Podcasts about Katherine Boo

A acarinhada apresentadora Júlia Pinheiro é uma leitora voraz que até recomenda leituras nas suas redes e, no meio do clube de leitura, do seu programa de TV, podcast e até uma peça de teatro, veio a este podcast com a difícil tarefa de escolher apenas algumas leituras que de gostou muito. Acabo esta temporada com uma convidada que me faz sentir que assim... vale a pena. Obrigada e até breve. As escolhas da Júlia:A Pátria, Fernando Aramburu;O Deus das Pequenas Coisas, Arundhati Roy;O Leitor, Bernhard Schlink;Nem Todas as Árvores Morrem de Pé, Luísa Sobral.Memórias de Adriano, Marguerite Yourcenar;Outras referências:O Regresso dos Andorinhões, Fernando Aramburu;O Sonho de Uma Outra Vida, Katherine Boo;A Neta, Bernhard Schlink.Recomendei: Shantaram, Gregory David Roberts;Velar por Ela, Jean-Baptiste Andrea;Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie:O Inventário de Sonhos;Americanah.Ofereci:Verão no Lago, Ann Patchett;A qualquer momento, Liane Moriarty.O Podcast: Menos Pausa.A Peça de teatro: a mais velha profissão do mundo.Os livros aqui:www.wook.pt

Ruth Dickey, Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, joins us to talk about her connection to the organization, the process of judging the National Book Awards, who she is as a reader and more with Miwa Messer, host of Poured Over. We end this episode with TBR Top Off book recommendations from Marc, Jamie, and Donald. This episode of Poured Over was hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang.                      New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app  Featured Books (Episode):  March: Book Three by John Lewis  Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward  Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward  Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson  My Friends by Hisham Matar  Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu  Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah  The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty   Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange  Featured Books (TBR Top Off):  The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard  Behind the Beautiful Forever by Katherine Boo  The Shipping News by Annie Proulx 

In this edition, I speak with Amee Parbhoo, Managing Partner of Accion Venture Lab, a leading global seed-stage investor in inclusive fintech startups. Accion Venture Lab is part of Accion, the pioneering nonprofit that has been investing in financial inclusion for the last six decades.I was excited to speak with Amee because she's on the front lines of identifying technologies that expand access to capital and financial services.In addition to getting an update on the fintech landscape, I was particularly keen to hear Amee's thoughts on how she sees the sector evolving — from one in which fintechs enabled the provision of traditional financial services, to one where startups are developing vertical-specific solutions with embedded finance. Amee shares a few of the verticals and themes she's particularly excited about, as well as a superb book recommendation … one of my favorites, in fact.Thanks, as always, for listening. I hope you enjoy this episode — and if you do, you should share it with friends, and if you feel so inclined, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts so that more listeners can discover this type of content.This podcast was recorded in April 2023.---Learn more about Accion Venture LabRead the Center for Financial Inclusion's report Green Inclusive FinanceGrab a copy of Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers---Music credit: Daniel Allan, “Too Close” released on Sound. You can learn more about Daniel's community-owned DAO that underwrote his latest EP here. (Disclosure: In addition to the “Too Close” NFT, Portico's founder Michael Casey owns $OVERSTIM tokens, as well as many other music NFTs; one of his Sound collector profiles is available here).

Turns out Russian mercenaries stand ready to troll journalists and produce big-budget action movies in war-torn African countries. Neil Munshi, West Africa Editor now for Bloomberg, went to the Central African Republic to report on that mercenary group, while writing an award-winning series of stories seeking to explain the conflicts raging in most of the countries in the region.  Countries featured: Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Mali, India, USA, Nepal Publications featured: GQ, Times of India, GQ India, Financial Times, Bloomberg   Here are links to some of the things we talked about: Neil's award winning series on West Africa (free to read) - https://bit.ly/3pdXsAx His story about a film glorifying mercenaries - https://on.ft.com/3phIfOJ F1 Drive to Survive doc series trailer - https://bit.ly/3Poug4q Zikoko's NairaLife - https://bit.ly/3Qjq07s The Journalist and the Murderer - https://bit.ly/3QuHIVS What It's Like to Fight a Megafire in New Yorker - https://bit.ly/3dsN84S Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo - https://bit.ly/3QrOiwi   Follow us on Twitter @foreignpod or on Facebook at facebook.com/foreignpod Music: LoveChances (makaih.com) by Makaih Beats From: freemusicarchive.org CC BY NC

A Catarina revela uma paixoneta antiga e até lhe escreveu uma carta... Fala de desigualdades, de mudanças que têm de ser feitas, de livros que deviam ser obrigatórios para todos. E até dá uma ideia para o meu próximo Podcast, e quer participar. Boa conversa, venham daí... Os livros que a multifacetada Catarina trouxe: - O Sonho de uma outra vida, Katherine Boo; - As estradas são para ir, Márcia; - Querida Jeawele, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; - Todos devemos ser feministas, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; - Anos de Chumbo, Chico Buarque.

Today is the birthday of investigative journalist Katherine Boo, 1984, who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2000 for articles around abuse of the intellectually disabled.

Deep in the jungle, Fabiano Maisonnave finds amazing stories to tell. He is the only correspondent for a major Brazilian newspaper to be based in the Amazon rainforest region. Long before he reported on remote Amazon tribes, Fabiano tells us about leaving his first assignment in farm country over death threats. He then sets off on a long period as a foreign correspondent, covering Latin America from all over the region, and later becoming Folha’s correspondent in Beijing.  Countries featured: Brazil, Venezuela, Honduras, China Publications featured: Folha de S.Paulo Fabiano discusses growing up in a closed community around a megadam project during the Brazilian dictatorship (7:45), his first job digging into corruption in Brazil’s farm country and being run out of town (15:10), reporting around Latin America, including a coup in Honduras that left him in close quarters with the ousted president (22:21), moving to China to report on everything from fake shoes to geopolitics (26:45), returning to Brazil to report on the Amazon (33:19), the story that got away about a political murder in the early 2000s (38:56), rooting out a corrupt businessman attempting to bribe indigenous to mine their territory (43:55), dangers and challenges of reporting in the rainforest and living in Manaus (49:09) and finally the lightning round (59:38).    Here are links to some of the things we talked about: Jake’s story on the Brazilian military in the Amazon - https://reut.rs/3w0b0Se Fabiano’s story on traditional runaway slave communities (English) - https://bit.ly/3tZkV8Y Fabiano’s english language work on Climate Home - https://bit.ly/3cqKSbg His story on a polluted waterfall (Portuguese) - https://bit.ly/3cqftpy Fabiano’s story on Chinese knockoff shoes (Portuguese) - https://bit.ly/3lSSuXo His story on attempts to bribe indigenous to mine their land (Portugese) - https://bit.ly/3conWcK His story accompanying indigenous attempting to shut down illegal mines (Portuguese) -  https://bit.ly/3tZ8Z6S Amazonia Real (Portuguese) - https://bit.ly/39lkWMn NYT Book Review podcast - https://apple.co/3fk1Bij Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo - https://amzn.to/2UpGXSm Harry Hole by Jo Nesbo wiki - https://bit.ly/3lXnGVb Ten Days that Shook the World by John Reed - https://amzn.to/39jsgbz   Follow us on Twitter @foreignpod or on Facebook at facebook.com/foreignpod Music: LoveChances (makaihbeats.net) by Makaih Beats From: freemusicarchive.org CC BY NC

We are on the cusp of a radical paradigm shift in worldviews. It is as if two tectonic plates are rubbing up against one another. One is called “Datastan” – the paradigm that quantifies, counts, measures, and commoditizes everything. The other is “The Republic of Stories” where diversity, the artist, individual stories, and every contribution matters. Arlene Goldbard is a writer, speaker, consultant, workshop leader, and cultural activist whose focus is the intersection of culture, politics, spirituality, the arts and artists. She is a fierce advocate for the power of human creative expression. Her books include Creative Community: The Art of Cultural Development (New Village Press 2006), The Culture of Possibility: Art, Artists & the Future (Waterlight Press 2013) and The Wave (Waterlight Press 2013) Interview Date: 6/11/2013 Tags: MP3, Arlene Goldbard, datastan, Republic of Story, Corporate Nation, No Child Left Behind, prisons, unemployment, Move to Amend, hope, Story Teller Corp, Trash Dance, graffiti, billboards, customer service, storytelling, Katherine Boo, poverty, confirmation bias, art, artist, music, occupy movement, Roadside Theater, Augusto Boal, Social Change/Politics, Art & Creativity, Business, Community

We are on the cusp of a radical paradigm shift in worldviews. It is as if two tectonic plates are rubbing up against one another. One is called “Datastan” – the paradigm that quantifies, counts, measures, and commoditizes everything. The other is “The Republic of Stories” where diversity, the artist, individual stories, and every contribution matters. Arlene Goldbard is a writer, speaker, consultant, workshop leader, and cultural activist whose focus is the intersection of culture, politics, spirituality, the arts and artists. She is a fierce advocate for the power of human creative expression. Her books include Creative Community: The Art of Cultural Development (New Village Press 2006), The Culture of Possibility: Art, Artists & the Future (Waterlight Press 2013) and The Wave (Waterlight Press 2013) Interview Date: 6/11/2013    Tags: MP3, Arlene Goldbard, datastan, Republic of Story, Corporate Nation, No Child Left Behind, prisons, unemployment, Move to Amend, hope, Story Teller Corp, Trash Dance, graffiti, billboards, customer service, storytelling, Katherine Boo, poverty, confirmation bias, art, artist, music, occupy movement, Roadside Theater, Augusto Boal, Social Change/Politics, Art & Creativity, Business, Community

Meera Syal stars in a National Theatre adaptation of Katherine Boo's bestselling non-fiction novel, Behind The Beautiful Forevers, which vividly depicts life in a Mumbai slum.

Welcome to a special episode…Winter 2019 Book Preview with Catherine of Gilmore Guide to Books! Catherine and I share our most anticipated books coming out in January, February, and March of 2019. Also, stay tuned for my Most Anticipated Books of Winter 2019 blog post, which is coming out tomorrow. I’ll share some of the books I talked about in this podcast, but also many that I didn’t! Highlights The similarities and differences between Catherine’s and my reading taste. How Catherine and I choose which books to read. Why we need Brain Candy in our reading. How well do you want to know the author behind the work? Winter 2019 Book Preview January Sarah’s Picks: Sugar Run by Mesha Maron (January 8) | Buy from Amazon [7:31] Joy Enough by Sarah McColl (January 15) | Buy from Amazon [10:50] Otherwise Engaged by Lindsey J. Palmer (Publication Date Changed to February 26) | Buy from Amazon [13:56] Catherine’s Picks: The Only Woman in the Room by Marie Benedict (January 8) | Buy from Amazon [9:26] Unmarriagable by Soniah Kamal (January 22) | Buy from Amazon [12:45] The Current by Tim Johnston (January 22) | Buy from Amazon [16:29] February Sarah’s Picks: Bowlaway by Elizabeth McCracken (February 5) | Buy from Amazon [18:40] American Pop by Snowden Wright (February 5) | Buy from Amazon [22:58] The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray (February 19) | Buy from Amazon [26:47] The Lost Prince: A Search for Pat Conroy by Michael Mewshaw (February 26) | Buy from Amazon [30:09] Catherine’s Picks: I Owe You One by Sophie Kinsella (February 5) | Buy from Amazon [20:42] The Chef’s Secret by Crystal King (February 12) | Buy from Amazon [25:36] Death is Hard Work by Khaled Khalifa (February 12) | Buy from Amazon [28:27] March Sarah’s Picks: So, Here’s the Thing: Notes on Growing Up, Getting Older, and Trusting Your Gut by Alyssa Mastromonaco (March 5) | Buy from Amazon [34:36] White Elephant by Julia Langsdorf (March 26) | Buy from Amazon [39:27] Catherine’s Picks: The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See (March 5) | Buy from Amazon [33:10] A People’s History of Heaven by Mathangi Subramanian (March 19) | Buy from Amazon [37:19] The Other Americans by Laila Lalami (March 26) | Buy from Amazon [42:14] Other Books Mentioned Fates & Furies by Lauren Groff (My Review) | Buy from Amazon [8:00] An American Marriage (My Review) | Buy from Amazon [8:20] The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid (My Review) | Buy from Amazon[9:44] Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong (My Review) | Buy from Amazon [11:27] Tell Me More by Kelly Corrigan (My Review) | Buy from Amazon [12:27] Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake by Anna Quindlen | Buy from Amazon [12:36] Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen | Buy from Amazon [12:59] The Hopefuls by Jennifer Close (My Review) | Buy from Amazon [16:00] Descent by Tim Johnston | Buy from Amazon [16:34] Commonwealth by Ann Patchett (My Review) | Buy from Amazon [19:22] The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne (My Review) | Buy from Amazon [20:06] A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne (My Review) | Buy from Amazon [20:14] Feast of Sorrow by Crystal King | Buy from Amazon [25:43] An American Marriage by Tayari Jones (My Review) | Buy from Amazon [28:03] The Mothers by Brit Bennett (My Review) | Buy from Amazon [28:09] Beach Music by Pat Conroy | Buy from Amazon [30:54] The Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See | Buy from Amazon [33:18] Shanghai Girls by Lisa See | Buy from Amazon [33:18] The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See | Buy from Amazon [34:20] Who Thought This Was a Good Idea? by Alyssa Mastromonaco | Buy from Amazon [35:04] Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo | Buy from Amazon [38:35] Alternate Side by Anna Quindlen (My Review) | Buy from Amazon [41:06] Final Girls by Riley Sager | Buy from Amazon [41:42] The Moor’s Account by Laila Lalami | Buy from Amazon [42:25] Other Links The New and Improved 2019 Rock Your Reading Tracker (available for purchase for $14.99) My Top Recommendation Sources of 2018 From the Front Porch podcast (co-hosted by Annie Jones and Chris Jensen) Spivey’s Club Facebook Group (founded by Ashley Spivey) The Affair (Showtime TV series) Book Riot’s All the Books Podcast: 2019 Preview About Catherine Gilmore Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram Catherine started The Gilmore Guide to Books over 6 years ago after wrapping up a career as a corporate librarian. She loves books and reading (surprise!) and currently lives in Seattle. Support the Podcast Share - If you like the podcast, I’d love for you to share it with your reader friends…in real life and on social media (there’s easy share buttons at the bottom of this post!). Subscribe...wherever you listen to podcasts, so new episodes will appear in your feed as soon as they’re released. Rate and Review - Search for “Sarah’s Book Shelves” in Apple Podcasts…or wherever you listen to podcasts! Feedback - I want this podcast to fit what you’re looking for, so I truly do want your feedback! Please tell me (email me at sarahsbookshelves@gmail.com or DM me on social media) what you like, don’t like, want more of, want less of, etc. I’d also love to hear topics you’d like me to cover and guests you’d like to hear from.

Steve Clemons of the Atlantic talks with MacArthur Genius Grant recipient and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Katherine Boo. Her bestseller, “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving for a better life in a Mumbai slum. Based on three years of uncompromising reporting, she puts a human face on issues of inequality. Series: "Helen Edison Lecture Series" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 33266]

Steve Clemons of the Atlantic talks with MacArthur Genius Grant recipient and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Katherine Boo. Her bestseller, “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving for a better life in a Mumbai slum. Based on three years of uncompromising reporting, she puts a human face on issues of inequality. Series: "Helen Edison Lecture Series" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 33266]

Steve Clemons of the Atlantic talks with MacArthur Genius Grant recipient and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Katherine Boo. Her bestseller, “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving for a better life in a Mumbai slum. Based on three years of uncompromising reporting, she puts a human face on issues of inequality. Series: "Helen Edison Lecture Series" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 33266]

Steve Clemons of the Atlantic talks with MacArthur Genius Grant recipient and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Katherine Boo. Her bestseller, “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving for a better life in a Mumbai slum. Based on three years of uncompromising reporting, she puts a human face on issues of inequality. Series: "Helen Edison Lecture Series" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 33266]

Steve Clemons of the Atlantic talks with MacArthur Genius Grant recipient and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Katherine Boo. Her bestseller, “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving for a better life in a Mumbai slum. Based on three years of uncompromising reporting, she puts a human face on issues of inequality. Series: "Helen Edison Lecture Series" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 33266]

Steve Clemons of the Atlantic talks with MacArthur Genius Grant recipient and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Katherine Boo. Her bestseller, “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving for a better life in a Mumbai slum. Based on three years of uncompromising reporting, she puts a human face on issues of inequality. Series: "Helen Edison Lecture Series" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 33266]

  “We hear, in the media and in comments by politicians, a lot of very glib statements that oversimplify China, that suggest all of China is one thing or one way,” says Michael Szonyi, a professor of Chinese history and director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. China, of course, is as complicated as — if not more complicated than — any other country, and misunderstandings about it among Americans are both common and consequential. The relationship with China is “arguably — in anyone’s estimation — the most important bilateral relationship that the U.S. has,” says Jennifer Rudolph, a professor of modern Chinese political history at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Jennifer and Michael edited a book to address 36 questions that ordinary people, especially Americans, ask about China. The book is titled The China Questions: Critical Insights Into a Rising Power, and it draws on the expertise of the Fairbank Center and prompts these accomplished academics to write 2,000-word essays for a general audience that they typically never aim to reach. View the entire list of questions on the Harvard University Press website. A sampling: “Is the Chinese Communist Regime Legitimate?” (by Elizabeth J. Perry) “Is There Environmental Awareness in China?” (by Karen Thornber) “Will China Lead Asia?” (by Odd Arne Westad) “What Does the Rise of China Mean for the United States?” (by Robert S. Ross) “Can China and Japan Ever Get Along?” (by Ezra F. Vogel) “Will Urbanization Save the Chinese Economy or Destroy It?” (by Meg Rithmire) “Why Does the End of the One-Child Policy Matter?” (by Susan Greenhalgh) “Why Do Classic Chinese Novels Matter?” (by Wai-yee Li) Recommendations: Jeremy: Drawn Together: The Collected Works of R. and A. Crumb, by Robert Crumb and Aline Kominsky-Crumb. The husband-and-wife pair became known for their funny, vulgar comics in the late 1970s, though Robert’s zany work goes back a decade earlier. Jennifer: Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, by Katherine Boo. A work of creative nonfiction about a young boy and his family, and how the system is stacked against them. Michael: The Fairbank Center website, which features a blog and a podcast. Also, Michael’s new book, titled The Art of Being Governed: Everyday Politics in Late Imperial China. And The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World, by Greg Grandin. Kaiser: The North Water: A Novel, by Ian McGuire. A dramatic tale that includes whaling, murder, and brutality, and whose overall flavor Kaiser describes as Joseph Conrad meets Cormac McCarthy meets Herman Melville meets Jack London.

In this episode my sister, Sharon, and I discuss the book Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo. Twitter: https://twitter.com/ruthrootz Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ruthrootz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ruthrootz/ Blog: Rootz’s Blog: https://blogbyrootz.blogspot.com Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/better-with-books/id1293449772?mt=2 Anchor: https://anchor.fm/betterwithbooks RadioPublic: https://play.radiopublic.com/better-with-books-WwDRqy Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=185181 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc-cBvKXkTgAyDLm7uYQaEQ?view_as=subscriber SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/betterwithbooks email: rootzmacbwb@gmail.com

Katherine Boo, Anand Giridharadas, and Philip Gourevitch are all past winners of the Library's Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism, which celebrates its 30 anniversary this year. They came to the Library to speak on the shifting responsibilities, purposes, and even definitions of journalism.

Hello listeners! For Women's History Month, we're featuring six nonfiction books by six amazing women. Books Mentioned in this Episode The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher http://amzn.to/2lw5K4b Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff http://amzn.to/2maLWXG Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly http://amzn.to/2mqpLNN Bad Girls Throughout History: 100 Remarkable Women Who Changed the World by Ann Shen http://amzn.to/2lQVNRv Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo http://amzn.to/2l98bO0 Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein http://amzn.to/2lw4NZt Contact hello@readingwomenpodcast.com | readingwomenpodcast.com Litsy, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram: @thereadingwomen Music “Stickybee” by Josh Woodard Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We are on the cusp of a radical paradigm shift in worldviews. It is as if two tectonic plates are rubbing up against one another. One is called “Datastan” – the paradigm that quantifies, counts, measures, and commoditizes everything. The other is “The Republic of Stories” where diversity, the artist, individual stories, and every contribution matters. Tags: Arlene Goldbard, datastan, Republic of Story, Corporate Nation, No Child Left Behind, prisons, unemployment, Move to Amend, hope, Story Teller, Trash Dance, graffiti, billboards, customer service, storytelling, Katherine Boo, poverty, confirmation bias, art, artist, music, occupy movement, Roadside Theater, Augusto Boal, Social Change, Politics, Art & Creativity, Business, Community

We are on the cusp of a radical paradigm shift in worldviews. It is as if two tectonic plates are rubbing up against one another. One is called “Datastan” – the paradigm that quantifies, counts, measures, and commoditizes everything. The other is “The Republic of Stories” where diversity, the artist, individual stories, and every contribution matters. Tags: Arlene Goldbard, datastan, Republic of Story, Corporate Nation, No Child Left Behind, prisons, unemployment, Move to Amend, hope, Story Teller, Trash Dance, graffiti, billboards, customer service, storytelling, Katherine Boo, poverty, confirmation bias, art, artist, music, occupy movement, Roadside Theater, Augusto Boal, Social Change, Politics, Art & Creativity, Business, Community

In this episode, the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute hosts an evening of readings and conversations with three acclaimed authors: Katherine Boo, Geoff Dyer, Adam Johnson, and Jen Kramer. The event was held October 15, 2016 at the Inspire Theater in Las Vegas, NV.

The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine (Penguin Press) From an award-winning journalist, a brave and necessary immersion into the everyday struggles of Palestinian life. Over the past three years, American writer Ben Ehrenreich has been traveling to and living in the West Bank, staying with Palestinian families in its largest cities and its smallest villages. Along the way he has written major stories for American outlets, including a remarkable "New York Times Magazine" cover story. Now comes the powerful new work that has always been his ultimate goal, The Way to the Spring.  We are familiar with brave journalists who travel to bleak or war-torn places on a mission to listen and understand, to gather the stories of people suffering from extremes of oppression and want: Katherine Boo, Ryszard Kapuciski, Ted Conover, and Philip Gourevitch among them. Palestine is, by any measure, whatever one's politics, one such place. Ruled by the Israeli military, set upon and harassed constantly by Israeli settlers who admit unapologetically to wanting to drive them from the land, forced to negotiate an ever more elaborate and more suffocating series of fences, checkpoints, and barriers that have sundered home from field, home from home, this is a population whose living conditions are unique, and indeed hard to imagine. In a great act of bravery, empathy and understanding, Ben Ehrenreich, by placing us in the footsteps of ordinary Palestinians and telling their story with surpassing literary power and grace, makes it impossible for us to turn away. Praise for The Way to the Spring "Ben Ehrenreich's rendition of the Palestinian experience is powerful, deep and heartbreaking, so much closer to the ground than the Middle East reporting we usually see. I wish there were more writers as brave."--Adam Hochschild "As heart-breaking as it is, The Way to the Spring is also a strangely joyful book, because Ehrenreich grasps the essence of the Palestinian struggle: not Islam, or even nationalism, but the stubborn refusal of injustice, the restless search for how it would feel to be free, as Nina Simone said. The Way to the Spring is more than a work of journalism. It is a freedom song, burning with humanity."--Adam Shatz Ben Ehrenreich is a journalist whose writing has appeared in LA Weekly, the Village Voice, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times Book Review, and many other publications. He lives in Los Angeles. 

Poison Boy is back - shot out of a cannon with a raging hangover but determined to make the post. With Safety Ranger Big Dog, we discuss the heck out of the whole Spice, K2, Loud synthetic cannabinoid mess, dropping knowledge bombs right and left. The Venomous Media Review focuses on BEHIND THE BEAUTIFUL FOREVERS by Katherine Boo and the use of Eraz-ex by the inhabitants of a Mumbai undercity and even with all that, we still have time to talk about Movember, spruce beer, George Takei, Howard Stern, ALLEGIANCE on Broadway all wrapped up in the gorgeous guitar work of Bahamas. almost makes the hangover worthwhile.

Multiple New York Times bestselling author Daniel Pink stopped by The Writer Files to chat about his secrets for getting words onto the page.   Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By   Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. Start getting more from your site today! Mr. Pink is the author of five provocative titles on the subjects of business, work, and human behavior — including To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others — and has written for The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, The Sunday Telegraph, Fast Company, and Wired. In addition to having one of the most viewed TED talks of all time — “The puzzle of motivation” — Dan recently hosted and co-executive produced the TV series “Crowd Control” for the National Geographic Channel. In this file Daniel Pink and I discuss: Why You Should Never Check Email Before You Write The Effectiveness of Word Count Quotas Why the Adage “Butt-in-Chair” Really Works How to Structure Your Writing Schedule to Beat “Resistance” The Author’s Exhaustive Reading Recommendations His Fantasy Chipotle Table Guests And Why You Need to Get Over Yourself and Get to Work Listen to The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes http://www.danpink.com/ Dan Pink’s TED talk: “The puzzle of motivation” Crowd Control on National Geographic Channel Daniel Pink on Twitter Kelton Reid on Twitter The Transcript How Bestselling Author Daniel Pink Writes Voiceover: This is Rainmaker.FM, the digital marketing podcast network. It’s built on the Rainmaker Platform, which empowers you to build your own digital marketing and sales platform. Start your free 14-day trial at RainmakerPlatform.com. Kelton Reid: These are The Writer Files, a tour of the habits, habitats, and brains of working writers, from online content creators to fictionists, journalists, entrepreneurs, and beyond. I’m your host Kelton Reid: writer, podcaster, and mediaphile. Each week, we’ll find out how great writers keep the ink flowing, the cursor moving, and avoid writer’s block. Multiple New York Times bestselling author, Daniel Pink stopped by The Writer Files to chat about his secrets for getting words onto the page. Mr. Pink is the author of five provocative titles on the subjects of business, work, and human behavior, including To Sell Is Human, The Surprising Truth About Moving Others. He’s also written for The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, The Sunday Telegraph, Fast Company, and Wired. In addition to having one of the most viewed TED Talks of all time, The Puzzle of Motivation, Dan recently hosted and co-executive produced the TV series Crowd Control for the National Geographic Channel. In this File, Daniel and I discuss why you should never check email before you write, the effectiveness of word-count quotas, whether the adage ‘butt-in-chair” really works, how to structure your writing schedule to beat resistance, and why you need to get over yourself and get to work. If you enjoy The Writer Files podcast, please do me a favor and leave a rating or a review in iTunes to help other writers find us. Thanks for listening. Dan, thanks so much for agreeing to come on The Writer Files and update your file. Daniel Pink: I’m happy to be here. Actually, I thought that this was The Rockford Files. Kelton Reid: I think that’s been off the air. Daniel Pink: I thought it’d be so cool. I’m going to be on The Rockford Files. I thought that show was off the air. Kelton Reid: Now that you know that you’re not on The Rockford Files, would you like to update your writer file? Daniel Pink: Sure, why not. Kelton Reid: Absolutely. Let’s talk about you the author. For listeners who may not know you or your work, who are you, and what is your area of expertise as a writer? Daniel Pink: Who am I? I am Daniel Pink. I am a middle-aged white man who lives in Washington, D.C. For the last 18 years, I have been working for myself and mostly centered around writing books. The books tend to be about business, work, and human behavior. Kelton Reid: Where can we find your writing? Daniel Pink: You can find it at your local library, in your favorite online or offline bookstore. You can find it online at DanPink.com. Kelton Reid: What are you presently working on, Dan? Daniel Pink: I am working on anticipating your next question. No, I’m not. Actually, believe it or not, Kelton, I am in the throes of trying to write a few book proposals to see which is the next book I want to write. Kelton Reid: To see which one sticks? Daniel Pink: Yeah. Here’s the thing. Even though I’ve been doing this for a fairly long time, I still try to write fairly thorough proposals before I launch into a book. That’s less for the publisher than it is for me. It offers me a way to stress test the idea to see whether I’m interested in it, to see whether it holds up, to see whether I want to spend the next two years working on this kind of thing. That’s what I’m doing right now. I’m actually writing multiple proposals just to see which one or ones feel the best. Kelton Reid: Yeah, technically this is what nonfiction writers do to get the ball rolling there. Actually, listeners may not know that you are also a TV producer. Daniel Pink: Well, barely, yeah. Kelton Reid: TV producer is code for also writer. Were you writing your National Geographic show as well? Daniel Pink: A little bit of it. What I was doing more than anything else was actually helping conceive the segments, figure out the segments, lay them out. Also, the way that we did the show required a lot of on-the-fly decisions. For the handful of listeners who didn’t see every episode of the show, Crowd Control, I should point out that the show was a really great show on National Geographic. We did 12 episodes of a series where we took problems out there in the world, things like people speeding, people jaywalking, people parking in disabled spaces, kids peeing in pools. Then, using social science and some cool design technology, we would put a solution in place, turn on our cameras, and see what happened. A lot of the ‘producing’ was actually on the fly where we do the experiment and see how people reacted. You had to figure out, “Okay, what’s going on here? How are we going to cover this?” and so forth. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Thinking on your feet quite a bit. Daniel Pink: Yeah. Kelton Reid: Very cool. When you’re getting ready to launch into a bigger writing project, how much time would you say per day that you’re researching or reading about your topic? Why You Should Never Check Email Before You Write Daniel Pink: It really depends. My process, generally, for a nonfiction book, is to begin with a skeletal outline. It depends on how I’m doing the research. If it’s research that involves reading a lot of papers and so forth, that’s one thing. If it involves doing actual reporting where you’re going out interviewing people, watching stuff happening, that’s another story. In the reporting and research phase, I like to spend, where I can, most of the workday on it. Kelton Reid: Before you sit down to actually get clacking there, do you have any pre-game rituals or practices that get you in the mode? Daniel Pink: Pre-game rituals, no. What I will do many times is I’ll check my email just to make sure that there isn’t something urgent. That’s always a really bad idea. You just go down the rabbit hole of useless email. In terms of do I say any prayers, have rosary beads, or spin three times on my desk, I don’t do anything like that. I just open the door and put my butt in the chair. Kelton Reid: Very nice. Do you write every day when you’re working on something big? The Effectiveness of Word Count Quotas Daniel Pink: When I’m working on something big, I do. When I’m working on a book or it’s at that stage where I’ve done enough research, where I feel like I’ve more or less mastered a lot of the material and can move on to executing it, I actually think of it as bricklaying where I’ll come to my office, show up in my office at a certain time, like say 9:00. I’ll set myself a word count for the day. Let’s say 500 words. I will then turn off my phone, turn off my email, and then I will do nothing, truly nothing, until I hit my word count. If I hit my word count at 11:00 in the morning, hallelujah. If it’s 2:00 in the afternoon and I still haven’t hit my word count, I’m not going anywhere. I’ll cancel meetings and cancel phone calls in the afternoon if it takes me till. 8:00 in the evening, which it actually has unfortunately. I won’t do anything else. Kelton Reid: Got you. Is your most productive locale your office there that we’ve seen pictures of? Daniel Pink: Ah, yes, the beautiful Pink Ink world headquarters, which is a refurbished garage behind my house in Washington, D.C. That’s where the magic happens. Kelton Reid: Are you a writer who can listen to music while you write, or do you prefer silence? Daniel Pink: I can listen to music when I run or exercise. That’s it, or just listening to music for the sake of listening to music. I actually have the exact opposite view when I write. I have these little foam earplugs that I sometimes will put in just in case some imaginary sound is out there. I also even now have noise-canceling headphones that I will wear. I like silence. That way I can tune in more accurately to my own anguish. Kelton Reid: I like that. Are you someone who believes in writer’s block? Why the Adage ‘Butt-in-Chair’ Really Works Daniel Pink: No. I think writer’s block is a crock. I really do. I think that most writers agree with that. Writer’s block is for amateurs. Get your butt in the seat, and get to work. Kelton Reid: Let’s talk about your workflow. What hardware or typewriter are you using there in the garage? Daniel Pink: I’ve moved beyond typewriters, fortunately. Here’s what I’ve got in the setup. I’m looking at it right now. I have both a MacBook Air laptop and a 21-inch screen, maybe 25-inch screen iMac. I use my laptop, my Air for a lot of things. I actually will write books or even articles on the iMac. I don’t know why I do that. Because the screen is so big, I can put up a lot of stuff. The other thing that it does is it does fix me in place. Even though the files exist in Dropbox, I could do it anywhere. There’s something about that fixedness of coming to the same spot every single day, looking at the same screen every single day that helps me do stuff. Kelton Reid: What do you find in your workflow your most used software for writing and staying organized? Daniel Pink: For writing, I have made a dramatic leap into 1996 by using Word, although, as I said before, Dropbox is my co-pilot. I’ve become so reliant on putting everything in Dropbox. I have, though, being a modern guy, I’ve started to use Evernote a little bit. I can easily get by with Word and Dropbox. Kelton Reid: Your crucial outlining, that’s part of your organizational method. Do you have any other hacks, or are you a Post-it note guy at all? Daniel Pink: You know what I am? It’s interesting. It’s interesting to me because it’s about me. I’m not sure it’s interesting to anybody else. I use what I refer to as an — and this is a term of art — big-ass stickies, which are these giant Post-it notes. I prefer the graph paper versions of them. There’s something about graph paper that I love. It just makes me feel like I’m imposing some order on a world moving toward entropy or something. I don’t use whiteboard. I will use these big-ass stickies and put them all over my office. I like to write on stuff. I like to outline. I like to see it. I like to see stuff. I face a window, but if I turn my chair around, there’s a wall of cabinets. When I was writing this book, To Sell Is Human, I would have various outlines and things there. Sometimes, it sounds bizarre, but it actually works for me. Sometimes I will just turn my chair and look at the outlines, just look at them, and let it simmer a little bit. For me, seeing that stuff on the walls is really helpful. Kelton Reid: Do you have any best practices for beating procrastination? I know you’ve mentioned it. Are you someone who leans into the procrastination? How to Structure Your Writing Schedule to Beat ‘Resistance’ Daniel Pink: Yeah, I think that I and many people, most writers face what Steven Pressfield calls the ‘Resistance’ every single day. All of the forces of the universe are conspiring to make you stop writing. I think that what helps beat procrastination is as weird as it is, is a structure. When I go to sleep the night before, I know what I’m doing that next morning. I’m writing 500 words. I don’t want to get to the office, turn on my computer and say, “Huh, what should I do today? Should I type in ESPN.go.com and spend an hour there, or should I write 500 words? Hmmm, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll do the ESPN thing.” I don’t want to have that. I want to have the structure to say, “The choice is made for me. Here’s what you do.” That’s how I beat procrastination. Kelton Reid: Nice. Daniel Pink: Sometimes procrastination wins. Procrastination is a ferocious opponent. Kelton Reid: Well put. At the end of a long day, how do you unplug? Daniel Pink: I’m a pretty boring guy. I don’t really do all that much, Kelton. My wife and I have three kids. I actually spend a lot of time, compared to maybe some other people, I like to spend time with my family. I just like talking to them, hanging out with them. That’s one thing that I do. Especially when I’m writing, I try to run every day if I possibly can. When we’re done here today, I will go for a run, probably go faster because I’m so exhilarated by talking about myself. I like to eat good food and drink good wine. Because I’m on the verge of being an old man, I like to listen to baseball on the radio. Kelton Reid: Very nice. Daniel Pink: I basically just ensured that no one would ever want to hang out with me. Voiceover: Just a quick pause to mention that The Writer Files is brought to you by the Rainmaker Platform, the complete website solution for content marketers and online entrepreneurs. Find out more and take a free 14-day test drive at Rainmaker.FM/Platform. Kelton Reid: Let’s talk about creativity a little bit. I know in your work creativity is a big part of getting into … a lot of what you talk about involves storytelling and even though you talk about social behavior and psychology, can you define creativity in your own words? How Dan Defines Creativity, Sans a Muse Daniel Pink: Creativity is giving the world something it didn’t know it was missing. That’s my favorite definition. I think that the definition originally came from Paola Antonelli at the Museum of Modern Art. Kelton Reid: When do you personally feel the most creative? Daniel Pink: Aside from right now? Kelton Reid: Yes. Daniel Pink: Yeah, when do I feel the most creative? It’s weird. I actually sometimes feel the most creative when I’m in motion, whether I’m running or traveling somewhere. I get a lot of good ideas when I’m in motion. Kelton Reid: I’ve had many of guests actually mention that they get a lot of work done on the plane. Do you find that phenomenon as well? Daniel Pink: I can’t write on planes. I probably could if I had to. I don’t like writing on planes. It’s just not the right environment for me for whatever weird idiosyncrasies. I can focus pretty intently on planes. I can edit on planes. I’ll edit pages. This is just another just really exciting facet of my life. I will sometimes batch my email and spend an airplane ride answering 70 emails. Kelton Reid: Circling back to our friend who talks about Resistance, do you have a creative muse? Daniel Pink: No, come on. I’m a bricklayer who happens to use a computer. Do people really give you a serious answer to that? Kelton Reid: I don’t know. Daniel Pink: I’m serious. Come on, do people say, “Oh yes, my creative muse is named Daphne and she appears to me in the corner of my office every day at 8:00.” Kelton Reid: Sure. Daniel Pink: Come on. Kelton Reid: It probably should be redacted. Daniel Pink: No, I like it. It’s basically a test to see who’s full of it and who’s not. I think if the answer is yes, you should cease the interview. Kelton Reid: This interview’s over so, in your opinion, what makes a writer great? Daniel Pink: That’s an interesting question. What makes a writer great? I think it’s the ability to look at something that other people have looked at and see something entirely different, if that makes any sense. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Daniel Pink: I think that’s part of it. I also think it’s the ability to linger in somebody’s mind long after the encounter is over. I think that’s a mark of a really good writer. Kelton Reid: Do you have some favorite authors at the moment? Dan’s Exhaustive Reading Recommendations Daniel Pink: Gazillions of them. I think there’s so many, so many, so many good writers out there. I think that you can learn from lots of them. I would have to give you not an exhaustive, but just a gigantic, massive list. For instance, Michael Lewis, the guy’s unbelievably good. It’s irritating how good he is. He’s really just extraordinary. I would put Michael Lewis on the top of any list. Katherine Boo, who is a journalist, I think she’s extraordinary. I like the short story writer, novelist sometimes, Edgar Keret, Israeli guy, who writes these super short, iddy biddy short stories. I like the Japanese novelist Haruki Muraukami. I like Junot Diaz. I love Colson Whitehead, another novelist. In my world, I also like Malcolm Gladwell. Some people think it’s uncool, but I think he’s awesome. I like sheer business writers like Seth Godin and Tom Peters. My favorite novel in the last decade is a book called Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by a guy named Ben Fountain. I like Phillip Roth. I like Toni Morrison, those kind of legendary writers. I like George Pelecanos, a local guy who writes. I like Adam Kilgore, who’s a sports writer for The Washington Post. I used to love reading Gary Smith’s stuff in Sports Illustrated. I think that Derek Thompson at The Atlantic is one of the best young writers around. There’s so many, so many great people. There’s so many. Kelton Reid: You share a lot of great quotes in your work and in your speaking. Can you share maybe a best loved quote that floats to the top right now? Daniel Pink: That floats to the top. I like the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote that says, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.” I like that. Also, there’s a great Viktor Frankl quote. Viktor Frankl says, “Live as if you were already living for a second time and as if you had made the mistakes you are about to make now.” I think that’s incredibly good advice. Kelton Reid: Absolutely. Let’s do a couple of fun questions next. Daniel Pink: I thought the first ones were fun. Kelton Reid: Good. I shouldn’t preface it like that. Who is your favorite literary character? Daniel Pink: Favorite literary character, it’s going to be weird because he’s just so deranged. I would say Nathan Zuckerman from the Phillip Roth Zuckerman novels. Please do not, listeners, impute any psychological meaning to that. Kelton Reid: That’s right. Daniel Pink: I just love his level of derangement and his obsessiveness. Also, I like the fact that Roth was able to carry him through multiple books. Kelton Reid: If you could choose one author from any era for an all-expense paid dinner to your favorite spot, where would you go, and who would you take? Dan’s Fantasy Chipotle Table Guests Daniel Pink: Just one? Kelton Reid: I’m sorry. Well, in your case, you can bring two. Daniel Pink: Yeah, I’m going to break this rule a little bit. I actually have an answer to that. It doesn’t quite conform to the structure that you’re giving me. I say this in all seriousness. If it were somehow metaphysically possible, I would like to sit down with Mohammed, Buddha, and Jesus. I would make sure that I had my voice recorder, maybe even iPhone video to record the whole thing. I think it would be a great documentary. I think it would be an awesome book, too. The reason for that is that if you think about writers, thinkers, philosophers, whatever you want to call them, who had a long-reaching affect, those guys did. There are people out there who still care about Jesus, and still care about Mohammed, and still care about Buddha. We like to think, “Oh, Shakespeare had such a great influence.” Jesus has about 1,600 years on him. Kelton Reid: Interesting. Where would this meal take place? Daniel Pink: It’s got to be Chipotle. Can you imagine, just walk into Chipotle with Jesus, Mohammed, and Buddha? Those guys, I’d feel chagrined taking them to a fancy restaurant. It’d be antithetical to a lot of what they stand for. I think we’re going to Chipotle. Kelton Reid: I can only imagine the faces of the other diners at Chipotle. Hopefully I won’t make a political crack there. Do you have a writer’s fetish at all? Daniel Pink: What do you mean by a writer’s fetish? Kelton Reid: It could be metaphorical. It could be something physical. Daniel Pink: I get it now. Believe it or not, I use pencils. I really like using pencils for editing. I hate mechanical pencils. I think mechanical pencils are Satan’s creation. I like regular old pencils that I sharpen. I use those for almost everything that I do at my desk. Kelton Reid: Cool. Who or what has been your greatest teacher? Daniel Pink: My mistakes, no question. Kelton Reid: Can you offer any advice to fellow writers on how to keep the ink flowing and the cursor moving? Why You Need to Get Over Yourself and Get to Work Daniel Pink: There’s a theme to this. It’s the same thing, which is basically get to work. Get over yourself. Get to work. Sit in the chair, and start working. If the ink isn’t flowing or the cursor’s not moving, maybe take a walk or something like that, but otherwise, make it move. Again, it’s like the question about the muse. If you’re waiting for the muse to strike you, you’re going to be there for a long time. That cursor’s going to be blinking forever. Kelton Reid: I want listeners to remember that the muse question is really the disqualifier. Daniel Pink: It’s the disqualifier for this. Kelton Reid: Where can fellow scribes connect with you out there? Daniel Pink: Fellow scribes, you can connect with me on the website DanPink.com. I spend more time than should on Twitter where my handle is @DanielPink. Those are two good ways to reach me or find out what’s going on. I do an email newsletter. It’s an irregular and irreverent email newsletter that I do just to stay in touch with readers, that lists maybe some tips that I’ve learned over the years, or stuff that I’m reading that I like. Kelton Reid: I am signing up for that as we speak. Daniel Pink: Thank you. Kelton Reid: Thank you so much for coming on The Writer Files and updating your file. I’m a big fan. I look forward to seeing your latest and greatest. Hopefully, we’ll see your face some more on television as well. Daniel Pink: We’ll see. I appreciate it. These are fun questions. For the print version of what you do, I like reading other people’s answers, too. It’s really interesting. I’m surprised that some people take themselves more seriously than I think that they should. Other people give some really, really great insight into what it’s like. I also think that there would be some insight in somebody going through a lot of your interviews and finding the common themes. Kelton Reid: Absolutely. Daniel Pink: If someone were to go through the interviews and say, “What are the common themes among all the people you talk to?” I think that would be fascinating. Kelton Reid: Yeah, definitely. I will also remind the listeners that the transcripts from all of the shows are posted to the website, WriterFiles.FM, shortly after the interview goes live out there in the world. You can actually find all of the printed versions of these. They are edited as well, so they actually spell things correctly. Daniel Pink: Wow. Kelton Reid: Yes, I’m telling you. Thanks again, Dan. I really appreciate your time. Daniel Pink: All right, appreciate it. Thanks, Kelton. See you later. Kelton Reid: Cheers. Thank you for tuning in to The Writer Files. Get your butt back in the saddle. For more episodes of The Writer Files and all of the show notes, or to leave us a comment, or a question, simply drop by WriterFiles.FM. You can always chat with me on Twitter @KeltonReid. Cheers. See you out there.

This two-part Profiles features interviews with novelist Margaret Atwood and New Yorker staff writer Katherine Boo.

This week we're mashing up past and present.2:07 - A Triangle Productions world premiere, "Storefront Revue: The Babes Are Back," tells the story of the anything-goes creative maelstrom that was Portland's Storefront Theater in the 70s and 80s. 12:30 - Video game developers large and small come together for a PIGSquad challenge: build a game in 48 hours. Sleep? Who needs it?21:17 - Katherine Boo talks about revealing the hidden world of a Mumbai slum in "The Beautiful Forevers" on "Think Out Loud" during a live show at Literary Arts.29:36 - Guster is just one of many national bands that come to Portland to record their albums with one of our talented record producers. In their case, it was at the Cottage Grove studio of producer Richard Swift, who also tours with The Shins and The Black Keys. During a recent opbmusic session, Guster talks about the role Swift played in their new album, which many critics have hailed as a modern update on their guitar pop sound.35:28 - Paisley School, which has a total K-12 student body of 83, stages "Hamlet." Performances May 6th and 7th at Paisley School!40:04 - We dip into the Portland Arts & Lectures archive to hear from Joan Didion. You can hear her whole talk with her late husband, the writer John Dunne, at Literary Arts: The Archive Project.We end with a request for audio: Do you remember hearing Willie Nelson on the air back when he was DJing in Vancouver, Washington? If so, email us at stateofwonder@opb.org.

Sometimes word nerds just need a place to talk shop, and that s what we intend to do here. In this episode of the The Writer Files I ve asked award-winning journalist Adam Skolnick to join me on a guest segment we’re calling Writer Porn. Adam is an award-winning, globetrotting travel journalist, which is kind of a rare thing these days. He is the author and co author of 25 Lonely Planet guidebooks, and has written for publications as varied as the New York Times (for whom he won a big award from the Associated Press Sports Editors last year), ESPN.com, Wired, Men’s Health, Outside, BBC, and Playboy Magazine. He recently finished his first narrative non-fiction book based on his award-winning NY Times coverage of the death of the greatest American free diver of all time, titled One Breath (slated for publication in January). Adam and I talk about how a page one New York Times story became a book, the secret literary legacy of Playboy Magazine, debunking Jack Kerouac’s prolificness, and tips and tricks to staying focused when you re working on multiple projects across multiple timezones. In this 29-minute file Adam Skolnick and I discuss: How a Tragic New York Times Story Became a Book What a Globetrotting Journalist Does to Get a Story The Secret Literary Legacy of Playboy Magazine What Mr. Skolnick Has in Common with Hunter S. Thompson One Great Trick to Stay Focused on Multiple Deadlines Busting The Urban Legend of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” Why You Shouldn’t Compare Yourself to Other Writers How to Stay Organized When You Have a Ton of Research Listen to The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes AdamSkolnick.com A Deep-Water Diver From Brooklyn Dies After Trying for a Record Top 10 Writers Published in Playboy ‘I Only Read It For The Interviews’ The Fact and Fiction of ‘On the Road’ Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors by Sarah Stodola Voice Recorder HD for Audio Recording, Playback, Trimming and Sharing Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Kaherine Boo Zeitoun by Dave Eggers Kelton Reid on Twitter Adam Skolnick on Twitter Writer Porn on Twitter Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By   Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. Start getting more from your site today! The Transcript How Award-Winning Journalist Adam Skolnick Writes Voiceover: This is Rainmaker.FM, the digital marketing podcast network. It’s built on the Rainmaker Platform, which empowers you to build your own digital marketing and sales platform. Start your free 14-day trial at RainmakerPlatform.com. Kelton Reid: These are The Writer Files, a tour of the habits, habitats, and brains of working writers, from online content creators to fictionists, journalists, entrepreneurs, and beyond. I’m your host, Kelton Reid: writer, podcaster, and mediaphile. Each week, we’ll find out how great writers keep the ink flowing, the cursor moving, and avoid writer s block. In this episode of The Writer Files, I’ve asked award-winning journalist Adam Skolnick to join me on a guest segment we call Writer Porn. Sometimes, word nerds just need a place to talk shop, and that’s what we intend to do here. We’ll talk about how a page-one New York Times story became a book, the secret literary legacy of Playboy magazine, debunking the urban legend of Jack Kerouac’s creative Mount Everest, and tips and tricks to staying focused when you’re working on multiple projects across multiple time zones. Just a quick introduction of Adam: he is an award-winning, globetrotting travel journalist, and obviously, that’s a rare thing these days. He is the author and co-author of 25 Lonely Planet guidebooks, and he’s also written for publications as varied as ESPN.com, Men’s Health, Outside, BBC, and Playboy. He’s just now finishing up his first narrative non-fiction book based on his award-winning New York Times coverage of the death of the greatest American free diver of all time. The title of that book is One Breath, and it is slated for publication in January. Congratulations on that accomplishment. That must feel pretty good. Adam Skolnick: Yeah, it feels great. It was a big, big weight off my shoulders. Kelton Reid: To say the least, I’m sure. Adam Skolnick: Yeah. You have this goal in mind, and it’s driving you. It was well over a year from the time when he died to the point of getting the book deal and researching the book and tagging along with the free divers and embedding myself with his friends and family, then writing it. You re so singly focused for all that time. Then when it’s done, you do relax deeply. Kelton Reid: You actually won a pretty big award from the AP last year, didn’t you? How a Tragic New York Times Story Became a Book Adam Skolnick: I don’t know how big it is, but in sports writing, it s fairly large. I was there to do more of a general feature on free diving for the New York Times — this was an event in November 2013 called Vertical Blue. Vertical Blue is the Wimbledon of free diving. It’s competitive free diving, so the divers compete in three different disciplines. They hold their breath, and they go as deep as possible on that one breath, either with fins or without fins, or by pulling a line down and back. That’s the event, and that’s the sport. Because it’s a growing sport, more and more people are getting into it either casually or seriously, and there are schools opening all over the world. It’s an international sport, and I was just there to do a general feature. When he died, tragically, I just happened to be there 10 feet away, so it became a different story right off the bat. That story, I wrote it that evening — the first one, the day-one story — and it went viral. I think it was the New York Times number-one story that day. Then the next day, we did a follow-up piece with a group of writers, myself and three others, and both those stories were widely disseminated. I think people were enamored with the sport, enamored with the this diver, Nicholas Mevoli. The Times submitted it. I had no idea they were submitting it until they were. All the major papers submit to the APSE Awards. It’s a newspaper award, and it’s an organization, and they honor the best newspaper sports writing each year. I was lucky enough to win. Kelton Reid: It is an amazingly tragic story. I know that you spent a lot of time on the road, because I was getting rogue transmissions from you. Were you in Russia? What a Globetrotting Journalist Does to Get a Story Adam Skolnick: Yeah. The book starts with Nick s death, and then it goes back through his life. It’s Into the Wild meets Shadow Divers. Shadow Divers was a bestseller about some wreck divers and their quest to discover this new wreck they found, what it was and to name it. There was a lot of death and destruction involved in that, and it was a really compelling book. Into The Wild, we all know, is an iconic book and Krakauer’s first book. It’s a great book. Just like Chris McCandless in Into The Wild, Nick had a story where he had an even more troubled upbringing than McCandless, and he was searching for something, and he found it free diving after many, many forays into acting, into protest. The water was his refuge. The water was where he was free. He ended up finding this sport later in terms of athletics. He found it when he was 30. His first competition, he broke the American record. He was this gifted athlete, a tremendous athlete, not just as a swimmer. He was also a tremendous athlete on the bike. He was a near-X-Games-quality BMXer and just an incredible soul. Following him is a no-brainer. You want to tell that story. It s an inspiring story. I start with his story, and I go back and forth between him and the 2014 free diving seasons. For that, I went to Roatán for the Caribbean Cup, which is — if you use a tennis metaphor — one of the Grand Slam events, then the World Championships, which is obviously the World Championships, and that was in Sardinia, Italy, and then also back to Vertical Blue a year later. In the meantime, I spent time with two of the great Russian free divers. Natalia Molchanova and her son, Alexey Molchanov, are two of the very best free divers in the world. Natalia is the very best female free diver of all time, and Alexey is the deepest diver with fins, so he’s one of the two best free divers currently in the world. I spent time with them in Russia. Kelton Reid: You’ve been a little busy. Adam Skolnick: Yeah, I’ve been busy. What bridges those two stories in the book — Nick s story and his rise from the time he’s a child to getting into the sport, and then the 2014 season — is the work of some doctors who are trying to figure out what exactly happened to Nick, because his death is something the sport of free diving the sport had never seen before. It wasn’t the type of accident that you would have normally seen in free diving, it was very unique. Kelton Reid: It sounds like a really captivating story, and I actually can’t wait to read it. Adam Skolnick: Thanks, man. Kelton Reid: I just find it fascinating, the fact that you are a guy who is always on the road. You travel many, many months out of the year. You don’t have a permanent home. And then you’re constantly working on a handful of different deadlines simultaneously. One of those has been doing some writing for Playboy. I guess my first question is, how do average citizens react when you mention that you have published with them or are working for them? Adam Skolnick: Average citizens? Kelton Reid: I don’t know. How does your mom react? Adam Skolnick: I don’t know any average citizens, Kelton. Kelton Reid: I m sorry. The Secret Literary Legacy of Playboy Magazine Adam Skolnick: No, I think it’s funny. It depends on who it is. Some people react knowing that Playboy has this rich literary history, but more often, the younger folks I talk to laugh, and they have no idea of this rich history that Playboy has. I have to explain to them that there’s articles. Of course, I just finished up a story about free diving for Playboy that’ll be out in May. Going into the free diving community and explaining to them that I’m going to write a story for Playboy about the sport, some were just mystified that that’s a thing. I don’t know why. My theory is that people go elsewhere for their naked pictures, and that has somehow dimmed Playboy’s history in people s minds, when in reality, it’s still here. It s still kicking. It s still publishing good writers. Kelton Reid: So it s a generational thing, maybe. It s not that generation who’s saying, “I only read it for the articles,” any longer. They don’t even know that it has or had articles to begin with, or that some of the most famous authors of the 20th century published there, including Arthur C. Clarke, Ian Fleming, Nabokov, Chuck Palahniuk, Murakami, Margaret Atwood. The list goes on, and on, and on. You recognize some of those names. Adam Skolnick: Yeah, Gabriel García Márquez. Kelton Reid: Joseph Heller. Adam Skolnick: It’s an honor for me. I think Playboy’s upheld an ideal, and it was always a progressive ideal. It was a pushing-America-forward ideal. That’s how it was founded. Part of that is this great literary tradition. My favorite article probably of all time out of Playboy is the interview that Alex Haley did with Malcolm X, which subsequently led to the autobiography of Malcolm X, which was one of the great works of non-fiction in American history. Playboy has this incredibly rich tradition. It’s an honor to be associated with them. They have a full bar in their lobby. I love it. What Mr. Skolnick Has in Common with Hunter S. Thompson Kelton Reid: Another one of those great interviews, I think, was with Hunter S. Thompson, who, oddly enough, also wrote for the New York Times and was a pretty accomplished journalist himself. Another strange factoid — he relocated to Hawaii to work on a book. It sounds like a familiar theme. Did you write your book in Hawaii? Adam Skolnick: No, but I had relocated to Hawaii to do a story on the GMO corn seed farms that have cropped up where the old sugar cane plantations once were. There is one community that is being heavily impacted by tainted dust that’s blown into their community and damaged property and impacted public health. I moved out there to cover that story. In Hawaii, it’s very hard to parachute in and tell a story well. There’s trust issues with outsiders, and from the surf culture on, it s a very locals-only type spot. It was helpful for me to rent a house there and live there while I burrowed into this story. The person who came and shot that story, a photographer named Lia Barrett, had just come from the Caribbean Cup in 2013 where Nick had hit his 100-meter dive, and she was pitching, “Hey, we should be covering free diving together.” That was the whole genesis of me going to Vertical Blue in the first place, and that story also led me to connect with the New York Times in the first place. That story came out in Salon, but it connected me up with the New York Times science reporter there. It was just an odd turn of events that led me to be in the Bahamas that day, and Hawaii was definitely part of it. As far as me living overseas and working on stuff, that’s something I’ve done frequently. A couple of the places I’ve covered for Lonely Planet include Indonesia and Thailand, which I’ve covered each several times. Whenever I’m there and do those jobs, I tend to stay in the country to write my manuscript. I’ve done that several times. I’ve done the same thing. When I was working on stories, reporting about Myanmar and East Burma and the humanitarian crisis there, I’ve embedded in the community for some time to tell those stories. It’s something I’ve done and something I’ll continue to do. I enjoy doing that part of it and staying longer than most reporters would. Kelton Reid: Let me turn the conversation briefly to productivity. As you’re working on different long-form and short-form pieces, especially when you’re working on a hard deadline but you’re in a beautiful place like Bali or Hawaii, how do you stay focused, first of all? Adam Skolnick: The main thing for me is that I give myself a words-per-day quota. If you’re talking about a longer piece, or even with shorter pieces I do that now, you’re talking about a manuscript that’s upwards of 50,000, 100,000 words. Most books are over 100,000 words or around 100,000 words. The Lonely Planet manuscripts can vary anywhere from 30,000 to 80,000 — I ve had 90,000 words. It’s basically the same amount of material, but it’s just a different type of material. In order to hack through material, you have to give yourself a words-per-day quota, and once you do that, you find that you can meet it. That’s, I think, the hardest thing for newer writers, or younger writers, or any writer really — the focus, the expansion of that focus. Everyone could sit down when they’re inspired and pound out something, could make it sound good. What if they’re tired or dragging or not feeling it? How do they then push on? You have to. In order to put together any big piece of work, you have to be able to push through good days and bad days. Frankly, even the bad days could turn out better work than the good days sometimes. It’s just a matter of being there, showing up, doing it. I give myself a 3,000-word-a-day quota that I try to meet, whether I’m doing a Lonely Planet guide book or I’m doing my book. If I’m doing a magazine story — a feature story where I’ll still try to turn out a lot of words — I might do 2,000 words day then, because I’m going over the words a bit more carefully at first. Whereas with books, you can put out this massive amount of work and then go back through and edit and cut afterwards. With a magazine article, maybe you do a little bit less of that. Maybe you don’t let yourself ramble for 10,000 words because that’ll make it hard to cut. Kelton Reid: On that note, I know a lot of online content creators and novelists in general are working on multiple projects simultaneously. When you say you have your 3,000-word-a-day quota, when you have a manuscript-length project, like a 100,000-word project, but then you also have smaller projects that you’re working on the side, how do you balance the two? One Great Trick to Stay Focused on Multiple Deadlines Adam Skolnick: I think there’s two things. First of all, before you’re going to sit down and write a big piece of work, unless it’s fiction, and even if it is fiction, there’s the research element. For me, I end up in a rhythm where I’m researching and then I’m writing, and then I’m researching and then I’m writing. Then, if I have overlapping deadlines, which does happen, usually it’s when I’m researching something bigger. Then I might take on write-ups or something smaller, or I might have to research for two different things at the same time. I’ve also done things where I’ve researched all day and then at night I’ve written on a different project. That’s happened. Recently, when I had to do a draft of the Playboy story and turn that in prior to the submission date of my book, I did take a few days out of that work on One Breath to dedicate to the magazine article. I’m a one-trick pony. I have a hard time multitasking, to be honest with you. I tend to give everything to what I’m doing at that moment. That’s what I do. For me, multitasking is, “Okay, tomorrow I’m going to do this in the day, and in the night I’m going to do 1,500 words because I can’t do 3,000 because I’m only going to do a night session,” or something like that. I’ll just have that marked in my head. That’s the best multitasking I can probably do. You can’t help it if you’re doing a project that’s three months long. Something else might come up in between that you have to connect to. Usually, what I’ll do is I’ll disconnect from the longer project for a period of time, a couple of days, and do the smaller one. That’s usually what I do because it’s just easier for me to do that then try to do them all at once. Kelton Reid: That single-minded focus is good. I definitely ascribe to that. Subscribe to that? Do I aspire to that? Adam Skolnick: Yes, I don’t know. You could ascribe, aspire, and subscribe to it. Kelton Reid: Just a quick pause to mention that The Writer Files is brought to you by the Rainmaker Platform, the complete website solution for content marketers and online entrepreneurs. Find out more and take a free 14-day test drive at Rainmaker.FM/Platform. Busting the Urban Legend of Jack Kerouac s On the Road Kelton Reid: Speaking of another famous author who published in Playboy: Jack Kerouac actually published in Playboy. He started his journalistic career, and I didn’t know this, as a sports reporter for the New York World Telegram — I’m sure that exists still. Adam Skolnick: Yeah, right. Kelton Reid: He s most well known for writing the 120,000-word novel On The Road in three weeks — I put three weeks in quotes — on this 120-foot long scroll of paper that he famously taped together or whatever. Adam Skolnick: Right. Didn’t Jim Irsay buy the scroll recently? Kelton Reid: I don’t know, the original or what? Adam Skolnick: The owner of the Colts — I think he bought the original scroll. Kelton Reid: That’s wild. I did get a chance to see that scroll actually here in Denver. Adam Skolnick: I bought that hardcover they released. Kelton Reid: Is that right? Adam Skolnick: Yeah, right around the auction time, they finally released it in hardcover. All the real names are in there that he doesn’t use. He uses his own name. He uses William Burroughs’ name. He uses Allen Ginsberg s name, and of course Neal Cassady s name. Kelton Reid: What I found most interesting about the fact that it’s this urban legend, or this creative Mount Everest, that he sat there for three weeks with this single-pointed attention and supposedly wrote this 120,000 word novel in those 20, 21 days on speed. It’s an urban legend that writers hold dear to their hearts. I read recently that that might not be as accurate as we thought it was, because according to Sarah Stodola s book Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors –which I highly recommend, I love it, it’s pure writer porn in my opinion — Kerouac wrote six drafts of On the Road in the three years leading up to those three weeks where he finally nailed it. When he wasn’t sitting at that typewriter, he was taking notes prolifically, much like you do, journalists do. When he was criss-crossing the country, and meeting all these crazy people, and collecting all these stories, that was part of his process. Really, he wrote that novel over three years time. Adam Skolnick: Yeah, the first draft, you mean. Kelton Reid: The first draft. It wasn’t published for another 6 years. Adam Skolnick: Yeah, I think that everyone loves the wunderkind, genius story, so that’s probably where that came from. Plus, he did sit down there for three weeks and do the scroll and do his 120,000 words. If you read the published version of that, you’ll see there’s no indentations or anything like that, so you can see his manic mind moving and working in a way that you can’t when you read the polished work. There’s something raw there. Of course the polished version is a classic. It s probably one of my favorite books of all time. Why You Shouldn t Compare Yourself to Other Writers Adam Skolnick: Yeah, it can be daunting when you start to compare yourself to other writers. I think that’s what that does. When you hear about that, you’re like, “God, I’m not capable of that. Does that mean I’m not capable of writing a book as good as On the Road. Does that mean I’m not capable of making a living as a writer?” I think those are the kinds of neurotic mind loops that we tend to go into, especially writers who are internal and in their head a lot anyway. At least I am. I think that debunking that myth is really good, because obviously you don’t get to be where he got to at such a young age without incredible work ethic. It’s not about doing speed and sitting down for three weeks, but it’s about doing it all the time. I think that’s what he did, and that’s why he was so great. Kelton Reid: Flexing that muscle — because he had really been writing from an early age. His father introduced him to writing. He had his own printing press. He started early. I think by the time he was 22, his writings amounted to something like 600,000 words. I think even William Burroughs said that when he met Jack Kerouac close to that, he probably had written closer to a million words. He was flexing that muscle, so to speak. That’s a monumental feat, but he was clearly a professional athlete in the sport. Adam Skolnick: Yeah, it’s the classic Gladwell thing now, the 10,000 hours. He had that real young. That’s what did it. Again, it’s no mystery why he was so great. He found his voice young because he was writing so much, and it became so natural for him. Yeah, there probably was something happening creatively by him doing this: “I’m going to sit down for three weeks and do it until it’s done, do it right this one last time.” We can’t completely let go of that myth because there had to be some sort of chemical reaction with the muse that made it so great that time he sat there. Otherwise he wouldn’t have continued to sit there. There’s something to that last gasp, three-week marathon that he pulled off that I think matters. Yeah, I think that’s not what makes him great. What makes him great is the work before and after. Kelton Reid: He was meticulously organized, this guy. He had files and notebooks and kept everything pretty neatly organized. I think a lot of his Beat friends who would visit his apartment would always marvel at the fact that he was just very regimented guy. I think he was also a merchant marine, if I’m not mistaken. Adam Skolnick: Yeah. Kelton Reid: When you’re travelling the world, Adam Skolnick, and you’re working on all these different mediums, you’re probably using not only notebooks, photographs, audio interviews. How to Stay Organized When You Have a Ton of Research Adam Skolnick: I’m not the most organized guy in the world. You are very organized, Kelton Reid. I’m not the most organized. When I first started, because I was a travel writer before I was doing harder core stories — and I still do a lot of travel stories, and obviously the Lonely Planet stuff is all travel-related — I would just use Moleskine notebooks or whatever notebooks I could find on the road if I ran out of notebooks. I kept it all in notebooks, kept all those notebooks on me, and when it came time to do the write-up, I would just go through the notebooks at the time. Then when Lonely Planet started to go to a shared publishing platform, I was part of the experimental phase. One of the higher-ups that came on the road with us — and we did this in Colorado, as a matter of fact — asked me to start taking notes on my phone just to see if I liked it. At first I didn’t like it at all, and I felt like I was losing something in terms of creativity with the mind and the whole idea of the hands and a brain. They’re connected, and if I’m writing something analog then my brain s working differently and somehow opening more organically, which was really probably just my own laziness, not wanting to have to adapt to using this app and using my thumbs. He said, “Just try it for a week, and then you can go back to the notebooks if you want.” Pretty soon after, I found that putting it into a phone right away, uploading it right away, actually made it easier and makes me, a less organized person, more organized. I started to use the phone, and I now use all sorts. I use the phone when I’m interviewing subjects. I’ll use the phone for notes sometimes. I’ll use my notebooks sometimes, depending on the situation, and then I’ll also use the audio recorder. Voice Recorder HD is the app I use, because you can back it up to Dropbox. I do that for some interviews. I’ll use any number of those three things. Then afterward, I’ll have to transcribe the voice interviews. I’ve done most of that myself, although I do farm it out sometimes to transcription services if I’m under the gun, and that’s just something I’ve started to experiment with lately. Then, in terms of the book, which I don’t have call to do this for anything else because if I’m doing a Lonely Planet guide book or a magazine story I could keep everything in one Notes file. I don’t need more than one Notes file, and then I can email that to myself and put it into a Word document. Now all my notes are already transcribed from the notebook, which is my phone, and it’s all right there. Then I can go through it and highlight what I need and look through it. I don’t have to do much. Although, when I’m writing a magazine story, what I’ll do is I’ll outline the story, and then I’ll go through those notes and take the chunks that I think relate to the subject or the turn in the story that I’m working. I’ll slot that into that piece in the outline so I have it all there for me. That’s how I’ll organize it right before I do the work. In terms of this book, there were literally hundreds of interviews. I couldn’t tell you right now because I haven’t counted them all out, but it’s over 100 interviews. I’m interviewing different people about different things and different places. Then I started to slot them into their own separate document. I’m just using Word documents, and I’ll just slot in those notes or that transcribed interview into the North Carolina pile, or the New York City pile, or the Russia pile, or the Sardinia pile, that kind of stuff. That’s how I did that. Then when it came down to the outline, again with the book, I did more detailed outline, and I started slotting in those big slabs of notes into those sections. So when I started working on it, it was all there for me. That’s how it worked. I probably have 1,000 Word pages of notes to work on. Kelton Reid: You’ve just got this huge raw block of clay, so to speak, that you start molding from there. You’ve got to start with something, and that’s pretty amazing. Last quick question for Adam Skolnick: can you give us a couple recommendations for favorite non-fiction reads you read recently? Adam Skolnick: I read Behind the Beautiful Forevers, which is beautiful. Katherine Boo, I believe, is the author. It s a beautiful book about the Mumbai slums. Zeitoun — a few years ago I read that. it’s one of my favorite nonfiction books of all time. That’s about a handyman who was caught in the floods in New Orleans after Katrina. It s a beautiful book by Dave Eggers, and I highly recommend that. Kelton Reid: Great one. Adam Skolnick: Then Harry Potter is my favorite non-fiction book I’ve ever read — J.K Rowling. Amazing how she embedded herself into that world. I found it magical … oh wait. Kelton Reid: I’m not familiar. Adam Skolnick: Are you not familiar with that work? Kelton Reid:Adam Skolnick: Thanks for having me. Kelton Reid: We will speak with you in another episode very soon. I appreciate your time. Remember, every great sculpture starts with a raw block of clay. Keep working, and eventually it will start to look like something. Thanks for flipping through Adam’s file with me. If you enjoyed this episode of The Writer Files, feel free to leave a comment or a question on the website at Writerfiles.FM. You can also easily subscribe to the show on iTunes and get updates on new episodes. Please leave a rating or a review on iTunes to help other writers find us. You can find me on Twitter @KeltonReid. You can find Adam @adamskolnick. You can find more Writer Porn @writerporn. Cheers. Talk to you next week.

Director Rufus Norris and actress Meera Syal discuss Behind the Beautiful Forevers, a new play by David Hare based on the book by Katherine Boo. Find out more and book tickets here: http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/behind-the-beautiful-forevers

Director Rufus Norris and actress Meera Syal discuss Behind the Beautiful Forevers, a new play by David Hare based on the book by Katherine Boo. Find out more and book tickets here: http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/behind-the-beautiful-forevers

London's Wellcome Institute has a new exhibition entitled The Institute of Sexology which it describes as "a candid exploration of the most publicly discussed of private acts". How will our reviewers tiptoe gently around the explicit nature of what's on show? What We Do In The Shadows is a New Zealand vampire comedy film about a group of bloodsucking flatmates (a 'dracumentary' if you will) - who does the washing-up in the house of the undead? Behind The Beautiful Forevers is David Hare's new play at London's National Theatre, based on the non-fiction book of the same name by Pulitzer Prize winning author Katherine Boo. It deals with life death and hope in a Mumbai undercity Robert Edric is an acclaimed British novelist whose latest book explores the life of Branwell Bronte - brother of the more famous sisters - whose life couldn't match theirs. Legacy is a new Danish TV police programme. What is it about the Scandi Noir genre that keeps on gripping UK audiences? Tom Sutcliffe is joined by Helen Lewis Pat Kane and Amanda Craig. The producer is Oliver Jones.

The shortlisted authors for the 2014 Costa Book Awards are announced. Critic Stephanie Merritt comments on the authors chosen in five categories: novel, first novel, poetry, biography and children's fiction. Meera Syal discusses her latest stage role in Behind the Beautiful Forevers, based on the book by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Katherine Boo, about life in the shadow of Mumbai's luxury hotels. The final part of Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay, has been split in two for the film version. Sophia McDougall reviews Mockingjay: Part 1. Peter Bazalgette, Chair of Arts Council England, discusses his campaign to raise the profile of arts in the UK as the political parties write their manifestos for the General Election next May.

This week on the podcast, hear the two award-winning authors discuss poverty around the world.

Writer, comedian and actor Meera Syal and psychoanalyst and author Stephen Grosz discuss favourite books with Harriett Gilbert. A Russian romance, a very English murder, and the poverty of India are the themes in books by Chekhov, Agatha Christie and Katherine Boo. Produced by Melvin Rickarby

On Start the Week Allan Little talks to Pakistani novelist, Mohsin Hamid about 'how to get filthy rich in rising Asia', and his self-help manual of rags to riches. The playwright Bruce Norris dramatises an entrepreneur's quest for wealth with priceless ambition, while Katherine Boo explores the slums of Mumbai to question the impact of the volatility of the market. And the turbulent times of an English village throughout the 20th century is the subject of Peter Moffat's latest television series. Producer: Katy Hickman.

Weekly JourneywithJesus.net postings, read by Daniel B. Clendenin. Essay: *When the Trite is Also True* for Sunday, 13 January 2013; book review: *Behind the Beautiful Forevers; Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity* by Katherine Boo (2012); film review: *Take Me Home* (2011); poem review: *Now I Become Myself* by May Sarton.

Slate critics Dan Kois, Hanna Rosin, and Emily Bazelon discuss Katherine Boo’s National Book Award-winning story of life in a Mumbai slum. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near Mumbai's international airport. The Pulitzer prize winning writer, Katherine Boo, spent 4 years hearing the stories of the slum dwellers who stand little chance of joining the 'new' Indian middle class. She talks to Laurie Taylor about her new book "Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum". Also, the sociologist, Jeff Kidder, highlights new research which analyses why so many Americans are morally opposed to taxation. They're joined by British sociologist, Peter Taylor Gooby, who's researched British attitudes to tax. Producer: Jayne Egerton.

Anne McElvoy talks to the Pulitzer Prize winner, Katherine Boo about her book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Jackie Wullschlager reviews the literally luminous new show at Tate Liverpool which features the late work of Twombly, Turner and Monet; one of our New Generation thinkers, Timothy Secret, reflects on how we mourn our dead and Uta Frith, Harry Collins and Marcus Chown explore a new twist on the legacy of one of the great scientific minds of the 20th Century, Alan Turing.

Episode 57: Today's Social Work Podcast is on community-based prevention services for children and adolescents. I spoke with Dr. Richard Catalano, who along with David Hawkins, developed Communities That Care, a prevention-planning system that promotes the positive development of children and youth and prevents problem behaviors, including substance use, delinquency, teen pregnancy, school drop-out and violence. It is a system for identifying community needs, matching those needs to evidence-based prevention programs, and evaluating the outcomes. The system has been used in dozens of communities around the United States, and has demonstrated effectiveness in reducing problem behaviors and promoting positive youth development. But before we get to the interview, I want you to imagine for a moment how you would work with a pregnant 16-year old sexual abuse survivor who was addicted to crack, semi-illiterate, suicidal, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and whose baby daddy was prostituting her in exchange for drugs. Ok, got your treatment plan figured out? If you’re thinking, "I know I need to address her suicidality first, but after that, I’m not really sure," then you’d be right, and you’re probably not alone. Most social workers, most service providers, treat individual or family problems once they’ve occurred. And this young woman has a lot of problems. So, what if I suggested that the best place to start with this client was 17 years ago, before she was born, before she was raped, before she turned to drugs to dull her pain or perhaps used drugs to make herself look cooler to her father-figure boyfriend pimp? What if I suggested that the best use of time and money was in preventing these problems from occurring in the first place? If you’re with me on this one, you’re not alone. In 2006, the New Yorker published an article by Katherine Boo (2006, Feb 6) called "Swamp Nurse." The story takes place about an hour southwest of New Orleans, Louisiana, a place where infant mortality, illiteracy rates, and child poverty are among the highest in the country. The title, Swamp Nurse, refers to a group of nurses who do home visits with low-income women during pregnancy and work with them until their child turns two. These nurses are expected to, and I’m not making this up, reduce infant mortality, illiteracy rates and child poverty, and in turn improve the overall health, education, and economic self-sufficiency of these families and consequently the community as a whole. Uh huh. All through home visits. I know. And the most remarkable part? They did it, more or less. How? They were part of a decades-old prevention program called the Nurse-Family Partnership (www.nursefamilypartnership.org/About/What-we-do). These nurses promoted the use of prenatal care, healthy eating, not using cigarettes, alcohol or illegal drugs. They worked with parents to provide responsible and competent care – and to a 16 year old that might include getting them to understand that it is their job to make their baby feel loved, not the other way around. And they helped the parents plan for their future, including future pregnancies, education, and jobs. This program works because it prevents certain behaviors by promoting others. That is the essence of prevention programs. And, according to Dr. Catalano, there are tons of effective prevention programs out there. The trick is to figure which ones are right for your community. Benjamin Franklin famously said, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." This idea, that prevention is a better value for the money that cure, is at the core of public health policy and one of the most compelling arguments for investing in prevention services. Steve Aos, associate director of the Washington State Institute for Public Policy has done cost-benefit analyses on dozens of prevention programs, and found that while most programs do not have a 16:1 return ratio, there are many programs out there that return $3 and $4 dollars per dollar invested. Oh, and the Nurse-Family Partnership? $2.88 per dollar. Steve and his colleagues calculated that by spending $9100 per mother, the Nurse-Family Partnership produced over $26,000 in benefit (www.wa.gov/wsipp). Let’s come back to our 16-year old crack addicted suicidal prostitute for a minute. If she had been involved with a program, or a series of programs that promoted parent-child bonding, emotional, cognitive, behavioral and moral competence, self-determination, belief in the future, and half a dozen other concepts that are included under in the broad heading of positive development, it is likely that she would have never become my client. In order to learn more about how this might happen at a community level, I spoke with Dr. Richard Catalano, or "Rico" as he asked me to call him. Rico is the Bartley Dobb Professor for the Study and Prevention of Violence and the Director of the Social Development Research Group in the School of Social Work at the University of Washington. He has published over 225 articles and book chapters, and his work has been recognized by practitioners; criminologists; and prevention scientists. I asked Rico to talk about some of the persistent problems that youth in America face and why we haven’t been able to overcome them. He talked about why he went from being a treatment researcher to a prevention researcher. We talked about the benefits of taking a community-based approach to prevention. Rico described the Communities That Care prevention system, and talked about what makes it an effective approach to preventing adolescent behavior problems and promoting positive development of children and youth. I interviewed Rico at Temple University’s School of Social Work. He was the invited speaker for the school’s lecture series on social work research. For more information about Temple’s School of Social Work, or the research lecture series, please visit their website at www.temple.edu/ssa.org To read more about Communities That Care, and to hear other podcasts, please visit the Social Work Podcast website at http://socialworkpodcast.com.

Episode 57: Today's Social Work Podcast is on community-based prevention services for children and adolescents. I spoke with Dr. Richard Catalano, who along with David Hawkins, developed Communities That Care, a prevention-planning system that promotes the positive development of children and youth and prevents problem behaviors, including substance use, delinquency, teen pregnancy, school drop-out and violence. It is a system for identifying community needs, matching those needs to evidence-based prevention programs, and evaluating the outcomes. The system has been used in dozens of communities around the United States, and has demonstrated effectiveness in reducing problem behaviors and promoting positive youth development. But before we get to the interview, I want you to imagine for a moment how you would work with a pregnant 16-year old sexual abuse survivor who was addicted to crack, semi-illiterate, suicidal, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and whose baby daddy was prostituting her in exchange for drugs. Ok, got your treatment plan figured out? If you’re thinking, "I know I need to address her suicidality first, but after that, I’m not really sure," then you’d be right, and you’re probably not alone. Most social workers, most service providers, treat individual or family problems once they’ve occurred. And this young woman has a lot of problems. So, what if I suggested that the best place to start with this client was 17 years ago, before she was born, before she was raped, before she turned to drugs to dull her pain or perhaps used drugs to make herself look cooler to her father-figure boyfriend pimp? What if I suggested that the best use of time and money was in preventing these problems from occurring in the first place? If you’re with me on this one, you’re not alone. In 2006, the New Yorker published an article by Katherine Boo (2006, Feb 6) called "Swamp Nurse." The story takes place about an hour southwest of New Orleans, Louisiana, a place where infant mortality, illiteracy rates, and child poverty are among the highest in the country. The title, Swamp Nurse, refers to a group of nurses who do home visits with low-income women during pregnancy and work with them until their child turns two. These nurses are expected to, and I’m not making this up, reduce infant mortality, illiteracy rates and child poverty, and in turn improve the overall health, education, and economic self-sufficiency of these families and consequently the community as a whole. Uh huh. All through home visits. I know. And the most remarkable part? They did it, more or less. How? They were part of a decades-old prevention program called the Nurse-Family Partnership (www.nursefamilypartnership.org/About/What-we-do). These nurses promoted the use of prenatal care, healthy eating, not using cigarettes, alcohol or illegal drugs. They worked with parents to provide responsible and competent care – and to a 16 year old that might include getting them to understand that it is their job to make their baby feel loved, not the other way around. And they helped the parents plan for their future, including future pregnancies, education, and jobs. This program works because it prevents certain behaviors by promoting others. That is the essence of prevention programs. And, according to Dr. Catalano, there are tons of effective prevention programs out there. The trick is to figure which ones are right for your community. Benjamin Franklin famously said, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." This idea, that prevention is a better value for the money that cure, is at the core of public health policy and one of the most compelling arguments for investing in prevention services. Steve Aos, associate director of the Washington State Institute for Public Policy has done cost-benefit analyses on dozens of prevention programs, and found that while most programs do not have a 16:1 return ratio, there are many programs out there that return $3 and $4 dollars per dollar invested. Oh, and the Nurse-Family Partnership? $2.88 per dollar. Steve and his colleagues calculated that by spending $9100 per mother, the Nurse-Family Partnership produced over $26,000 in benefit (www.wa.gov/wsipp). Let’s come back to our 16-year old crack addicted suicidal prostitute for a minute. If she had been involved with a program, or a series of programs that promoted parent-child bonding, emotional, cognitive, behavioral and moral competence, self-determination, belief in the future, and half a dozen other concepts that are included under in the broad heading of positive development, it is likely that she would have never become my client. In order to learn more about how this might happen at a community level, I spoke with Dr. Richard Catalano, or "Rico" as he asked me to call him. Rico is the Bartley Dobb Professor for the Study and Prevention of Violence and the Director of the Social Development Research Group in the School of Social Work at the University of Washington. He has published over 225 articles and book chapters, and his work has been recognized by practitioners; criminologists; and prevention scientists. I asked Rico to talk about some of the persistent problems that youth in America face and why we haven’t been able to overcome them. He talked about why he went from being a treatment researcher to a prevention researcher. We talked about the benefits of taking a community-based approach to prevention. Rico described the Communities That Care prevention system, and talked about what makes it an effective approach to preventing adolescent behavior problems and promoting positive development of children and youth. I interviewed Rico at Temple University’s School of Social Work. He was the invited speaker for the school’s lecture series on social work research. For more information about Temple’s School of Social Work, or the research lecture series, please visit their website at www.temple.edu/ssa.org To read more about Communities That Care, and to hear other podcasts, please visit the Social Work Podcast website at https://socialworkpodcast.com.