH HAMISH AND DAVID KILGOUR on the show, Nov 2021THE CLEAN - Dunes (live Gronigen, 89)THE CLEAN - Draw(in)g To a (W)hole (live Barcelona 2010)THE CLEAN - Outside the Cage (live Barcelona 2010)THE CLEAN - I Wait Around (live Regent, Dunedin, 2007)INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD LANGSTON - Author of In The Dreamlife You Need a Rubber SoulTHE CLEAN - In The Dreamlife You Need a Rubber Soul (live Barcelona, 2010)THE CLEAN - Whatever I Do Is (live Barcelona 2010)THE CLEAN - Fish (live Sammys, Dunedin, 2000)THE CLEAN - Getting Older (live Maxwells, Hoboken, 2010)THE CLEAN - Hold On To the Rail (live Sammys, Dunedin, 2000)THE CLEAN - At the Bottom (live Sammys, Dunedin, 2000)THE CLEAN - I Can't Stand It (live) - Mashed (Arch Hill, 2008)THE CLEAN - Point That Thing Somewhere Else (Sammys, Dunedin, 2000)

April 20, 2026KURT M. SMITH,Pastor-Teacher @ Providence Re-formed Baptist Church of Remlap,AL, & author of a number of books,including “Thundering the Word:The Awakening Ministry of GeorgeWhitefield”, who will address:“A BIOGRAPHER of GEORGE WHITE-FIELD's REVIEW of the NEW FILM:‘A GREAT AWAKENING: ONE MAN'sFAITH IGNITED a REVOLUTION',A VIEW of GEORGE WHITEFIELD'sIMPACT UPON AMERICA as SEENTHROUGH the EYES of BENJAMINFRANKLIN” Subscribe: iTunes TuneIn Android RSS Feed Listen:

Scottish Ballet's Starstruck honours Gene Kelly's creative legacy and his passion for creating "dance for the common man". His wife Patricia Ward Kelly tells us about this fusion of ballet, jazz, tap and tango danced to the music of Chopin, Ravel and Gerswhin. As the winner of the inaugural Sherborne Prize for Travel Writing is announced as Adam Weymouth for his book Lone Wolf, about a journey from Slovenia to Italy across the Alps, Adam joins us along with veteran writer Colin Thubron to discuss the art of travel writing. And as he receives an Outstanding Contribution to Photography prize and as his work goes on show at the Sony World Photography Awards exhibition in London, photographer Joel Meyerowitz talks to us about his career - documenting everything from London in the swinging sixties to New York in the aftermath of 9/11. Presenter: Kirsty Wark Producer: Mark Crossan

Jan Morris was one of the best known travel writers since World War 2, yet despite her fame she is an engima. The reason is simple. At the height of her success in the early 1970s she transitioned from male to female. The reasons for her going through what was still a fairly primitive risky procedure were clear to her but not to the world at large and other than one book of memoir Morris rarely spoke about it again. Sara Wheeler is herself a successful travel writer and biographer and in this FRDH podcast she speaks with host Michael Goldfarb about her authorized biography of Morris and the complicated and stupendously productive life she led. Give us 54 minutes to tell you all about it.

In the anthology American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union, the Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer uses primary sources that take us back to critical moments when Americans fought over the meaning and direction of our country. In conversation with Amna Nawaz, co-anchor and co-managing editor of PBS News Hour, and an NBC News and MSNBC contributor.   This program was held on February 18, 2026 in partnership with Politics and Prose. Watch on YouTube.

SEG 11: Conrad Black Biographer Conrad Black details Canada's immense chromium deposits in the "Ring of Fire." He highlights its strategic value for stainless steel production and US national security, potentially ending reliance on several unreliable foreign minerals sources. (12)1903 CANADA

Michael Crick reveals shocking details on Nigel Farage's alleged school racism, chaotic parties, near-death escapes, and why he's Britain's most successful politician this century. Get Michael's book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Party-After-Another/dp/1471192296 Follow him on X: https://x.com/MichaelLCrick Come to my live show: https://podlifeevents.com/event-details/heretics-live-show-in-conversation-with-suella-braverman-hosted-by-andrew-gold-11-mar-2026-tickets?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=blog&utm_content=launch&utm_partner=ag  SPONSORS: Organise your life: https://akiflow.pro/Heretics  Earn up to 4 per cent on gold, paid in gold: https://www.monetary-metals.com/heretics/  Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at https://mintmobile.com/heretics  Michael Crick, legendary journalist and Farage biographer, drops jaw-dropping revelations on Nigel Farage: from schoolboy racism & anti-Semitism witnessed by over 30 people, bullying a young African boy, chaotic Reform UK councils raising taxes, surviving three near-death accidents, secret Tory defection attempts, dependence on James Goldsmith's death for UKIP success, Trump-like contradictions, grooming gangs failures, mass immigration realities, and why Farage remains the most influential & successful politician of the 21st century despite spending almost no time in Parliament. Explosive Heretics interview – don't miss it! #FarageExposed #NigelFarage #MichaelCrick Join the 30k heretics on my mailing list: https://andrewgoldheretics.com  Check out my new documentary channel: https://youtube.com/@andrewgoldinvestigates  Andrew on X: https://twitter.com/andrewgold_ok   Insta: https://www.instagram.com/andrewgold_ok Heretics YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@andrewgoldheretics Chapters: 0:00 Farage: Most Successful Politician This Century? 5:07 Farage's Early Green Vote & Tory Rejection 9:05 Shocking School Racism & Anti-Semitism Claims 13:49 Does Farage Still Panders to Racists? 18:24 When Farage "Lost" His Racism 23:24 Far Right vs Reform – What's the Difference? 28:29 Reform's Chaotic Council Record Exposed 33:03 Who Should Patriots Vote For Now? 38:07 Farage's Trump Obsession & Putin Admiration 43:04 Immigration: Enrichment or Cultural Threat? 48:15 Future Mass Migration & Birth Rate Crisis 53:08 Politicians Raking It In – Farage's Million 58:03 Farage's High Life & Man of the People Myth 1:03:30 Coutts Scandal Revived Farage's Career 1:08:11 Near-Death Crashes & Irritability Link 1:12:00 A Heretic Michael Admires Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's show, Steve is joined by June Thomas, author of A Place of Our Own, and Michael Schulman, author of Her Again and Oscar Wars, for some rollicking Gabfest discourse. First up, they get all shook up by EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, the concert documentary directed by Baz Luhrmann from archival Elvis performance footage. Does the master of cinematic spectacle bring the King back to life?Next, they turn to The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, the new sitcom from 30 Rock co-creator Robert Carlock starring Tracy Morgan. Finally, they examine the uncanny and profound phenomena of posthumously-published celebrity interviews—including Eric Dane and Jane Goodall—of Netflix's Famous Last Words specials. Existential bravery or exploitative trash? They discuss.In an exclusive bonus episode for Slate Plus subscribers, the panel weighs in on the best casting Oscar race.EndorsementsMichael: The audiobook of the memoir I Regret Almost Everything by Keith McNally as narrated by the incomparable Richard E. Grant.June: Two niche podcasts featuring conversations with authors of biography including Bio, the official podcast of the Biographers International Organization, and Biographers in Conversation. Also, jumping on the Richard E. Grant train, the BBC parody cooking series Posh Nosh starring Grant and Arabella Weir.Steve: The recent essay “The Stony Dark Within” by Joy Williams about Rainer Maria Rilke in the New York Review of Books.--Email us your thoughts at culturefest@slate.com. Podcast production by Benjamin Frisch. Production assistance by Daniel Hirsch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week's show, Steve is joined by June Thomas, author of A Place of Our Own, and Michael Schulman, author of Her Again and Oscar Wars, for some rollicking Gabfest discourse. First up, they get all shook up by EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, the concert documentary directed by Baz Luhrmann from archival Elvis performance footage. Does the master of cinematic spectacle bring the King back to life?Next, they turn to The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, the new sitcom from 30 Rock co-creator Robert Carlock starring Tracy Morgan. Finally, they examine the uncanny and profound phenomena of posthumously-published celebrity interviews—including Eric Dane and Jane Goodall—of Netflix's Famous Last Words specials. Existential bravery or exploitative trash? They discuss.In an exclusive bonus episode for Slate Plus subscribers, the panel weighs in on the best casting Oscar race.EndorsementsMichael: The audiobook of the memoir I Regret Almost Everything by Keith McNally as narrated by the incomparable Richard E. Grant.June: Two niche podcasts featuring conversations with authors of biography including Bio, the official podcast of the Biographers International Organization, and Biographers in Conversation. Also, jumping on the Richard E. Grant train, the BBC parody cooking series Posh Nosh starring Grant and Arabella Weir.Steve: The recent essay “The Stony Dark Within” by Joy Williams about Rainer Maria Rilke in the New York Review of Books.--Email us your thoughts at culturefest@slate.com. Podcast production by Benjamin Frisch. Production assistance by Daniel Hirsch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Walter Isaacson (The Greatest Sentence Ever Written) is a biographer, historian, and Professor of History at Tulane University. Walter returns to the Armchair Expert to discuss why he embeds himself into the lives of his subjects to write about them, how empathy can get in the way of success, and discovering the secret sauce of Elon Musk. Walter and Dax talk about his interest in people that try to learn as much as possible about everything knowable, the belief that growing up as a misfit can instill the drive seen in innovators of the modern age, and why an understanding of engineering is crucial to the political and philosophical conversations taking place today. Walter explains evaluating truths in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, the struggle and strategy to create common ground throughout American history, and his assertion as a historian that even heroes have great flaws and villains have backstories.Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.