Grant in the arts, awarded annually
POPULARITY
Categories
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 149, my conversation with Terry Tempest Williams. We were talking about her book When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations on Voice, available from Picador. Air date: February 17, 2013. Terry Tempest Williams is the award-winning author of over twenty books of creative nonfiction, including the environmental classic, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place. Among her other books are Leap; Red; The Open Space of Democracy; Finding Beauty in a Broken World; The Hour of Land; and Erosion: Essays of Undoing. Her work has been translated and anthologized worldwide. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Lannan Literary Award, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Letters and is currently writer-in-residence at the Harvard Divinity School. She divides her time between Cambridge, Massachusetts and Southeastern Utah. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Vol. 16 of Story Time, featuring an author reading aloud from her work. In this episode, Deb Olin Unferth reads from her new novel, Earth 7, now available from Graywolf Press. Deb is the author of six books, including Barn 8 and Wait Till You See Me Dance. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and three Pushcart Prizes, and was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Her work has appeared in Granta, Harper's, McSweeney's, and The Paris Review. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Deb Olin Unferth is the author of the novel Earth 7, available from Graywolf Press. Unferth is the author of six books, including Barn 8 and Wait Till You See Me Dance. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and three Pushcart Prizes, and was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Her work has appeared in Granta, Harper's, McSweeney's, and The Paris Review. *** Today's episode is brought to you by Rula. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that's actually covered by insurance. Visit www.rula.com/otherppl to get started. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
MOPs & MOEs is proudly sponsored by Teamworks — the performance operations platform trusted by elite military units and professional sports organizations worldwide. Teamworks brings your scheduling, communications, athlete monitoring, and readiness data into one unified system — so your leaders stay informed, your people stay connected, and your unit stays ready. No more scattered spreadsheets or missed messages. Just one platform built for organizations where performance is the mission. Learn more at teamworkstactical.comWe are also supported by TrainHeroic — the coaching and programming platform built for strength and conditioning coaches who train serious athletes. Whether you're programming for a military unit, a tactical team, or individual athletes, TrainHeroic gives you the tools to build and deliver professional training programs, track athlete progress, and communicate directly with your people — all through one app. Your athletes get world-class programming on their phone; you get the visibility to actually coach them. Start your free trial at trainheroic.comThe History of Exercise Is Weirder Than You Think — Bill Hayes, Author of SweatBill Hayes spent four years chasing the history of exercise across ancient Greece, Renaissance Italy, Kansas City, and the Vatican — and somehow ended up writing the most entertaining book about working out that's ever existed. Drew and Alex sit down with him to find out what he learned.What we get into:Gloios — ancient Greek athletes would scrape the sweat and oil off their bodies after competing, funnel it into a jar, and sell it at the gymnasium for medicinal purposes. Warts. Hemorrhoids. The price depended on how good the athlete was. Christiane Amanpour interviewed Bill on CNN and said nothing had ever seemed so gross to her. She was correct.Exercise began as war training — tenth century BC, not that different from what we do now. Running, endurance testing, strength work. Sparta was the only place that let women train. The Olympic Games formalized competition in the eighth century BC and athletes became cultural heroes — which is why their sweat was worth buying.Bill's dad was a West Point swimmer, Korean War vet, Purple Heart recipient who lost an eye in combat. Bill chose poetry over a military career — an act of rebellion he's pretty honest about. But his dad dragged him to the Spokane Athletic Club every Sunday after church, and that's where the love of exercise started.Girolamo Mercuriale — a Renaissance physician who wrote the first systematic text on exercise, De Arte Gymnastica, in 1569. Bill tracked down a transcription of his manuscripts in a library in Kansas City, Kansas, that hadn't been checked out in 35 years.The Vatican Library story — Bill had a Guggenheim Fellowship and letters of recommendation and still got interrogated in a small room because he didn't have a PhD. He got in. Everything he needed was already in Kansas City.Staying in it across a lifetime — injuries, aging, motivation, and the underrated importance of rest. Bill has herniated discs, a severed rotator cuff, and is still going. The answer isn't finding the perfect program. It's just not stopping.Mentioned in this episode:Sweat — Bill HayesGirolamo Mercuriale, De Arte Gymnastica, 1569Isthmia, Olympia, Delphi, Mycenae — Bill's Greek road trip following the original athletic circuitThe Metropolitan Museum of Art — has a strigil and gloios pot on display if you want to see it in personLong and Strong — the Mops and Moes training program on TrainHeroic Views expressed are those of the speakers and do not represent any official organization.
The Pawsitive Post in Conversation by Companion Animal Psychology
Leave us a voicemail!Marc Bekoff, PhD, joins Zazie and Kristi to talk about his new book Love in Their Hearts, his work (and upcoming book) with Jane Goodall, and what it's like studying canids.We talked about:Why Marc and his co-author Jeff Campbell wrote Love In Their HeartsThe time Marc's dog Jethro rescued a baby bunny, and stories of the grizzly bear known as 399The importance of naming animalsMarc's research on dogs, wolves, coyotes, and foxes, and how his work replaced theories of dominance leading to the dissolution of litters in the wildHow animals tell storiesMarc's work with Jane Goodall, how he first heard of her, and how she influenced his workThe educator's kit that goes with Love In Their Hearts and how it can inspire hope and activism in young readersThe book Marc recommended is Knowing Wonder: An Elephant Story by Merrill Sapp illustrated by Gareth Hooks. You can read Marc's interview with Merrill Sapp here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animal-emotions/202412/an-elephants-world-from-the-mind-and-heart-of-a-matriarchLove In Their Hearts: A Celebration of Animal Emotions and a Guide to Compassionate Action is by Marc Bekoff and Jeff Campbell.Every Elephant Has a Name by Jane Goodall and Marc Bekoff illustrated by Gavin Scott will be published on Feb 8, 2027.Marc Bekoff will be at Bark! Fest to talk about Love In Their Hearts on Sep 23, joining Alison Pearce Stevens (Detective Dogs). Sign up here: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/1317856369316/WN_QnjJGASbSvyWmpRL-mp1lQFind out more about Bark! Fest and sign up for the other events at companionanimalpsychology.comMarc Bekoff is professor emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has won many awards for his research and writing, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Exemplar Award from the Animal Behavior Society. He writes regularly for Psychology Today and has published more than thirty books, including The Emotional Lives of Animals and numerous scientific and popular essays. Visit marcbekoff.com to learn more.Find Marc's Psych Today blog here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animal-emotionsSupport the showAbout the co-hosts:Kristi Benson is an honours graduate of, and now on staff with, the prestigious Academy for Dog Trainers and has her PCBC-A from the Pet Professional Accreditation Board. She lives in beautiful northern British Columbia, where she helps dog guardians through online classes. She is also a northern anthropologist.Kristi Benson's website Facebook Zazie Todd, PhD, is the award-winning author of Bark! The Science of Helping Your Anxious, Fearful, or Reactive Dog, Wag: The Science of Making Your Dog Happy and Purr: The Science of Making Your Cat Happy. She is the creator of the popular blog, Companion Animal Psychology, and has a column at Psychology Today. She lives in Maple Ridge, BC, with her husband, a dog and a cat. Instagram BlueSky
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 732, my conversation with Alexandra Kleeman, author of the novel Something New Under the Sun (Hogarth Press). Air date: October 13, 2021. Alexandra Kleeman's other books include the short story collection Intimations and the novel You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine, which was awarded the 2016 Bard Fiction Prize and was a New York Times Editor's Choice. In 2020, she was awarded the Rome Prize and the Berlin Prize, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction in 2022. Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Zoetrope, Conjunctions, and Guernica, among others, and other writing has appeared in Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, VOGUE, Tin House, n+1, and The Guardian. Her work has received fellowships and support from Bread Loaf, MacDowell, Djerassi, and the Headlands Center for the Arts. She is an Associate Professor at Cornell University and a Contributing Writer at the New York Times Magazine. She lives in Ithaca and Colorado with her husband, Alex Gilvarry. *** Today's episode is brought to you by Rula. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that's actually covered by insurance. Visit www.rula.com/otherppl to get started. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This week we are bringing you a conversation that Literary Arts hosted in October 2025 with historian and political philosopher Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny, who spoke about his book On Freedom with Literary Arts executive director – and co-host of this show – Andrew Proctor. Timothy Snyder is the author of several books including Bloodlands and The Road To Freedom, as well as numerous articles and a popular Substack. He is a scholar of Eastern European history who Anne Applebaum has called, “one of our most original and perceptive thinkers.” He currently serves Chair in Modern European History at University of Toronto. He has won both the Carnegie and the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Literature Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding and the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought. He speaks five languages and reads in ten, once telling a reporter, “If you don’t know Russian, you don’t really know what you’re missing.” The Guardian called him, “one of the most eloquent interpreters of the war in Ukraine.” He served as an advisor to UN Security Council, and has met privately with Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In the wake of the 2016 election, what began as a list of thoughts on an airplane napkin became On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century. The book spent two years on the bestseller list and catapulted Snyder from respected historian to one of the most prominent voices in fight against authoritarianism. The lessons of On Tyrrany were widely shared, inspiring multiple poster campaigns and at least one rap song. With On Freedom, Snyder once again places the past in direct conversation with the present and the future. Freedom, for Snyder, is not external thing we may or may not achieve, but an ongoing, embodied struggle. With immediacy and striking humility, he draws lessons from history, not simply to predict future risk, but to claim agency in the present, to see clearly our potential as individuals, as a country and as a species. Timothy Snyder is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. His books, which have been published in over forty languages, include Bloodlands, Black Earth, On Tyranny, Road to Unfreedom, Our Malady, and On Freedom. His work has inspired poster campaigns and exhibitions, sculptures, a punk rock song, a rap song, a play, and an opera, and he has appeared in over fifty films and documentaries. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.
This week, religion scholars Reza Aslan and Ilan Stavans sit down with Emily D. Crews to discuss their new anthology, A Nation Wrestles with God: American Prophets, Philosophers, and Firebrands, a historic collection of the radicals and freethinkers that sparked a country's journey through divinity—praising, challenging, and redefining the sacred. This book and conversation are presented in conjunction with the American Writers Museum's special exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture, of which Stavans and Crews were advisors. American Prophets is now on display at the AWM. This program was part of the 2026 American Writers Festival. Co-hosted by the American Writers Museum and Chicago Public Library, the American Writers Festival is a free literary event featuring in-depth conversations with diverse writers from across genres and backgrounds. This conversation took place June 7, 2026 and was recorded live at the Harold Washington Library Center. AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB More about A Nation Wrestles with God: Spanning more than 400 years of spiritual transformation and imagination, A Nation Wrestles with God collects diverse writers—poets, novelists, theologians, scientists, musicians, politicians, comedians, artists, mavericks, naturalists, futurists, and more—whose daring texts incited dialogue, even change, and continue to influence a growing nation. From the pre-colonial to the present day, these landmark stories, poems, essays, letters, speeches, songs, comic strips, and more awoke new generations to free religious thought. On the occasion of America's 250th year of independence, and during a time of deep ideological division, this sweeping anthology is an urgent reminder of the pluralities that strengthen and unite us. About the speakers: REZA ASLAN is a renowned writer, commentator, professor, Emmy- and Peabody-nominated producer, and scholar of religions. He is the author of numerous internationally bestselling books, including the #1 New York Times Bestseller Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, currently in development at Fremantle Media with Pablo Larrain attached to direct. A former Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and recipient of the prestigious James Joyce Award, Aslan has helped craft the mythologies for Hollywood's most acclaimed franchises, including Dune, Game of Thrones, and The Leftovers. In addition to his writing and production work, he has served as host and executive producer of CNN's Believer and Rough Draft with Reza Aslan, and co-hosts the podcast Metaphysical Milkshake alongside Rainn Wilson. His latest book, An American Martyr in Persia, was nominated for the PEN/Jacqueline Beograd Weld Award. Born in Iran, he lives in Los Angeles with his wife and their four children. EMILY D. CREWS is the Executive Director of the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School. In collaboration with its staff and faculty co-directors, she sets the research and programming agenda of the Marty Center. She also acts as its public representative and leads its partnerships with collaborators across the University, the city of Chicago, and beyond. A graduate of the University of Chicago Divinity School's PhD program in the History of Religions, Emily is a scholar of Christianities in Africa and the United States. Emily is the co-editor of Remembering Jonathan Z. Smith: A Career and Its Consequence (with Russell McCutcheon, 2020) and African Diaspora Religions in 5 Minutes (with Curtis J. Evans, 2024). She has published scholarly articles in Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Religion and Theology, and numerous edited volumes, as well as articles for the public in Sightings and The Local Palate. She was recently a scholar-consultant on the Court Theatre's production of The Gospel at Colonus. ILAN STAVANS is the publisher of Restless Books and the Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities and Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. His books include On Borrowed Words, Spanglish, Dictionary Days, The Disappearance, and A Critic's Journey. He has edited The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, the three-volume set Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories, and The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, among dozens of other volumes. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Chile's Presidential Medal, the International Latino Book Award, and the Jewish Book Award. Stavans's work, translated into twenty languages, has been adapted to the stage and screen.
Kevin Powers' books, including The Yellow Birds, A Line in the Sand, A Shout in the Ruins and poetry collection Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting, have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He has been a finalist for the National Book Award and a recipient of the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Guardian First Book Award, the Prix littéraire du Monde prix étranger, and the Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine, among other recognitions. He was a James A. Michener Fellow in Poetry at the University of Texas at Austin from 2009-2012 and later held a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction. Powers is a U.S. Army veteran of the war in Iraq. His new novel is Children of the Wild. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This week, Ivy Slater, host of Her Success Story, chats with her guest, Diane Coburn Bruning. The two talk about the origins of Diane Coburn Bruning's passion for dance, the founding and mission of the Chamber Dance Project, which pairs dancers with live musicians, and the unique challenges of sustaining a performing arts company. In this episode, we discuss: How a passion for both dance and live music inspired the founding of Chamber Dance Project, and its unique approach to performances with live musicians. What it was like to build a dance company in New York and later in Washington, D.C., including the challenges of financial sustainability and artist support. Diane Coburn Bruning recognized the need to create opportunities for dancers and choreographers during traditional company layoffs, leading to the company's founding in 2000. Why live music is essential to an authentic dance experience, and the importance of smaller, more intimate venues for both audiences and performers. What goes into commissioning new works and supporting emerging and established choreographers through the Chamber Dance Project. Why building a company is a marathon, not a sprint, and why patience and persistence are critical for growth in the arts. Diane Coburn Bruning, founder of Chamber Dance Project In 2000, choreographer Diane Coburn Bruning founded Chamber Dance Project, dancers & musicians in New York City guided by a conviction that dance should be performed with live music, that smaller venues afford a more intense experience for viewers and performers alike, and that sharing the creative process engages audiences on a deeper level. In 2013 she moved the company to Washington, D.C. Diane is an award-winning choreographer who has worked with dance, theatre, and opera companies throughout the U.S. and abroad. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, two fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the McKnight National Fellowship, a Dewar's Young Artist Award, fellowships from Sundance Film Institute, Yale University School of Drama, Leopold Schepp Foundation and Virginia Commission on the Arts, and a Strauss Fellowship. She has also received support from Meet the Composer, the Harkness Foundation, New York State Council for the Arts, Heathcote Foundation, David Howard Foundation and The Carlisle Project. Diane has worked with Atlanta Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, Boston Ballet, Juilliard Dance Ensemble, American Repertory Ballet, Milwaukee Ballet, Joffrey II, Nashville Ballet, Aspen Ballet, Ballet Chicago, Ballet Memphis, Daghdha Dance (Ireland), Minnesota Ballet, Chautauqua Ballet, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, and Studio Theatre, among others. Her popular Ramblin' Suite, her collaboration with the Red Clay Ramblers, was commissioned by Atlanta Ballet and performed by Milwaukee Ballet. She has worked on productions with Pittsburgh Opera, Glimmerglass Festival, and four with Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center. Vogue Television did a feature on her, and Dance magazine named her as one of "25 to Watch." Diane's works appeared in the International Ballet Festival in Colombia, South America, and her major work Boots was premiered near Berlin with Ballett Magdeburg. She has done commercial work for top brands and clients including Nickelodeon, People magazine, Lord and Taylor, and Lladro. She has done theatrical work for Studio Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, and Shakespeare Theatre Company. At Shakespeare Theatre Company, she worked alongside director Michael Kahn, receiving a Helen Hayes Award nomination for her choreography of the musical Improbable Frequencies. She has been a guest artist at more than 25 conservatory and university dance departments, including several times for Juilliard and Tisch/NYU. She has been a teaching artist for Lincoln Center Institute and New York City Ballet and has served on many grant panels. Diane directed the Craft of Choreography Conference, helped found Pacifica Choreography Project, and has led choreographic workshops throughout the country Graduating with honors from Butler University's Jordan College of Arts, she later received their Alumni Achievement Award. She holds a master's in choreography from NYU and studied composition privately with Bessie Schoenberg and music with Juli Nunlist. Diane studied for a year with renowned designers Jennifer Tipton and Ming Cho Lee on a post-graduate fellowship from Yale University School of Drama. Website: https://chamberdance.org/ Social Media Links: https://www.facebook.com/ChamberDanceProject/ https://www.instagram.com/chamberdanceproject/
Portland artist Arvie Smith is known for colorful, larger-than-life oil paintings that explore oppression and injustice against Black Americans through symbolism and visual tropes. He’s also a professor emeritus at Pacific Northwest College of Art after a 35-year tenure. His murals can be seen on buildings in North Portland and at the Donald E. Long Juvenile Center, where he spent time teaching art to incarcerated youth.Despite being in his mid-80s, Smith is far from retired — just last year, he received a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. The work he created during that fellowship is currently on display in Chicago. Titled “Crossing Clear Creek,” the exhibit explores Smith’s childhood memories and experience of race in rural Texas and Los Angeles. We spoke with Smith in March 2025 about his life and work.
Mike Kelleher talks with Joyelle McSweeney, recipient of a 2026 Windham-Campbell Prize for Poetry, about Anne Carson's vibrant translation of Euripides's Iphigenia Among the Taurians and what it means to see a different side of a well-known story. Joyelle McSweeney is the author of ten books of poetry, drama and prose, a well-known critic, and a vital publisher of international literature in translation. Winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship for Poetry (2022) among other honors, McSweeney is also co-founder and co-editor of Action Books. She is currently Chair of the English Department and the William P. and Hazel B. White Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
David Rivard is a renowned poet with seven books of poetry to his credit. His newest is called “Some of You Will Know”. His other books incude “Standoff”, “Otherwise Elsewhere”, “Sugartown”, “Bewitched Playground”, “Wise Poison”, and “Torque”. His work has won the PEN/New England Prize in poetry, the James Laughlin Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and he has been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He's also received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. My featured song is “Heat 2007”, from the album Prisoners Of Love. Spotify link. —------------------------------------ The Follow Your Dream Podcast:Top 1% of all podcasts with Listeners in 200 countries! Click here for Start Here Click here for All Episodes Click here for Guest List Click here for Guest Testimonials Click here for Pillars Click here for Robert's Project Grand Slam Click here to Subscribe Click here to receive our Email Updates Click here to Rate and Review the podcast —---------------------------------------- CONNECT WITH DAVID:www.davidrivard.net —------------------------------------ ROBERT'S NEWEST RELEASE:“THE BUZZ” - Ft. Darius de Haas (vocals) and Dave Eggar (Celo). Short, Sweet and Totally Different CLICK HERE FOR OFFICIAL VIDEO CLICK HERE FOR ALL LINKS —-------------------------------------- Audio production: Jimmy RavenscroftKymera FilmsConnect with the Follow Your Dream Podcast:Website - www.followyourdreampodcast.comFollow Robert's band, Project Grand Slam, and his music:Website - www.projectgrandslam.com
In this episode, Paddy gives you the skinny on the Guggenheim Fellowship, one of the most prestigious awards for mid-career artists. The talk contains tips and strategies you won't find on their website, including knowing when to apply and how often. You won't find this information anywhere else, so have a listen. Even if you're not planning to apply, this episode will give you strategies for ALL grant applications. Relevant links: https://www.gf.org/
Welcome back to ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for ArtistsToday's guest is David Humphrey, a New York-based painter whose work has been shown nationally and internationally, and who has been recognized with some of the most prestigious awards in the art world, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Rome Prize. He teaches in the MFA program at Columbia University, is represented by Fredericks & Freiser Gallery in New York, and is the author of Blind Handshake, an anthology of David's art writing. On today's episode I ask David about how he knows when a painting is finished, his works on paper, and what late-career de Kooning taught him about the surface of a painting. We get into what David calls the "ecology" of his studio, the sociability of paintings, decision-making in the studio, and the question of shallow vs implied space in his newer work. We also talk about his recent show at Kate Werbel Gallery which features works on paper, wall painting and installation. Finally, David reflects on navigating privilege and provocation during his career, including a memorable and charged moment at a Hunter College lecture that I was actually in the audience for. We finish up by talking about the stakes of painting and the absurdity, weakness, and humor inherent in the medium.Support this podcast by clicking HERE and becoming a Patreon Supporter!If you're enjoying the podcast so far, please rate, review, subscribe and SHARE ON INSTAGRAM! If you have any questions you want answered, write in to artmatterspodcast@gmail.com host: Isaac Mannwww.isaacmann.cominsta: @isaac.mannguest: David Humphreywww.davidhumphreynyc.cominsta: @aikenhumpThank you as always to ARRN, the Detroit-based artist and instrumentalist, for the music.
Why do church search committees so often struggle to find the right pastor? In this episode, Loren Richmond Jr. talks with novelist Michelle Huneven about her acclaimed novel Search, a witty and surprisingly insightful look at the dynamics of a church pastoral search committee. Although fictional, the novel captures many of the real-world challenges congregations face as they discern leadership, navigate competing priorities, and wrestle with their own identities. The conversation explores why churches are often drawn to charismatic candidates, how institutional blind spots shape hiring decisions, and why healthy congregations begin with self-awareness rather than simply searching for the "perfect" pastor. Huneven reflects on the parallels between church searches, university hiring, and other institutional decision-making, highlighting how group dynamics, consensus, and competing visions of the future influence outcomes. They also discuss declining church attendance, denominational structures, diversity, congregational governance, and the enduring tension between preserving tradition and embracing change. Along the way, Huneven shares practical wisdom from her own experience as a novelist, teacher, and occasional preacher about creativity, leadership, and the writing process. Together they explore: Why church search committees often struggle to discern the right leader The appeal—and danger—of charismatic candidates How group dynamics shape congregational decision-making Institutional health and leadership transitions Consensus, conflict, and competing visions for the future Why healthy churches are marked by self-awareness Michelle Huneven is the author of six novels, most recently Search and Bug Hollow. She teaches creative writing at UCLA. Among other honors she has received a James Beard Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lost her house in Altadena, California in the Eaton fire so, while rebuilding, she lived in Los Angeles with her husband, dog, and talkative African Gray parrot. Mentioned Resources:
On episode 261, we welcome Ilan Stavans to discuss the historical incarnations of god, god as a symbol of both oppression and liberty, Moses's rebellion against god and how it symbolizes modern faith, god as an ineffable experience, why we continue to create god, militant atheism as a response to deep-seated hope for the existence of god, Jesus dying for the sins of Yahweh, morality without religion, and god in the age of AI. Ilan Stavans is the publisher of Restless Books and the Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities and Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. His books include On Borrowed Words, Spanglish, Dictionary Days, The Disappearance, and A Critic's Journey. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Chile's Presidential Medal, the International Latino Book Award, and the Jewish Book Award. Stavans's work, translated into twenty languages, has been adapted to the stage and screen. Ilan is also the host of the NPR-affiliated podcast "In Contrast." His new book, available on June 30, 2026, is called A Nation Wrestles With God: American Prophets, Philosophers, and Firebrands. | Ilan Stavans | ► Website | https://restlessbooks.org/our-team ► Podcast | https://www.nepm.org/in-contrast-a-podcast-on-culture-in-the-making ► A Nation Wrestles With God Book | https://bit.ly/ANationWrestlesWithGod Where you can find us: | Seize The Moment Podcast | ► Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/SeizeTheMomentPodcast ► Twitter | https://twitter.com/seize_podcast ► Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/seizethemomentpodcast ► TikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@seizethemomentpodcast
“Narrative remains a pretty unbeatable delivery device for information.” — Patrick Radden Keefe Has London really fallen? That's the question Patrick Radden Keefe — staff writer at The New Yorker and bestselling author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing — addressed in his new book, London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth. One thing for sure is that Keefe himself hasn't fallen. He's been surprised by the book's success. “I thought the antibodies would get up because I'm an interloper,” the American confesses about writing about Britain. Antibodies or not, the book has been a #1 bestseller in both the UK and US. And we can look forward to an A24 and Brightstar TV adaptation soon. On London, the story is murkier. London Falling begins on November 29, 2019, when nineteen-year-old Zac Brettler falls to his death from a luxury apartment above the Thames. Every parent's ultimate nightmare. As it happens, I've known Zac's dad, Matthew, for many years. But what appeared to be a tragic accident or a suicide turned out to be something far more sinister — a story of double lives, dirty money, a dishonest businessman named Akbar Shamji, and a terrifyingly violent gangster known as Indian Dave. Lurking behind the Brettler death is what Keefe presents as the greatest deceit of all — London's cruel descent into what he sees as the moneyed miasma of post-Thatcherite neo-liberalism. London is, in Keefe's compelling narrative, the most invisible of cities — where power lies with criminals like Indian Dave, where the police are at best bystanders, and where a teenage fantasist from a comfortable middle-class family can become fatally entangled in a fallen world he barely understood. Five Takeaways • Zac Brettler: The Double Life That Led to His Death: Zac Brettler was nineteen years old. He fell — or was pushed, or was forced to jump — from a luxury apartment balcony above the Thames on November 29, 2019. He had been living a double life: to London's criminal underworld, he was Zac Ismailov, the son of a Russian oligarch, heir to a great fortune. He had even fabricated bank statements showing a personal account holding $1 million. Under this guise, he became entangled with Akbar Shamji, a slippery businessman, and a man known as Indian Dave, a violent extortionist. Keefe's reporting suggests Zac jumped to escape from one of these men. Scotland Yard's passivity in investigating the case is, in Keefe's word, bizarre. • London as a Twenty-Four-Hour Laundromat for Dirty Money: Keefe's portrait of London is the book's macro argument: a global city that has been hollowed out by decades of financial deregulation, whose financial sector is stacked with professional facilitators eager to help protect or conceal a dubious fortune, where posh mansions and private nightclubs serve as the visible surface of a hidden economy of criminal money. Zac Brettler was not rich. He was a boy from a comfortably off family who became fixated on the glitzy, mercenary, aspirational culture embodied by foreign billionaires who had bought mansions and football clubs in his city. London, in Keefe's telling, did this to him. • The Brettlers' Consent: A Long Haul With the Family: Keefe had written 15,000 words for The New Yorker when he knew there was a book. He went to Matthew and Rochelle Brettler and their surviving son Joe and told them: I will only do this with your blessing. They read the finished piece, talked amongst themselves, and came back with a yes. Keefe's method: he is an open book; he invites sources to read his previous work. It took him an LSE graduate who became one of the most trusted journalists in the world to persuade a devastated family to trust him with their son's story. They made the right decision. • Narrative as Delivery Device: Keefe's Method: Keefe on why he writes the way he writes: everyone has a phone in their pocket making claims on their attention. Narrative — true stories about real people, told with enough seductive propulsive energy — remains the most powerful way to convey information, to make someone who would not otherwise read nonfiction want to keep turning pages. He is looking, always, for inherently dramatic stories. London Falling is that: a whodunit, a parental love story, a portrait of a corrupted city, and a thriller, all in one book. The New York Times described the whole book as one of the best of 2026 so far. • The Television Adaptation: A24, Brightstar, and the Lessons of Say Nothing: A24 and Brightstar are producing the television adaptation of London Falling. Five production companies had to audition for the Brettlers over Zoom. The family is involved. Keefe knows from Say Nothing — which took five years from book to screen and won awards as an FX series — that this cannot go on autopilot. The aim: something sophisticated, sensitive, and just to the family's story. The first word on the Mill Hill School website is “integrity.” Whether that word will survive contact with a television adaptation remains to be seen. About the Guest Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth (Doubleday, April 7, 2026; #1 New York Times bestseller), Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty (winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize), Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (National Book Critics Circle Award; named one of the twenty best books of the 21st century by the New York Times), Rogues, and Chatter. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Magazine Award, and the Orwell Prize. He served as executive producer on the award-winning FX series Say Nothing and is the creator and host of the podcast Wind of Change. References: • London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth by Patrick Radden Keefe (Doubleday, April 7, 2026). • Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe — referenced at the opening. • Say Nothing (FX series, executive produced by Keefe) — referenced in the closing section. • Andrew O'Hagan, Caledonian Road — referenced as covering similar London territory in fiction. • A24 and Brightstar — the production companies making the London Falling television adaptatio...
Maddie McGarvey: A 15‑Year Photojournalism Journey in Appalachia What emerging photographers can learn from a long‑form documentary that went from a college grant to the New York Times. “The camera was an excuse to talk to people. It let a shy kid step out of his own way and into other lives.”– Maddie McGarvey
In this episode of Out of the Clouds, host Anne Mühlethaler welcomes Dr. Paule Valery Joseph: nurse scientist, clinician, entrepreneur, writer and 2025 Guggenheim Fellow. Born in Venezuela to Haitian parents and trained at Hostos Community College, Pace University and the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Joseph is a Senior Investigator at the National Institutes of Health, where she leads the Section on Sensory Science and Metabolism. She is also the co-founder of the Global Consortium for Chemosensory Research, a network spanning more than 70 countries, and the founder and CEO of Anchor Health. Her work sits at the intersection of neuroscience, nutrition, behaviour, and prevention — and her driving question is both simple and radical: what if our senses are not secondary to health, but among the body's earliest and most intelligent warning systems?The conversation starts with Dr Joseph sharing her life story, growing up between Spanish, French and Haitian Creole, in a household shaped by two cultures and a mother who was a community nurse. She describes how her early years in Venezuela planted questions she would spend her career answering. The path from bedside nursing in the Bronx to becoming one of the world's leading chemosensory scientists was not a straight line, but it was guided, she says, by an accumulation of questions she could not accept leaving unanswered.Anne and Paule discuss what it means to be a nurse scientist, a researcher who begins with the patient's experience and considers a discovery unfinished until a nurse in a community clinic or a patient's living room can actually use it. Paule explains how her early observations in long-term care facilities and later work with bariatric surgery patients first drew her attention to taste and smell: patients whose food no longer tasted the same, whose appetite had shifted, whose relationship to flavour had fundamentally changed. These observations led her to the Monell Chemical Senses Center and to a career studying the molecular mechanisms behind chemosensing.The conversation goes deep into what taste and smell can tell us about overall health. Paule describes how smell loss can predate a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease or Alzheimer's by four to ten years, and shares the story of her mother-in-law, whose subtle changes in cooking first signalled something was wrong and ultimately led to a diagnosis of frontotemporal lobe dementia. It is one of the most striking illustrations in the episode of what she calls the body's sensory early warning system, and of the fact that most clinicians still do not routinely test for it.Other themes include the Ozempic tongue phenomenon and what GLP-1 drugs are revealing about the relationship between the gut, the brain and flavour perception; the emerging field of urban smellscapes and how scent has been used across cultures and centuries as a way of marking place, time and memory; and what it might mean to treat smell and taste as vital signs, as routinely assessed as vision or hearing.Paule speaks with equal warmth about the personal dimensions of her work: the mentorship she received and pays forward, the responsibility she feels as the first nurse scientist in 100 years to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship, the joy of her TED Fellowship and the unexpected collaboration it opened with a cacao expert, and the book she is writing at the intersection of smell, health and wellbeing. She closes with the word she might tattoo on herself — ancestor — and with Celia Cruz, whose defiant joy she describes as a Caribbean inheritance she carries everywhere.A memorable conversation with a scientist who studies the senses and a host who has been learning, since their first meeting, to follow her nose.Happy listening!Connect with Paule:Paule Valery Joseph's websitePaule Valery Joseph on LinkedInPaule Valery Joseph on InstagramPaule Valery Joseph on BlueSkyPaule Valery Joseph on YouTubeFor more, head over to https://OutoftheClouds.com/the-PodcastVisit our website: https://outoftheclouds.com/Subscribe to Anne's newsletter The Mettā View: https://annevmuhlethaler.com/the-metta-viewFollow Anne on IG: https://www.instagram.com/annvi/BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/annvi.bsky.socialLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anne-v-muhlethaler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Well, that's about it for the story of planet Earth, poor Earth, reduced to not much more than a piece of burnt coal. But, as Deb Olin Unferth shows in her latest electrifying novel, life and love persist, even in the most unexpected, inhospitable places.Two women meet on a beach of artificial sand. One was raised in a pod in the ocean and the other may or may not be a robot. Their love—or any love—seems so unlikely. Earth is severely depopulated. Some people have given up, gone off to Mars. Others pursue eternal life as digital code. And yet others, like Dylan and Melanie, are holdouts—and some of those holdouts are constructing a vast molecular collection in hopes that a future person may be alive to make a new Earth. Foolhardy? Misguided? Quixotic? Probably. But what can a human (or a robot) do?By the end of Unferth's wild, poetic, revelatory, and slyly philosophical novel, the reader has traveled to the very edges of the cosmos as a “soul globule” and between grains of sand as a microscopic tardigrade. A slim book tackling big questions (is all matter conscious? will we tech ourselves into salvation, or out of existence?), Earth 7 (Graywolf Press 2026) is a poignant inquiry into death, mourning, and indefatigable life, the most exhilarating work to date by one of our most original and beloved writers. Deb Olin Unferth is the author of seven books, including Barn 8 and Wait Till You See Me Dance. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and four Pushcart Prizes, and was a National Books Critics Circle Award finalist. Her work has appeared in Harper's, The Paris Review, Granta, and McSweeney's. She's a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches for the Michener Center, the New Writers' Project, and she also directs the Pen City Writers, the prison creative-writing program at a south Texas penitentiary. Recommended Books: Victor Pelevin, Omon Ra Jean Stafford, A Mother in History Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Well, that's about it for the story of planet Earth, poor Earth, reduced to not much more than a piece of burnt coal. But, as Deb Olin Unferth shows in her latest electrifying novel, life and love persist, even in the most unexpected, inhospitable places.Two women meet on a beach of artificial sand. One was raised in a pod in the ocean and the other may or may not be a robot. Their love—or any love—seems so unlikely. Earth is severely depopulated. Some people have given up, gone off to Mars. Others pursue eternal life as digital code. And yet others, like Dylan and Melanie, are holdouts—and some of those holdouts are constructing a vast molecular collection in hopes that a future person may be alive to make a new Earth. Foolhardy? Misguided? Quixotic? Probably. But what can a human (or a robot) do?By the end of Unferth's wild, poetic, revelatory, and slyly philosophical novel, the reader has traveled to the very edges of the cosmos as a “soul globule” and between grains of sand as a microscopic tardigrade. A slim book tackling big questions (is all matter conscious? will we tech ourselves into salvation, or out of existence?), Earth 7 (Graywolf Press 2026) is a poignant inquiry into death, mourning, and indefatigable life, the most exhilarating work to date by one of our most original and beloved writers. Deb Olin Unferth is the author of seven books, including Barn 8 and Wait Till You See Me Dance. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and four Pushcart Prizes, and was a National Books Critics Circle Award finalist. Her work has appeared in Harper's, The Paris Review, Granta, and McSweeney's. She's a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches for the Michener Center, the New Writers' Project, and she also directs the Pen City Writers, the prison creative-writing program at a south Texas penitentiary. Recommended Books: Victor Pelevin, Omon Ra Jean Stafford, A Mother in History Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Well, that's about it for the story of planet Earth, poor Earth, reduced to not much more than a piece of burnt coal. But, as Deb Olin Unferth shows in her latest electrifying novel, life and love persist, even in the most unexpected, inhospitable places.Two women meet on a beach of artificial sand. One was raised in a pod in the ocean and the other may or may not be a robot. Their love—or any love—seems so unlikely. Earth is severely depopulated. Some people have given up, gone off to Mars. Others pursue eternal life as digital code. And yet others, like Dylan and Melanie, are holdouts—and some of those holdouts are constructing a vast molecular collection in hopes that a future person may be alive to make a new Earth. Foolhardy? Misguided? Quixotic? Probably. But what can a human (or a robot) do?By the end of Unferth's wild, poetic, revelatory, and slyly philosophical novel, the reader has traveled to the very edges of the cosmos as a “soul globule” and between grains of sand as a microscopic tardigrade. A slim book tackling big questions (is all matter conscious? will we tech ourselves into salvation, or out of existence?), Earth 7 (Graywolf Press 2026) is a poignant inquiry into death, mourning, and indefatigable life, the most exhilarating work to date by one of our most original and beloved writers. Deb Olin Unferth is the author of seven books, including Barn 8 and Wait Till You See Me Dance. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and four Pushcart Prizes, and was a National Books Critics Circle Award finalist. Her work has appeared in Harper's, The Paris Review, Granta, and McSweeney's. She's a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches for the Michener Center, the New Writers' Project, and she also directs the Pen City Writers, the prison creative-writing program at a south Texas penitentiary. Recommended Books: Victor Pelevin, Omon Ra Jean Stafford, A Mother in History Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-fiction
Well, that's about it for the story of planet Earth, poor Earth, reduced to not much more than a piece of burnt coal. But, as Deb Olin Unferth shows in her latest electrifying novel, life and love persist, even in the most unexpected, inhospitable places.Two women meet on a beach of artificial sand. One was raised in a pod in the ocean and the other may or may not be a robot. Their love—or any love—seems so unlikely. Earth is severely depopulated. Some people have given up, gone off to Mars. Others pursue eternal life as digital code. And yet others, like Dylan and Melanie, are holdouts—and some of those holdouts are constructing a vast molecular collection in hopes that a future person may be alive to make a new Earth. Foolhardy? Misguided? Quixotic? Probably. But what can a human (or a robot) do?By the end of Unferth's wild, poetic, revelatory, and slyly philosophical novel, the reader has traveled to the very edges of the cosmos as a “soul globule” and between grains of sand as a microscopic tardigrade. A slim book tackling big questions (is all matter conscious? will we tech ourselves into salvation, or out of existence?), Earth 7 (Graywolf Press 2026) is a poignant inquiry into death, mourning, and indefatigable life, the most exhilarating work to date by one of our most original and beloved writers. Deb Olin Unferth is the author of seven books, including Barn 8 and Wait Till You See Me Dance. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and four Pushcart Prizes, and was a National Books Critics Circle Award finalist. Her work has appeared in Harper's, The Paris Review, Granta, and McSweeney's. She's a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches for the Michener Center, the New Writers' Project, and she also directs the Pen City Writers, the prison creative-writing program at a south Texas penitentiary. Recommended Books: Victor Pelevin, Omon Ra Jean Stafford, A Mother in History Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
How do distant galaxies form? If you have two distant clouds of hydrogen, why does one turn into a star and another doesn't? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome Dr. Erika Hamden, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Arizona. If Erika looks familiar, that might be because her TED Talk or “New Frontiers,” the TV show she hosts on Arizona Public Media. As always, though, we start off with the day's joyfully cool cosmic thing, Artemis II, our first manned mission around the moon since 1972. Chuck, Allen and Erika share their excitement watching the mission, and especially the landing, while we watch the “only good video of the moon ever taken with a phone” that Reid Wiseman shot on his iPhone. Dr. Hamden tells us about her research into how distant stars and galaxies form. To fill in the blanks of this cosmic puzzle, she observes hydrogen in its elemental or molecular form – not looking at the stars themselves, but the emissions from hydrogen atoms. You'll learn about star formation in our galaxy and how Erika discerns the moment that a new star “first turns on.” Then it's time for our first audience question. Emma B. asks, “How many galaxies are there?” Erika says that in the observable universe, it's an outrageously large number, probably hundreds of billions or more. We take a look at the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image, which reflects a “tiny, tiny part of the sky,” where every dot except for the 3 stars is a galaxy. And that's just the universe we can see. Chuck asks Erika to tell us about her book, “Weird Universe: Everything We Don't Know about Space (and why it's important).” Professor Hamden shares her belief that anyone can understand anything if it's explained the right way to them. She talks about a poem by Rebecca Elson called “Responsibility to Awe” and the responsibility scientists have to share the wonders of the world with everybody. For our next audience question, Ava asks, “What is the craziest job in Astronomy that you have seen AI take over from humans?” Erika talks about using LLMs to review the digitized photographic plates of stars and the massive amount of data from the Vera Rubin Observatory, and also which activities still require human creativity. Speaking of creativity, it turns out that before becoming an astrophysicist, Erika got a diploma at Le Cordon Bleu in London and had a career as a professional chef. She still loves to cook and shares her recipe (below) for the Swedish-style cardamom buns she shows us in the episode. Finally, before we go, we congratulate Emily on recently being awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. She shares some wisdom and advice she's learned on her journey that she also tells her students, but according to her it's a bit “cheesy” so we'll let her tell you in the show. If you'd like to know more about Dr. Hamden, you can keep up with her research, follow her on her social media accounts, and find out about her book by visiting her website. We hope you enjoy this episode of The LIUniverse, and, if you do, please support us on Patreon. Erika's Cardamom Bun Recipe You can find the original recipe here on Cecilia Tolone's Substack. Erika's Modifications: “My changes are that I add more milk- about 75 grams more, because American flour is drier and Tucson is especially dry! And I played around with adding chiltipin flakes (a local, very spicy pepper) to the filling to make it kind of spicy. It's great! Finally, I use whole cardamom seeds from Penzey's that I grind before putting in.” Credits for Images Used in this Episode: Artemis II end of mission splashdown. – Credit: NASA/ Bill Ingalls. Artemis II astronaut Reid Wiseman's iPhone video of the Earth and the Moon with his iPhone 17 ProMax, using 8x zoom, which he said is comparable to what he was seeing from the Artemis II capsule. – Credit: NASA /Reid Wiseman Hydrogen observed in the Milky Way Galaxy. – Credit: HI4PI Collaboration The Hubble Ultra Deep Field. – Credit: NASA/ESA Example of a photographic plate of stars, including notation marks, aka a Schmidt ammonia-sensitized, near-IR (Kodak I-N) objective-prism plate exposed for 1 hr. – Credit: STScI/ESO/Carnegie. Additional Credits: A Responsibility to Awe, by Rebecca Elson CHAPTERS 00:00 - We welcome University of Arizona Astrophysics Prof. Dr. Erika Hamden 02:43 - Joyfully Cool Cosmic Thing: Artemis II Mission and Return 08:14 - How Do Distant Stars and Galaxies Form? 15:46 -How Many Galaxies Are There? 18:25 - Weird Universe and Scientists' Responsibility to Awe 24:06 - What Jobs in Astronomy Has AI Taken Over from Humans? 31:33 - Chef Erika and her Swedish-style Cardamom Buns 39:10 - Parting Advice and Wisdom from Professor Erika Hamden #LIUniverse #CharlesLiu #AstronomyPodcast #ErikaHamden #GalaxyFormation
In this episode, we feature historian Sven Beckert discussing his sweeping new book, “Capitalism: A Global History.” We dig into how capitalism emerged over the last thousand years, why it's not just “markets” but a specific, historically created social order, and how it became a genuinely global system built on “connected diversity” of labor regimes—from wage work and peasant farming to slavery and colonial extraction. Beckert explains the crucial role of state power, empire, and the countryside in capitalism's rise, and traces how different historical phases—mercantile, industrial, and neoliberal—have reshaped our world. We also talk about capitalism's dual legacy of technological dynamism and staggering inequality, and why “denaturalizing” capitalism matters for how we think about today's crises, from inequality to climate change. If you're interested in the history of capitalism, global political economy, or the roots of our current social order, this conversation offers an accessible big‑picture overview from an author recognized as one of the world's leading scholars on the history of global capitalism, 19th-century United States history, and labor. About Sven Beckert Sven Beckert is the Laird Bell Professor of History at Harvard University and one of the leading historians of capitalism working today. Born in Germany and trained in history, economics, and political science before earning his PhD at Columbia University, Beckert's research focuses on the economic, social, and political history of capitalism in the nineteenth-century United States and from a global perspective. He is the author of the widely acclaimed “Empire of Cotton: A Global History”—winner of the Bancroft Prize and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. At Harvard, Beckert co-chairs the Program on the Study of Capitalism and the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History, teaches courses on American and global capitalism, and has helped lead major projects on the university's historical ties to slavery, while receiving numerous honors and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Order the book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/541160/capitalism-by-sven-beckert/ Sven's Website: https://www.svenbeckert.com/ Sven's Substack: https://substack.com/@svenbeckert Greg's book review on MLToday: https://mltoday.com/thinking-about-capitalism/ Pat's Substack: https://patcummings.substack.com/ #SvenBeckert#CapitalismAGlobalHistory#capitalismhistory#historyofcapitalism#globalcapitalism#economichistory#politicaleconomy#laborhistory#EmpireofCotton#industrialcapitalism#mercantilecapitalism#neoliberalism#globalization#globaltrade#slaveryandcapitalism#colonialism#connecteddiversity#Harvardhistorian#workingclasshistory#capitalismandinequality#capitalismanddemocracy#capitalismandclimatechange#worldhistory#Marxisthistory#criticaltheory#PatCummings#PatrickCummings#GregGodels#ZZBlog#ComingFromLeftField#Podcast#zzblog#mltoday
Episode 528 / Beverly FishmanBeverly Fishman is an artist born in 1955 in Philadelphia, who lives and works in Detroit. She received her Master of Fine Arts in 1980 from Yale University and her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Philadelphia College of Art in 1977.Her work has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at CUE Art Foundation, New York, NY; Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI; Gavlak Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL; KOTARO NUKAGA, Tokyo, Japan; Kravets Wehby Gallery, New York, NY; Library Street Collective, Detroit, MI; Louis Buhl & Co., Detroit, MI; Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; Ronchini Gallery, London, United Kingdom; SOCO Gallery, Charlotte, NC; The Contemporary Dayton, Dayton, OH; and Walter Storms Galerie, Munich, Germany.She has been included in group exhibitions at numerous international institutions including the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY; Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Turkey; Circulo de Bessa Artes, Madrid, Spain; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MI; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; National Academy of Design, New York, NY; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; The Drawing Center, New York, NY; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; and White Columns, New York, NY, among others.Her work is in the collections of Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Turkey; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; Eli and Edythe Broad Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI; MacArthur Foundation Collection, Chicago, IL; Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, TX; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC, and elsewhere.Beverly was inducted as a National Academician of the National Academy of Design in 2020. She is the recipient of the Anonymous Was A Woman Award; the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Hassam, Speicher, Betts, & Symons Purchase Award; a Guggenheim Fellowship in the Fine Arts; and a Fellowship Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Episode 528 / Beverly FishmanBeverly Fishman is an artist born in 1955 in Philadelphia, who lives and works in Detroit. She received her Master of Fine Arts in 1980 from Yale University and her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Philadelphia College of Art in 1977.Her work has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at CUE Art Foundation, New York, NY; Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI; Gavlak Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL; KOTARO NUKAGA, Tokyo, Japan; Kravets Wehby Gallery, New York, NY; Library Street Collective, Detroit, MI; Louis Buhl & Co., Detroit, MI; Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; Ronchini Gallery, London, United Kingdom; SOCO Gallery, Charlotte, NC; The Contemporary Dayton, Dayton, OH; and Walter Storms Galerie, Munich, Germany.She has been included in group exhibitions at numerous international institutions including the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY; Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Turkey; Circulo de Bessa Artes, Madrid, Spain; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MI; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; National Academy of Design, New York, NY; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; The Drawing Center, New York, NY; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; and White Columns, New York, NY, among others.Her work is in the collections of Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Turkey; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; Eli and Edythe Broad Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI; MacArthur Foundation Collection, Chicago, IL; Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, TX; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC, and elsewhere.Beverly was inducted as a National Academician of the National Academy of Design in 2020. She is the recipient of the Anonymous Was A Woman Award; the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Hassam, Speicher, Betts, & Symons Purchase Award; a Guggenheim Fellowship in the Fine Arts; and a Fellowship Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
We are resharing this episode in memory of Michael Harrison, who passed away on April 17, 2026. He was 67. In this episode, we discuss the life and work of musician and Sufi teacher Hazrat Inayat Khan with composer/pianist and Inayat Khan scholar Michael Harrison. Hazrat Inayat Khan ( July 1882 – 5 February 1927) was an Indian professor of musicology, singer, exponent of the saraswati vina, poet, philosopher, and pioneer of the transmission of Sufism to the West. At the urging of his students, and on the basis of his ancestral Sufi tradition and four-fold training and authorization at the hands of Sayyid Abu Hashim Madani (d. 1907) of Hyderabad, he established an order of Sufism (the Sufi Order) in London in 1914. By the time of his death in 1927, centers had been established throughout Europe and North America, and multiple volumes of his teachings had been published. Michael Harrison (October 24, 1958 - April 17, 2026) forged a new approach to composition through just intonation (the system of tuning based on pure harmonic proportions). His works blend classical music traditions of Europe and North India. He is a Guggenheim Fellowship and NYFA Artist Fellowship recipient. Michael created dedicated tuning systems for many of his works. He pioneered a structural approach to composition in which the proportions of harmonic relationships organically determine other musical elements such as pitch, duration, and dynamics. He also invented the “harmonic piano,” a grand piano that plays 24 notes per octave, documented in the Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Harrison seeks expressions of universality via the physics of sound – music that brings one into a state of concentrated listening as a meditative and even mind-altering experience. At the time of his death he was working on “The Raga Cycle”, a series of albums charting the hours of the day through Hindustani raga. The first installment, Evening Light, was released in March 2026 on Cantaloupe Records. More albums in the series were recorded before he became too ill to continue. They will be released in the years ahead. Donations in his memory can be made to the Michael Harrison Foundation for Just Music at JustMusic.org. Topics 00:00 Podcast Welcome 00:22 Encore Tribute 02:28 Mysticism Book Intro 02:49 Spiritual Music Path 04:32 Conservatory And Tonality 06:37 Daily Raga Practice 12:55 Voice Breath And Wazifa 16:48 Creation As Vibration 20:14 Harmony East And West 24:07 Math Of Consonance 25:32 Temperament Versus Just 28:24 Tuning The Soul Quote 32:03 Piano Retuning Journey 35:54 432 Versus 440 39:56 Music As Universal Religion 46:02 Cage Oliveros Deep Listening 51:16 Commentary And Curriculum 53:08 Teaching Programs 55:26 Closing Thanks And Outro Links Michael Harrison — His Own Work Evening Light: Raga Cycle I — Cantaloupe Music (2026) Seven Sacred Names — Bandcamp (2021) Revelation: Music in Pure Intonation — Cantaloupe Music (2007) From Ancient Worlds — michaelharrison.com Time Loops with Maya Beiser — Cantaloupe Music (2012) Michael Harrison website Episode Music Michael Harrison — "Mureed" from Seven Sacred Names (2021, Cantaloupe Music) Michael Harrison — "Alim: Polyphonic Raga Malkauns" from Seven Sacred Names (2021, Cantaloupe Music) Michael Harrison — "Qadr: Etude in Raga Bhimpalasi" from Seven Sacred Names (2021, Cantaloupe Music) Hazrat Inayat Khan — "Purvi Khal: Kamli Wale Tope Sabkuchhvare" (2022, Primitiv) Michael Harrison – “Sami: The Acoustic Constellation” from Seven Sacred Names (2021, Cantaloupe Music) Hazrat Inayat Khan The Mysticism of Sound and Music — Goodreads Inayat Khan 1909 78rpm Recordings — YouTube Hazrat Inayat Khan — Wikipedia The Inayat Order — Pir Zia Inayat Khan Turning Toward the Heart — SAND Podcast with Pir Zia Inayat Khan Teachers & Lineage Pandit Pran Nath — Wikipedia La Monte Young — Wikipedia Terry Riley — Wikipedia Pir Vilayat Khan — Wikipedia Ustad Mashkoor Ali Khan — Wikipedia Other Composers & Artists Referenced Pauline Oliveros — Center for Deep Listening® — Michael Reiley's teacher; creator of Deep Listening practice Pauline Oliveros — paulineoliveros.us John Cage — Wikipedia — composer, Zen Buddhist, creator of 4'33" Arvo Pärt — Wikipedia Hildegard of Bingen — Wikipedia Ravi Shankar — Wikipedia George Harrison Concert for Bangladesh — YouTube Roomful of Teeth — website John Eliot Gardiner — Wikipedia Josquin des Prez — Wikipedia Claudio Monteverdi — Wikipedia J.S. Bach — Wikipedia Programs & Institutions Arts, Letters and Numbers — Creative Music Intensive Michael Harrison Foundation for Just Music — donations in his memory Manhattan School of Music — where the harmonic piano is now archived Contact SAND podcast@scienceandnonduality.com Support the mission of SAND and the production of this podcast by becoming a SAND Member
Photographer and educator Eli Durst joins PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf to discuss his photobooks, artistic practice, and the evolving definition of documentary photography. Durst reflects on what it means to push and rethink documentary work today, from image-making to long-term engagement with subjects and place. Drawing on his experience working with Joel Meyerowitz, Durst also shares how he learned to build a sustainable life as an artist, balancing creative work with family. He discusses the role of mentorship, ongoing learning, and how collaboration with publishers and editors can reshape a project through new perspectives on sequencing and editing. The conversation also explores the importance of community in documentary practice, and how embedding within a community is often central to the work, sometimes even more than the act of photographing itself. https://www.elidurst.com https://www.instagram.com/durzt Eli Durst is an American artist whose work explores the social forces and group dynamics that shape the suburban American experience. Durst's photographs have been exhibited internationally and have been featured in Aperture, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Vogue, and The Atlantic among others. He has published three monographs: The Community (Mörel, 2020), The Four Pillars (Loose Joints, 2022), and The Children's Melody (Gnomic 2025). Durst lives and works in Austin, Texas, where he teaches at the University of Texas College of Fine Arts. Durst has received numerous prizes, including the 2016 Aperture Portfolio Prize and a 2017 Aaron Siskind Individual Photographer's Fellowship Grant, and a 2025 Guggenheim Fellowship.
Mea Culpa welcomes back one of the most dialed-in journalists of the last several decades, Jane Mayer. Mayer has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1995. As the magazine's chief Washington correspondent, she covers politics, culture, and national security. Previously, she worked at the Wall Street Journal, where she covered the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, the Gulf War, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1984, she became the paper's first female White House correspondent. She is the author of the 2016 Times best-seller “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right,” She also wrote the 2008 Times best-seller “The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals,” which was named a National Book Award finalist. She is the co-author, with Jill Abramson, of “Strange Justice,” also a National Book Award finalist, and, with Doyle McManus, of “Landslide: The Unmaking of the President 1984-1988.” She has won numerous prizes and awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Nellie Bly Award for Investigative Reporting. Michael and Jane dig into Clarence Thomas and the Supreme Court, GOP's scary policies, and Trump's legal woes.
Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the New York Times bestselling author of London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth (Doubleday). Patrick's other books include the New York Times bestsellers Rogues, Empire of Pain (winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction), and Say Nothing, which received a National Book Critics Circle Award and was named one of the Twenty Best Books of the Twenty-First Century by The New York Times Book Review. He is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Magazine Award, and the Orwell Prize for Political Writing. He served as an executive producer on the awardwinning FX series Say Nothing and is also the creator and host of the podcast Wind of Change, which The Guardian and Entertainment Weekly named the #1 podcast of 2020. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In the words of the Los Angeles Times, “A new book by (Patrick Radden) Keefe means drop everything and close the blinds; you'll be turning pages for hours.” Keefe is an award-winning investigative journalist, a staff writer at the New Yorker, the creator of a popular podcast, and the author of six books, including the bestsellers Rogues, Empire of Pain, and Say Nothing. “When I go out looking for a good story,” says Keefe, “I almost never find one. Instead, the really good ones tend to fall in my lap.” Say Nothing was prompted by reading an obituary. A wild-seeming rumor about the 90's heavy metal band The Scorpions led to the podcast Wind of Change, a sweeping tale of government secrets, Soviet spies, propaganda, and 90's power ballads. To call his research “meticulous” is an understatement. Keefe's book, Snakehead, required over 300 interviews to complete. Say Nothing found him speaking to thousands of sources. While writing about the opioid epidemic in EMPIRE OF PAIN, Keefe was blocked from speaking to the Sackler family, so instead, he amassed thousands of correspondences from personal emails to Bar Mitzvah announcements. Though Keefe's doggedness recalls the detective stories that inspired him early on, he is perhaps more hopeful than hardboiled. By approaching those forces that appear too vast to unravel, he proves that even institutions and systems that seem unassailable can, in fact, be broken down and examined—one interview, one receipt, one wedding invitation at a time. Like all the great whodunnits, his books contain breathtaking plot twists. Though he has, on at least one occasion, solved a murder mystery, Keefe is less interested in pointing to a perpetrator and more interested in holding up a mirror. The question at the heart of his work is one that pertains to everyone: What does it mean to be human? His newest book, London Falling, is an investigation into the mysterious death of 19-year-old Zach Brettler and its connection to both London's criminal underworld and its elite circles. The author Katherine Rundell says, “Nobody writes like Patrick Radden Keefe; nobody makes achieving something so powerfully complex and difficult look so easy. It's a form of intellectual generosity and, I think, a form of genius.” Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of the New York Times bestsellers Rogues, Empire of Pain, and Say Nothing, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, was selected as one of the ten best books of 2019 by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and The Wall Street Journal, and was named one of the top ten nonfiction books of the decade by Entertainment Weekly. His previous books are The Snakehead and Chatter. His work has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing and the Orwell Prize for Political Writing. He is also the creator and host of the eight-part podcast Wind of Change.
Ada Limón's poems expertly combine brilliant observations of our complex world with a tender sincerity. As a two-term Poet Laureate of the United States, Limón focused on using poetry to connect us more strongly with the natural world. She is the author of seven books of poetry, including Startlement: New & Selected Poems; The Hurting Kind, The Carrying; and Bright Dead Things. Her newest book, Against Breaking, is an expanded version of her final talk as Poet Laureate - and a celebration of poetry's ability to heal and connect us. Her awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and a MacArthur Fellowship. Limón was raised in Sonoma, California. On April 14, 2026, Ada Limon came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco for an on-stage conversation with KQED host Alexis Madrigal, which was a co-presentation with Litquake.
Photographer, director, and producer Mitch Epstein joins PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf to discuss his storied career in photography, environmental activism, and artistic influences. From early inspiration by Garry Winogrand to guidance from John Szarkowski, Epstein reflects on how he evolved into a research-driven, project-based photographer focused on environmental issues. He also discusses his work in film as a production designer and co-producer on Mississippi Masala (1991) and Salaam Bombay! (1988), and shares insights on privilege, longevity, and sustaining a life in photography. https://www.mitchepstein.net Mitch Epstein has photographed the landscape and culture of America for half a century. A graduate of Cooper Union, he became a pioneer of 1970s fine-art color photography. Epstein has been inducted into the National Academy of Design (2020) and was awarded the Prix Pictet (2011), Berlin Prize (2008), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2002). His work has been shown and collected by museums worldwide, including New York's Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Gallery in Washington DC, The Art Institute of Chicago, Tate Modern in London, Museum of Modern Art in Paris, Los Angeles's Getty Museum and LACMA, the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, TX, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Recent exhibitions include “American Nature” (photographs and multi-media installations) at the Gallerie d'Italia museum in Torino, Italy (2024-25); “In India,” (photographs and films) at Les Rencontres d'Arles in the Abbey of Montmajour, Arles, France (2022); and “Property Rights” at The Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas (2020-21). Epstein's seventeen books, mostly published by Steidl Verlag, include Recreation (2022, 2005), Property Rights (2021), New York Arbor (2013), American Power (2009), and Family Business (2004), winner of the Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award. Epstein's mixed media work includes films, moving image with sound installations, and performance. In 2013, The Walker Art Center commissioned and premiered a theatrical rendition of his American Power series. Directed by Annie B. Parsons and Paul Lazar, the performance combined original live music by Erik Friedlander and live storytelling by Epstein; and included video, projected photographs, and archival material. In documentary film, Epstein was director of Dad and Retail (2003) and director of photography for India Cabaret (1988). He was production designer and co-producer for the feature films Mississippi Masala (1991) and Salaam Bombay! (1988). Epstein's most recent exhibition, American Nature, assembles three self-contained yet integrated photographic series (Old Growth, Property Rights, American Power); a multi-channel video-sound installation with tonal music by Mike Tamburo and Samer Ghadry filmed performing in the forest (Forest Waves), and a looped projection with music by David Lang, performed by Maya Beiser (Darius Kinsey: Clear Cut). Together these five pieces investigate notions of wilderness and human society; and their both collaborative and troubled co-existence. Epstein lives in New York City and Massachusetts.
Today I have the immense pleasure of speaking with author Anna Badkhen about her new collection of essays, To See Beyond. Badkhen talks about how her experiences as a veteran war correspondent exposed her to War's multiple forms of violence, destruction, and carnage, and how that compelled her to write these essays about survival, and hope. Speaking from many global locations and from a wide range of historical and cultural perspectives, from antiquity to the present, Badkhen's essays draw together amazingly imaginative connections across peoples, and ways of seeing. Ultimately, we are shown how to both recognize violence, and hope as well. Anna favors us by reading select passages from this marvelous, and necessary, book.Anna Badkhen's new essay collection, To See Beyond, is out from Bellevue Literary Press in April 2026. She is the author of seven other published books, most recently Bright Unbearable Reality, which was a finalist for the 2026 Tiziano Terzani International Literary Prize and was longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award and for the 2023 Jan Michalski Prize for Literature. Badkhen's awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Barry Lopez Visiting Writer in Ethics and Community Fellowship, and the Joel R. Seldin Award from Psychologists for Social Responsibility for writing about civilians in war zones.A former war correspondent, Badkhen grew up in the Soviet Union and is a US citizen. She is an Artist-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania.
There aren't many contemporary poets who have name recognition beyond poetry circles, but Ada Limón, a MacArthur fellow and former two-term poet laureate of the United States, certainly does. Limón is one of the most decorated poets working today. A winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, a finalist for the National book Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award as well as the Griffin Poetry Prize. Her latest project is the book ‘Startlement: New and Selected Poems' and it is published by Milkweed Editions.
Ada Limón is the author of Against Breaking: On the Power of Poetry, available from Scribner. She served as the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States. Ada Limón is the author of seven books of poetry, including Startlement: New & Selected Poems; The Hurting Kind, which was a finalist for the Griffin Prize; The Carrying, which won the National Books Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award; and Bright Dead Things, which was named a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Award. Limón is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and was named a 2024 Time Woman of the Year. She is the author of two picture books, In Praise of Mystery as well as And, Too, The Fox, and was the editor of the anthology You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Host Jason Blitman talks to acclaimed journalist Patrick Radden Keefe about his latest book, London Falling. London Falling is the April 2026 Late Show with Stephen Colbert Book Club pick. Conversation highlights include:
Anne Aghion has been praised as a filmmaker of poetic vision and a unique documentarian whose films, in the words of one critic, “pull us deep into the social fabric” of the places she covers. She gained international renown for “The Gacaca Series” (pr. ga-CHA-cha), four films on post- genocide justice and social reconstruction in Rwanda. There, Anne Aghion charted the emotional impact of a controversial system of justice that returned killers to their homes to live side-by-side with the survivors of unimaginable violence. The final film in the series, “My Neighbor My Killer“, premiered in Official Selection at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival; was nominated for Best Documentary at the Gotham Awards; and earned Aghion the Nestor Almendros Award for courage in filmmaking at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival. Additionally, other films in the series received an Emmy Award and the UNESCO Fellini Prize. The 2008 feature “Ice People” was described by Variety as “staggeringly beautiful,” and New York Magazine's noted critic Bilge Ebiri wrote that “it might be the most immersive documentary I've ever seen.” The film, which explores the physical, emotional and spiritual adventure of living and conducting science in Antarctica, was produced with ARTE France and ITVS International in association with Sundance Channel. Her award-winning 1996 directorial debut “Se Le Movió El Piso: A Portrait of Managua (The Earth Moved Under Him),” examines how Nicaraguan slum dwellers had survived the double ravages of political and natural disasters. In 2024, Anne Aghion finished “Turbulence” which poses the question: How do we overcome the heartbreaks, sorrow and traumas we endure or witness, and come out whole? The film, written, directed and produced by Aghion, is made in association with Arte France – La Lucarne, and with the participation of the French Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée, Procirep & Angoa, Jewish Story Partners, and the New York State Council on the Arts. Anne Aghion has collected numerous prestigious awards for her work, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship. She has earned a host of grants from such organizations as the United States Institute of Peace, the National Science Foundation, the French Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée, and the Soros and Sundance Institute Documentary Funds. She has had residencies at the MacDowell Colony in the United States, the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center, and others. For “Turbulence” she also received a Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship to India. She has served as a juror for La Scam's L'Oeil d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) and the International Documentary Association (IDA), among others. She is an international speaker at universities and has conducted documentary workshops and master classes at film programs in countries including Haiti, India, Morocco, Lebanon, France and the United States. She serves on the board of Camargo Foundation's French association. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0FgITLEiKE Both “My Neighbor My Killer” and “Turbulence may now be streamed on the platform kinema.com.
Whether you know him from his award-winning and bestselling novel set in Puget Sound, Snow Falling on Cedars, or his columns in Pacific Northwest publications, Bainbridge writer David Guterson may be one of our region's most well-known writers. He's written a new novel, Evelyn in Transit, which explores what it means to live a righteous life, maybe even in spite of our imperfections. Guterson's novel introduces Evelyn Bednarz, who is radically open-minded, formidably strong, and unusually clear-eyed about herself and others. Yet Evelyn has always been a misfit in society. She's easily bored, unsuited to life at school, asks odd questions about faith and time, and sees through conventions others take for granted. Seeking to be true to herself, she hitchhikes across the American West, taking odd jobs. Meanwhile, in distant Tibet, another life unfolds: the life of a boy named Tsering, raised as a Buddhist monk in the mountains of Tibet, who eventually becomes a high lama. And yet, Evelyn and Tsering are linked, which Evelyn discovers when a trio of Buddhist lamas show up at her door to announce that her five-year-old son, Cliff, is the seventh reincarnation of the illustrious Norbu Rinpoche, recently deceased. The lamas' visit sets off a family crisis and a media firestorm over Cliff's future. As he's done in his other writing, Guterson links the Pacific Northwest with universal human truths. Evelyn in Transit asks us what it might mean to "live the right way," and to closely examine humanity's strivings for transcendence. David Guterson is the author of several novels: the national best seller Snow Falling on Cedars; East of the Mountains; Our Lady of the Forest, a New York Times Notable Book and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year; The Other; and Ed King. He is also the author of two story collections, two books of poetry, a memoir, and the work of nonfiction Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Makes Sense. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he lives in Washington state. Karen Maeda Allman is a bookseller alum, having worked for over 30 years at Independent Bookstores (including as author events co-coordinator for the Elliott Bay Book Company). She has served on many jury and awards panels, including for the National Book Award for Translated Literature, the DSC Prize and the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction. She's currently at Wales Literary Agency and also serves on the Board of Seattle Arts and Lectures. Buy the Book Evelyn in Transit: A Novel Elliott Bay Book Company
This reading, part of MIT's William Corbett Poetry Series, welcomes former U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze back to the campus where he began his literary journey. Introduced by Chloe Garcia Roberts and Nick Montfort, the event reflects on poetry's enduring place at MIT and its power to shape lives and communities across generations. Sze's visit highlights the unexpected connections and “rhymes” that emerge over time through teaching, mentorship, and the art of poetry. Sze is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Into the Hush (2025) and The White Orchard: Selected Interviews, Essays, and Poems (2025); The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems (2021); Sight Lines (2019), for which he won the National Book Award; Compass Rose (2014); The Ginkgo Light (2009); Quipu (2005); The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970–1998 (1998); and Archipelago (1995). He also authored Transient Worlds: On Translating Poetry (forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press, 2026), The Silk Dragon II: Translations of Chinese Poetry (2024), and edited Chinese Writers on Writing (2010). His poetry has been translated into fifteen languages, including Chinese, Dutch, German, Portuguese, and Spanish. He received the 2025 Bollingen Prize for lifetime achievement in American poetry, the 2024 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, 2024 National Book Foundation Science + Literature award, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Jackson Poetry Prize, a Lannan Literary Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among others. A chancellor emeritus of the Academy of American Poets and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he was the 2023–2024 Mohr Visiting Poet at Stanford University. Professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), Sze was the first poet laureate of Santa Fe, where he lives with his wife, the poet Carol Moldaw. The reading was presented by Comparative Media Studies/Writing and the William Corbett Poetry Series, with Lit@MIT and the MIT Press Bookstore.
Ellen Langer was the first woman to be tenured in psychology at Harvard, where she is still professor of psychology. She is recipient of three Distinguished Scientists awards, and the Arthur W. Staats Award for Unifying Psychology, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Liberty Science Genius Award, and has published over 200 research articles and thirteen books, including the international bestseller Mindfulness and her most recent book, The Mindful Body: Thinking our way to chronic health. She is known worldwide as the “mother of mindfulness, the “mother of positive psychology” and the mother of mind/body medicine. She helps us understand how mindfulness can help us think our way to chronic health, even if we have a cancer diagnosis. https://www.ellenlanger.me/ Books: The Mindful Body and Mindfulness ___________ To learn more about the 10 Radical Remission Healing Factors, connect with a certified RR coach or join a virtual or in-person workshop visit www.radicalremission.com. To learn more about Radical Remission health coaching with Liz or Karla, Click Here Join our mailing list and you'll receive our free eBook, Kickstart Your Healing: 20 Radical Remission Tips, as a special thank you for joining. Subscribe Here To watch Episode 1 of the Radical Remission Docuseries for free, visit our YouTube channel here. To purchase the full 10-episode Radical Remission Docuseries visit Hay House Online Learning. Follow us on Social Media: Facebook Instagram YouTube ____ Our sponsors: Immunocine Cancer Center is focused on advancing personalized cancer immunotherapy by harnessing the power of the immune system. Their work centers on the Immunocine Dendritic Cell Treatment (IDCT) — a first-in-class therapy designed to train the immune system to recognize and respond to a patient's specific cancer. The process begins by collecting information from the patient's tumor and using it to program specialized immune cells called dendritic cells, which help activate targeted immune responses. A key differentiator in Immunocine's approach is something called double loading — cancer information is delivered to the dendritic cell both inside the cell and on its surface, giving the immune system a more complete blueprint of the cancer it needs to recognize and attack. And while this approach is unique to Immunocine and unique to use therapeutically, it is NOT unique to biology - since this is how the immune system was always meant to work! Immunocine treats patients from around the world at its clinic in Cancun, Mexico, combining advanced immune science with personalized care. As always, patients should first explore whether they may be eligible for a clinical trial in the United States. To learn more, visit Immunocine.com. Learn more about Immunocine: Website Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/immunocine/ YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/@immunocinecancercenter Linkedin — https://www.linkedin.com/company/immunocine/ Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/Immunocine/ ____ Nestled in the pristine, natural beauty of British Columbia, The Healing Oasis stands as Canada's first-of-its-kind cancer wellness retreat, where hope reignites and the body is empowered to heal. Here, our renowned naturopathic cancer expert, Dr. Sean Ceaser, designs a fully personalized protocol of advanced, non-toxic therapies—including high-dose IVs like mistletoe and vitamin C, cutting-edge hyperthermia, PEMF, oxygen therapy, red light, and more. Savor daily organic, cancer-fighting meals, rest deeply in serene cabins, immerse in restorative activities like forest walks and yoga, drink mineral-rich living water, and receive emotional support in a peaceful sanctuary that combines world-class care with profound nature immersion to reduce side effects, boost vitality, and spark radical healing. Your journey to feeling alive again begins today at thehealingoasis.ca. Learn More about The Healing Oasis: Website Testimonials Video Overview
Naeem Murr, a dual US and UK citizen, is the author of four novels: The Boy, a New York Times Notable Book; The Genius of the Sea; and The Perfect Man, which was awarded The Commonwealth WritersʼPrize for the Best Book of Europe and South Asia, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His new novel is Every Exit Brings You Home. He is a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford. Among his awards are a Pushcart Prize, a Lannan Residency Fellowship, a PEN Beyond Margins Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Chicago and teaches at Northwestern University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In this episode of The Archive Project, we feature poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong from Portland Arts & Lectures in January 2022. Hong became nationally famous in the spring of 2020 for her essay collection Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, a book so searing and powerful it landed her on the cover of Time magazine's 2021 issue featuring the 100 most influential people in the world. Minor Feelings is a collection of seven essays is both a deeply personal account of Hong becoming—and being—an artist, and is also an account of her and her family's experience as Korean Americans in this country. But she has emphasized that this is a book about America, not necessarily about being Asian. It is also a book infused with her sensibility as a poet, as someone who is fascinated with the endless mutability and power of language. Hong has published three acclaimed collections of poetry, and many listeners who know and have read Minor Feelings might be surprised to learn she primarily identifies as a poet not as an essayist. The theme of her talk is “community and belonging” and she threads a narrative through pop culture, religion, autobiography, and 20th century history, in order to try to understand the rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans during the pandemic, and the broader discrimination so many Americans experience in their daily lives. That she does this with anger, humor, and tenderness speaks to her remarkable powers as a writer and speaker. Cathy Park Hong is the author of three poetry collections and Minor Feelings, a New York Times bestselling book of creative nonfiction which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography and was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. Hong is a recipient of the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her poems have been published in Poetry, The New York Times, The Paris Review, McSweeney's, and other journals. She is the poetry editor of The New Republic and full professor at Rutgers University–Newark.
Naeem Murr is the author of the novel Every Exit Brings You Home, available from Murr is the author of three novels, including The Boy (a New York Times Notable Book) and The Perfect Man (longlisted for the Man Booker Prize). A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford, he's been awarded a regional Commonwealth Writers Prize, a PEN Beyond Margins Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Chicago. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Most people remember exactly where they were the week of March 11, 2020. Life suddenly stopped. The world went quiet. And for a brief moment, everything about our routines, priorities, and pace of life was thrown into question. Six years later, the world is loud and fast again. But the real question is: what were we supposed to learn from the moment when everything slowed down?In this episode, Ryan talks with award-winning author Chloe Dalton about the strange stillness of those early pandemic months and how one unexpected encounter with a wild hare during lockdown completely changed the way she thought about time, work, and the life she was building. Later in the episode, novelist Susan Straight joins the conversation to reflect on why it's important that we don't rush to forget that time and what remembering the pandemic can still teach us.
Photographer and educator Curran Hatleberg returns to PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf to discuss his latest monograph, Blood Green (TBW Books). Hatleberg reflects on how the photobook emerged from images left out of his earlier publication, River's Dream, and how revisiting those omissions opened a new way of thinking about editing, continuity, and the evolving life of a body of work. He speaks about the ethics at the center of his practice, an engagement with people grounded in mutual curiosity and respect, and the role of presence, both with and without the camera. Now balancing his life as an artist, partner, and father, Hatleberg considers how time reshapes practice. The episode concludes with a meditation on art making as a form of self-portraiture, a record of who we were at a given moment. https://curranhatleberg.com https://tbwbooks.com/products/blood-green?_pos=2&_psq=curran&_ss=e&_v=1.0 Curran Hatleberg is a photographer based in Baltimore, MD. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including recent exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the High Museum, MASS MoCA, the International Center of Photography and Higher Pictures. In 2019, Hatleberg was featured in the Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art. His works are held in numerous public collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, SF MoMA, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the High Museum of Art among others. Hatleberg is the recipient of a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2020 Maryland State Arts Council Grant, a 2015 Magnum Emergency Fund grant, and a 2014 Aaron Siskind Foundation Individual Photographer's Fellowship grant. He has published five books, most recently Blood Green in 2025. Lost Coast, his first monograph, was released by TBW Books in fall 2016, and his second monograph, River's Dream, was published by TBW Books in 2022. Hatleberg has taught photography at numerous institutions, including Cooper Union and Yale University where he is currently a visiting critic in photography. He holds a BA in painting from the University of Colorado, Boulder and an MFA in photography from Yale University.
Jessica Dimmock's work focusses on humanistic and intimate storytelling. She is the recipient of numerous international awards for her photography and video work, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, three World Press Photo Awards for short films, The Inge Morath Award from Magnum, the F Award for Concerned Photography from Forma and Fabrica, The Infinity Award for Photojournalist of the Year from the International Center of Photography, and The Kodak Award for Best Cinematography at the Hamptons International Film Festival. She is a Sundance Edit and Story Lab Fellow, and her first feature film The Pearl was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the Dallas International Film Festival and was executive produced by Impact Partners. Her clients include HBO, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Microsoft, The UNFPA, Aperture, Showtime and PBS. She is the co-director of the Netflix series Flint Town as and directed on the reboot of Unsolved Mysteries and AppleTV's Home. In 2007 Jessica produced a photobook entitled The Ninth Floor (Contrasto). Her most recent film, co-directed with her partner Zackery Canepari, is Thoughts & Prayers: How to Survive an Active Shooter in America, focussing on the USA's $3 billion active shooter preparadness industry and its effects on teachers and students, released in 2025. In episode 277, Jessica Discusses, among other things: Current projects Her attraction to dark subject matter Her TV mini series Captive Audience Forming close relationships with her subject The random coffee shop interaction that changed her direction forever The chance encounter that led to her first big photography project and subsequent book, The Ninth Floor How the musician Moby played a part in her journey Serendipity and her project The Pearl The challenge of landing lucrative commercial work The Netflix series she co-directed, Flint Town Her most recent film Thoughts & Prayers: How to Survive an Active Shooter in America Website | Instagram Become a A Small Voice podcast member here to access exclusive additional subscriber-only content and the full archive of 200+ previous episodes for £5 per month. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here for everything A Small Voice related and much more besides. Follow me on Instagram here. Need a new website? I will build you one with Squarespace. Details here.