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Today we revisit a 2024 episode on one of the most fabulous parties New York City has ever seen, Truman Capote's Black and White Ball. Held at The Plaza hotel on November 28, 1966 as a masked fancy dress ball with a strict dress code of black and white, Capote gathered together a global coterie of artists, intellectuals, politicians and the international jet set for one of the most sought-after invitations of the 20th century. Want more Dressed: The History of Fashion? Our website and classes Our Instagram Our bookshelf with over 150 of our favorite fashion history titles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Head on out Kansas way to investigate a case of true crime, real life shenanigans starring... Truman Capote? And Sandra B. it turns out. But definitely grab a suitcase full of expensive coats and hop the train to jokes like: puffy cheeks, The Capotometer™, when the v-v-itch is back, hummus among us, occuptaionals, doin' it for the 'rents and... Veggie Tales?!
In this coda to our week of Marilyn Monroe, we examine Truman Capote's profile of her from Music for Chameleons. Written in 1980, this insightful piece of writing recalls a day in April 1955 which the two spend together. We see Marilyn very much alive and described by possibly the best sketch of her ever written. Also, more spiderwebs than you can count, mentioning all the dish on so many characters within our universe of Dominick Dunne. Continue your investigation with ad-free and bonus episodes on Patreon! To advertise on Done & Dunne, please reach out to info@amplitudemediapartners.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
We found one of the most haunted and legendary bars in New Orleans, and the ghosts there never stopped partying. In this episode, we explore the wild history and lingering spirits of Cafe Lafitte in Exile, the oldest continuously operating gay bar in the United States. With reported hauntings from Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote, a ghost named Mr. Bubbles who may still be causing chaos on the dance floor. We get into the dramatic “Grand Exile” parade that turned this bar into a symbol of queer resilience, the emotional energy many believe fueled its hauntings, and the disco era traditions that still live on today. Book mentioned: Queer Hauntings: True Tales of Gay & Lesbian Ghosts by Ken Summers Watch the video version here. Have ghost stories of your own? E-mail them to us at twogirlsoneghostpodcast@gmail.com New Episodes are released every Thursday and Sunday at 12am PST/3am EST (the witching hour, of course). Corinne and Sabrina hand select a couple of paranormal encounters from our inbox to read in each episode, from demons, to cryptids, to aliens, to creepy kids... the list goes on and on. If you have a story of your own that you'd like us to share on an upcoming episode, we invite you to email them to us! If you enjoy our show, please consider joining our Patreon, rating and reviewing on iTunes & Spotify and following us on social media! Youtube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Discord. Edited and produced by Jaimi Ryan. Original music by Arms Akimbo! Disclaimer: the use of white sage and smudging is a closed practice. If you're looking to cleanse your space, here are some great alternatives! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
In this episode, Patrick Teahan, MSW, is joined by personality psychologist William Todd Schultz to explore the complicated emotional landscape of family estrangement and how early childhood loss intersects with creative expression.Todd specializes in profiles of artists and has published books such as Tiny Terror on Truman Capote, An Emergency in Slow Motion on Diane Arbus, Torment Saint on Elliott Smith, and The Mind of the Artist. Together, they detail how childhood trauma and the death of an estranged toxic family member elicit complex forms of grief. They introduce the concept of ambiguous loss and how individuals use creative mediums to process unresolved family systems issues.The episode begins by unpacking a complex dynamic: the dual reality of an abusive sibling being both a perpetrator and a victim within a dysfunctional family hierarchy. Patrick and Todd use this concept to illustrate why survivors often experience a muted emotional response when an estranged family member physically passes, as the psychological passing of the relationship occurred long ago.Listeners will learn:Ambiguous Loss and Estrangement: What it truly means to experience the death of a toxic sibling and why a blank emotional response is a valid reaction to long-standing estrangement.The Dysfunctional Hierarchy: A look at multigenerational trauma and how abusive family members are often both perpetrators and victims.Creative Adaptation: How individuals with artistic inclinations use creative mediums to mentally conjure and process a lost relationship.Resurrecting in Fantasy: The psychological process of resurrecting the deceased through art to form a new and manageable dynamic that buffers the trauma of the loss.Historical Perspectives on Creativity: An exploration of the mid-century Berkeley psychological assessments on creative writers and how the field quantifies creative and psychological traits.Patrick and Todd also provide insights into meaning-making and grief-related growth, encouraging listeners to understand how modern psychological frameworks apply to these complex forms of grief. By understanding how trauma shapes personality, survivors can begin to safely set boundaries and use creative outlets for self-preservation and healing.Keywords: childhood trauma, family estrangement, ambiguous loss, creative expression, meaning-making, multigenerational trauma, grief-related growth, personality psychology, toxic family systems, boundary setting. Join the Healing Community!Join the Monthly Healing Community Membership
From 2007 - Kim Powers, author of "Capote in Kansas: A Ghost Story" - a novel that explores the friendship between Truman Capote and Harper Lee.
Every week in the 1950s and 60s, 30 million Americans watched the congenial Bennett Cerf on Sunday nights on "What's My Line?" But he was much more than a game show panelist. In 1927, he co-founded the publishing giant Random House and brought to the public authors such as James Joyce, Ayn Rand, Truman Capote, Dr. Suess, and William Faulkner. Author Gayle Feldman spent 30 years researching and writing her book "Nothing Random." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Every week in the 1950s and 60s, 30 million Americans watched the congenial Bennett Cerf on Sunday nights on "What's My Line?" But he was much more than a game show panelist. In 1927, he co-founded the publishing giant Random House and brought to the public authors such as James Joyce, Ayn Rand, Truman Capote, Dr. Suess, and William Faulkner. Author Gayle Feldman spent 30 years researching and writing her book "Nothing Random." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Our dear friend Ryan O'Connell returns to How Long Gone. His new book, Inspiration Porn, is out soon. We chat with him about Chris accidentally pouring candle wax all over himself at the Gabriela Hearst x Paul Smith dinner at the Chateau, Reese Witherspoon's umbrella holder, Colbert's final days on TV, Katy, Ariana, and Gaga, whether Will Arnett and Amy Poehler will get back together, Ryan being a closeted Dax Shepard listener, how you'd "better laugh at all his jokes if you want this Delta One ticket," a review of his book launch the night before—where Jason read one of Ryan's sex diary entries, Gwyneth's boyfriend breakfast bowls, Apple Martin and Romy Mars, we disagree on Olivia Dean, whether Jake Shane is today's Truman Capote, Alex Cooper's pregnancy press diversion, and some Ivy Wolk glazery. instagram.com/ryanoconn twitter.com/donetodeath twitter.com/themjeans howlonggone.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
durée : 00:24:36 - La Série fiction - Quelques semaines avant la mort de Marilyn Monroe, son grand et fidèle ami Truman Capote lui rend visite dans sa maison de Brentwood. - réalisation : Emmanuelle Chevrière, Arnaud Jalbert Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France
durée : 00:24:36 - Théâtre - Quelques semaines avant la mort de Marilyn Monroe, son grand et fidèle ami Truman Capote lui rend visite dans sa maison de Brentwood. - réalisation : Emmanuelle Chevrière, Arnaud Jalbert Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France
El crimen real antes del true crime obsesivo de internet. En Librero Sonoro revisitamos la obra con la que Truman Capote cambió para siempre la narrativa contemporánea: una historia brutal contada con tensión de novela y precisión periodística.Hablamos del origen de la non-fiction novel, de la fascinación cultural por los asesinos y de por qué A sangre fría sigue sintiéndose tan perturbador hoy como hace 60 años.
“I was convinced that somewhere in this pile of anecdotes and photographs and recollections was the vital clue, the detail that would make everything slide into place, and as I began to assemble all the information I'd gathered into an idea of a woman, I imagined myself at the head of a troupe of deputies and detectives, leading us all inexorably in the direction of Sabine Musil-Buehler.”When a stolen car is recovered on the Gulf Coast of Florida, it sets off a search for a missing woman, local motel owner Sabine Musil-Buehler. Three men are named persons of interest—her husband, her boyfriend, and the man who stole the car. Then the motel is set on fire; her boyfriend flees the county; and detectives begin digging on the beach of Anna Maria Island.Author Cutter Wood was a guest at Musil-Buehler's motel as the search for her gained momentum, and he was drawn steadily deeper into the case. Driven by his own need to understand how a relationship could spin to pieces in such a fatal fashion, he began to talk with many of the people living on Anna Maria, and then with the detectives, and finally with the man presumed to be the murderer. But there was only so much that interviews and transcripts could reveal.In trying to understand how we treat those we love, this book, like Truman Capote's classic In Cold Blood, tells a story that exists outside documentary evidence. Wood carries the investigation of Sabine's murder beyond the facts of the case and into his own life, crafting a tale about the dark conflicts at the heart of every relationship.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.
durée : 00:24:36 - La Série fiction - Quelques semaines avant la mort de Marilyn Monroe, son grand et fidèle ami Truman Capote lui rend visite dans sa maison de Brentwood. - réalisation : Juliette Heymann
“Justice may have been served, but the human element of the story didn't seem to add up.” — James Lasdun In March 2023, Alex Murdaugh — wealthy scion of a South Carolina prosecutorial dynasty — was found guilty of murdering his wife Maggie and his son Paul at their family estate. With its opioid addiction, fatal boat crash, staged suicide, and a cousin called Eddie, the case could have been invented for our true crime age. And who better to tell the story of the mysterious Mr Murdaugh than the literary crime writer James Lasdun whose 2023 New Yorker piece about the trial became the magazine's most-read story of the year. Lasdun's new book, The Family Man: Blood and Betrayal in the House of Murdaugh, tries to answer the one question the trial never answered. Why would a father annihilate his son? The prosecution claimed that Alex killed Maggie and Paul to distract from a web of financial crimes about to be exposed. While this is theoretically possible, Lasdun acknowledges, it is totally implausible psychologically. Coming from a family of prosecutors, Murdaugh would have known he would be the prime suspect. And this family annihilator, as the prosecutor described him, murdered not just his wife, but his boy. Who would annihilate their beloved child to muddy a prosaic embezzlement? The Southern gothic case isn't over. The court clerk who managed the Murdaugh trial resigned in disgrace after it emerged she had interfered with the jury — fabricating a Facebook post to remove a juror who was bending toward acquittal. Murdaugh has appealed to the South Carolina Supreme Court. A retrial isn't inconceivable. But even if the murder conviction is overturned, Murdaugh faces forty years inside for his financial crimes. So he's never going free. But James Lasdun's core question remains unanswered. Why? “Justice may have been served,” Lasdun concludes, “but the human element of the story didn't seem to add up.” Mr Murdaugh remains a mystery, perhaps even to himself. Five Takeaways • The Family Annihilator: A Psychological Category: The term “family annihilator” — first used at the Murdaugh trial — is not a well-developed criminological category. There isn't much psychology behind it. What Lasdun found in his research: most family annihilators are men who kill their families when they believe everything is about to be taken from them — not out of hatred, but out of a grotesque form of ownership. The family is theirs. If their world is ending, the family ends with it. This pattern, Lasdun argues, begins to illuminate what happened at Moselle. Not excusing it. Illuminating it. • The Thirteen Minutes of Mystery: The murders took place in a thirteen-minute window at the kennel at Moselle. In thirteen minutes, Alex was supposed to have shot his wife with a shotgun and his son with a rifle, staged the scene, called 911, and composed himself sufficiently to appear on a video call immediately afterward showing no signs of distress. Lasdun's question: was he capable of that? The prosecution said yes, and the jury agreed. Lasdun is not saying they were wrong. He is saying that the how and why of those thirteen minutes remain genuinely mysterious — and that the mystery is part of what makes the case important. • Cousin Eddie and the Staged Shooting: Three months after the murders, Alex arranged a meeting on a rural road with his cousin Eddie — a distant relative — and emerged with an entry and exit wound at the back of his head. Alex claimed he had asked Eddie to shoot him dead so that his surviving son Buster could collect his $10 million life insurance. Eddie denies this account entirely. The police concluded quickly that the “shooter” was not a stranger seeking vengeance for the boat crash, as Alex had initially claimed. Lasdun's reading: Alex was trying to reinforce the vendetta narrative that would implicate Anthony and Connor Cook, the young men who had been on the boat when Mallory Beach was killed. • The Court Clerk and the Removed Juror: One juror was leaning toward acquittal in the final hours of deliberation. That juror was removed from the jury on the last day of the trial, after the clerk of court produced evidence that the juror had been indiscreet about the case on Facebook. It subsequently emerged that the clerk had fabricated the Facebook post. She resigned in disgrace. The Murdaugh appeal is partly based on this interference. The South Carolina Supreme Court has taken it seriously. A retrial is not inconceivable. The legal situation is still live. • Murdaugh as an American Story: Lasdun's book, like Capote's In Cold Blood, is not ultimately about a crime. It is about a society. The Murdaughs were prosecutors — the family that put people in prison, that sent people to death row. The corruption that enabled Alex's embezzlement was not unusual in Hampton County; it was systemic. The opioids that fuelled his addiction were everywhere. The insularity and entitlement of the Lowcountry ruling class created the conditions in which Alex Murdaugh could operate for twenty years without exposure. The murders are a symptom. The disease is American. About the Guest James Lasdun is a poet, novelist, memoirist, and staff writer at The New Yorker. He is the author of The Family Man: Blood and Betrayal in the House of Murdaugh (W. W. Norton, May 5, 2026), Afternoon of a Faun, Give Me Everything You Have, and many other works. He was born in London and lives in Brooklyn, New York. References: • The Family Man: Blood and Betrayal in the House of Murdaugh by James Lasdun (W. W. Norton, May 5, 2026). • James Lasdun's two New Yorker pieces on the Murdaugh case — the magazine's most-read stories of the year. • Truman Capote, In Cold Blood — the comparison Lasdun's reviewers have drawn and that the interview raises explicitly. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple Podcasts
Emily Bazelon, staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, co-host of Slate's "Political Gabfest" podcast, Truman Capote fellow for creative writing and law at Yale Law School and author of Charged (Random House, 2019), offers legal analysis of today's arguments before the Supreme Court over Temporary Protected Status for certain refugees, plus reacts to the Louisiana redistricting decision.Photo: United States Supreme Court Building in Washington D.C., (Marielam1, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
The Supreme Court was busy today, hearing oral arguments over an immigration case, and issuing opinions on a number of other issues. On Today's Show:Emily Bazelon, staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, co-host of Slate's "Political Gabfest" podcast, Truman Capote fellow for creative writing and law at Yale Law School and author of Charged (Random House, 2019), offers legal analysis of today's arguments before the Supreme Court over Temporary Protected Status for certain refugees, and reacts to the Louisiana redistricting decision. NOTE: Today's discussion took place Wednesday morning, before SCOTUS's oral arguments began.
Send us Fan MailOn this episode Tom and Bert cover the famous or infamous Movie Villains of the 1960s!Everyone has their opinions on who they love and who they hate. We have the list of the "bad guys and ladies" from the '60s!FEATURED CHAPTERS(0:30) Intro & "Bond Villains" including Goldfinger, Red Grant, Dr. No and others(11:06) Baby Jane (Bette Davis), Bill Sikes from "Oliver" and The Birds(17:07) "Bonnie and Clyde", "Batman" w/ The Joker, The Riddler & The Penguin plus "The Children of the Damned"(27:56) Eleanor Iselin (Angela Lansbury) "The Manchurian Candidate"(32:49) Hal 9000- The Computer from "2001 A Space Odyssey"(37:44) Liberty Valence and Tim Strawn from "Cat Ballou" played by Lee Marvin(41:51) Max Cady (Robert Mitchum) "Cape Fear" and Dick and Percy in Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood"(47:08) Mrs. Robinson, "The Graduate", The Zombies, "Night of the Living Dead" and Norman Bates, "Pyscho" -----and It's a Wrap!Enjoy the Show!You can email us at reeldealzmoviesandmusic@gmail.com or visit our Facebook page, Reel Dealz Podcast: Movies & Music Thru The Decades to leave comments and/or TEXT us at 843-855-1704 as well.
It's another doubleheader in episode #735, this time with 2 unrelated '50s classics. First up, I talk about the offbeat John Huston comedy Beat The Devil. The screenplay he wrote with Truman Capote is very quotable, even though its characters and daffy plot parody serious caper flicks like Huston's The Maltese Falcon. Humphrey Bogart has been a regular on Have You Ever Seen over the years, but this is the first episode ever for Jennifer Jones or Gina Lollobrigida. Jenny is quirky, cute and quite a talented liar while Gina is...well, staggeringly gorgeous. Then I veer from the fun of that one to spend about 17 minutes on Lee J. Cobb and Jane Wyatt in The Man Who Cheated Himself. Felix Feist's noir is about a cop who breaks the law to cover for his murdering mistress. Jane Wyatt is yet another classic actress we'd never covered before. So spend this final Monday of April hearing about a loopy comedy and an intense crime flick. Well, Actually: "coupe" IS pronounced "coo-pay" in French AND in what's known as "British English". Also, the other movie that will be reviewed on Friday will in fact be the Gene Autry western South Of The Border. Subscribe to this effort in your app. Add a rating and write a review to suggest others give it a shot too. Contacting is easy. On social media, it's @moviefiend51 on Twitter, ryan-ellis on Bluesky and RyanHYES on Letterboxd. As for email, that's haveyoueverseenpodcast@gmail.com.
It's time to talk about Season 18 and the girls! First up, Nico & Kevo – along with Jonah, Tori, & TK, weigh in on Snatch Game of Love: Island Edition featuring Athena Dion as OC Greta Feta Onassis, Darlene Mitchell as Mrs. Claus, Discord Addams as The Pope, Jane Don't as Truman Capote, Juicy Love Dion as JoJo Siwa, Kenya Pleaser as Lizzo, Mia Starr as Bloody Mary, Myki Meeks as Drew Barrymore, Nini Coco as Sir David Attenborough – and it doesn't go how ANYONE expects! Then, check in with the near-end of the season with our coverage of the Roast, leading up to the LaLaPaRuZa & finale! Don't miss it all on a new HTML / X Is For Show! X IS FOR SHOW is a talk show for your favorite media, the same way THE OFFICE was a documentary about a paper company. Every week, THE ACTION PACK gathers to discuss a wide range of entertainment media and news, from film & TV to comics to gaming, music, and beyond. Led by NICO (@NicoAction) and TK (@TKAccidental) with producer KEVO (@KevoReally), as well as a variety of friends and special guests, these LIVE discussions are not to be missed - so be sure to tune in and join us for all the fun!
A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. Tonight on APEX Express, join the Powerleegirls Host Miko Lee speaks with children's book authors Lorraine Nam, Uma Krishnaswami and Maggie Tokuda-Hall about Library Joy in honor of National School Library Month! To Learn More Lorrraine Nam, illustrator and author Michael Threet's book: I'm So Happy You're Here: A Celebration of Library Joy Uma Krishnaswami Her books: Book Uncle Triology Maggie Tokuda-Hall Her book: Love in the Library Every Library Authors Against Book Bans Show Transcript [00:00:00] Opening: Apex Express Asian Pacific expression. Community and cultural coverage, music and calendar, new visions and voices, coming to you with an Asian Pacific Islander point of view. It's time to get on board the Apex Express. [00:00:35] Ayame Keane-Lee: Welcome to tonight's episode of Apex Express Celebrating Library Joy. I'm Ayame Keane-Lee the editor of tonight's show, and part of the PowerLeeGirls bringing you the introduction to tonight's show. Did you know that April is National School Library Month and in just 10 days from April 19th to 25th is National Library Week? The theme for this year's National Library Week is Find Your Joy with Honorary Chair Mychal Threets. The first of three interviews you'll hear my mom, Miko Lee have tonight is with Lorraine Nam the illustrator for the newly released children's book written by that very Mychal Threets called, “I'm So Happy You're Here”. You will then hear Miko speak with Uma Krishnaswami about her children's book “Book Uncle and Me,” and lastly with Maggie Tokuda-Hall about her children's book, “Love in the Library,” and the important work of Authors Against Book Bans. As a library kid and current library worker, I have experienced firsthand the transformative power of library access and the importance of inclusive and diverse storytelling. In and out of schools, libraries are vital to nurturing and uplifting the autonomy and sovereignty of children, which always has and continues to be a liberatory practice. We hope tonight's show will inspire you right into your local library to check out some of the great books mentioned here or to put them on hold. Let's listen in. [00:02:06] Miko Lee: Welcome, Lorraine Nam, illustrator of amazing children's books. Welcome to Apex Express. [00:02:13] Lorraine Nam: I'm excited to be here. [00:02:16] Miko Lee: I wanna start with a question I ask all of my guests, which is, who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you? [00:02:24] Lorraine Nam: Who are my people? I would say creative people. People who are interested in having an open mind, and looking at the bright side of things, the beautiful things, people who are curious. The type of legacy that I bring I think is just my parents who are creative and then bringing that, to this new generation. [00:02:57] Miko Lee: Thank you for sharing. I am, I'm looking at your beautiful face, and behind you is this, find your joy and, and it's in lots of colors on this pink banner and in at the top we see opening up of a library door with Mychal Threets, who's the author of this book, “I'm So Happy You're Here: A Celebration of Library Joy.” I'm wondering if you can talk about your collaborative process with Mychal Threets. [00:03:25] Lorraine Nam: The first impression that you have of writer and illustrator for a picture book is that they work really closely together, and that's actually not the case. We work pretty separately, but I was very excited. Mychal wrote the words to this book and they were looking for an illustrator and my agent called me and she asked me if I was interested. I was very excited about the project. I signed up for it and we worked pretty separately. We connected on Instagram, but he pretty much had no art notes, everything was pretty much whatever I was open to. Then we met for the first time and we got our very first copy of the book and we met in New York. [00:04:10] Miko Lee: And what was that like? [00:04:12] Lorraine Nam: Um, amazing. He is exactly who he is in his videos. [00:04:18] Miko Lee: Can you share for our audience who he is and a little bit more about him, just in case folks don't know. [00:04:24] Lorraine Nam: The book calls him a librarian ambassador. He describes himself as a reader, a lover of librarians or the number one fan of libraries. This is his first book and he's also the host of Reading Rainbow on PBS. We met at the New York Library, public Library for the first time, and he's just so nice, very kind. Honestly, it felt like we already knew each other just because we had been talking through the publisher about the book. [00:05:02] Miko Lee: Thank you for sharing. It's so beautifully illustrated and you have a incredibly diverse,, amount of people in the book, both racially but also physically, and I really appreciate how you encapsulated that. I'm just wondering what inspired you to develop this specific imagery for this book? [00:05:22] Lorraine Nam: Yeah, so one of the only stipulations in the art notes was that he wanted to have a diverse group of people attending the library. People of all ages of all color, all sizes, all disabilities. That seemed like a no brainer to me because I just know the message that he puts into the world. The only difficult part was narrowing down the cast. There's all these different types of people and just trying to figure out who to focus on. I wanted to make sure that you still see the same group of kids over and over. So it felt like you were following the along throughout the day, while still having lots of diversity and lots of different types of people. [00:06:11] Miko Lee: Had you set what the cover was gonna be at the beginning or did that come after you had already finished the whole book? [00:06:19] Lorraine Nam: Oh, that came much later. We pretty much had the art for the interior nailed down, and then we were working on concepts for the cover. I knew from Mychal's social media presence that maybe he didn't want to be the poster cover of the book. He wanted to be about the library goers and the people rather than himself. And so I was kind of towing that line of like obviously people wanna see him, it's his first book. They're such huge fans, and so like how much to put Mychal in and how much to showcase him, as well as showcase like all the other people who go to the library. [00:07:02] Miko Lee: He definitely does have a joyous kind of ebullient vibe to him. I recommend for audience to check out his socials because he has this, you wanna listen to him. He's so inviting and I love the poster behind you because he is saying, like, “welcome, come into the library. This is my world.” And you also made him look so cute. Really looks like a cartoon version of him. So sweet. In your artistic process, I'm wondering what helps you define the style of art you utilize? I'm thinking about the paper cutouts that you did for a tale of two princes. What is it about the work that inspires you to select that type of style? [00:07:43] Lorraine Nam: I actually had a very winding path to the style that I have today. So the style that I have today is very much layered. It's painted, a lot of it is painted. And then I cut it out and then I glue and collage different elements, and then I scan everything in and enhance certain aspects through Photoshop. But a lot of it started actually in wanting to make a physical book. So it was with book binding and then with book binding, because that's just a technique to produce a product, it was what goes in those pages and that's when I started doing cut paper. So just silhouetted, cut paper. And I was doing that for a long time, just cutting out rice paper to make silhouettes. I wanted to tell more of the story and depict people. So then I started making paper cut [laughs] sets. So I would build —almost like Legos— a whole set of paper buildings and paper people and paper objects that are three dimensional. And then I would photograph them. And then from there, I landed in this more 2D, but playing with still technique and texture and layers. [00:09:10] Miko Lee: Wow, that's so interesting. Can you share a little bit more about your artistic process? Do you start at a certain time of day? Do you only work at night? Do you have a whole studio set up? [00:09:20] Lorraine Nam: well, For the book projects because there's such a timeline to 'em and they're very specific. I'll do very loose sketches on Post-it notes. They're readily available and then you can stick two of them next to each other to make a full spread. I use these post-its, and then I would just fold them in half and use that as like very quick pencil drawings. And then if I had something that I liked, I would just go in and pen. But they were still very small. So it was more about looking at silhouettes and composition. And then I would print, it's a very old school technique, but I would print out all the text for the book and cut 'em out. And double sided tape and just stick them on to see where the text should be on the page and where it could fit. I would just do that manually until I had something that I liked a little bit more. Then I would start creating digital, like line drawings. [00:10:21] Miko Lee: And are you lining this all up on a wall or putting it on the desk? [00:10:26] Lorraine Nam: Um, so they're in like a notebook. [00:10:29] Miko Lee: Oh, you put 'em in book format? [00:10:31] Lorraine Nam: It's all the spread. So it should take about two pages basically. You should be able to look at it and look at it from like an eagle eye perspective of what the entire book will look like and what the flow will be like, and if there's closeups or this is like a far away saying, you get more of the like, setting of the library. [00:10:52] Miko Lee: And with the font printed out really small so that it's on the bottom of that Post-it note. [00:10:56] Lorraine Nam: Mm-hmm. [00:10:57] Miko Lee: Wow, that is so fascinating. And what is it when you're eagle eye-ing, what are you looking for? [00:11:04] Lorraine Nam: I'm pretending that I'm a kid looking at a book for the first time, with zero context and maybe zero reading level skill and just looking at the pictures and seeing if I can spot the same character and if there is a story that follows along, because this is a library book where it doesn't talk about specific people. I wanted to be able to follow each character in the book and see what their day was like in the library. So when they first came into the library, what they were doing during the day, what friends they made, and then maybe them leaving or, you know, a resolution of some kind, like their parents are checking out symbols at the library. [00:11:52] Miko Lee: the concept of having the character go throughout the book. Was that in the instruction or was something that you created. [00:11:59] Lorraine Nam: That was something that I wanted. Because I know looking at picture books, the pictures can also tell a story where, the words, it might not be in the words. So I wanted there to be more of a layered storytelling through image. [00:12:18] Miko Lee: I appreciate that as a mom. I remember when my girls were little, they would always say, where is that rabbit on the page? Or where is that thing? And so being able to track a character all the way through, is quite delightful. It adds another dimension for the multiple readings. You mentioned before about how you didn't really meet Mychal, the author of the book until the very end, and I guess that's common as an illustrator and you've worked with so many different experts in their fields from, physicist Neil Degrasse Tyson to Skater Nathan Chen. How is their very different fields, how does that impact your art making? [00:12:57] Lorraine Nam: It's actually the most fun. It's what drew me to illustration in the first place. I love being able to do like a deep dive and a specific subject that I wouldn't necessarily have gravitated towards and do that research. I actually do go to the library. I start the process at the library and I look at all the books about that particular topic, and then see what other people have done. And so working on the book for Neil deGrasse Tyson, it was so much fun looking at different how space is depicted the idea of galaxies and making that tangible and real for kids. And then for Nathan Chen, I was already a fan before I got the project, so it was very easy. But watching the videos, seeing all the different techniques and for his book it was more looking at sports books. Because he's such a unique person in his specific field in figure skating that there weren't very many books on figure skating and most are of a female portrayal. I was looking more at sports and how people show different types of movement, , and show like form. And the more technical aspects that are very, very, very specific and very critical to those things. [00:14:32] Miko Lee: And how did that manifest into your book? [00:14:35] Lorraine Nam: Um, a lot of drawings of like, the breakdown of his jumps and trying to figure out can a child do this jump [laughs]? And also doing a lot of research 'cause he's a very private person. His book is not about him, it's not a biography, but it's also loosely based off of him. You know, I have two other siblings. If I had a book based off of me, I want my siblings to be involved and represented in that as well. So I included his family, even though they're not a huge part of the book, his siblings are not like big characters. But they're still represented in there. So he can still be like, oh that's my family. This is based off of my story. [00:15:32] Miko Lee: So when you're doing these approaches, like including Nathan's family or in the library book, making sure characters go all the way through, is that something you have to check in with the writer about, to see if they're okay? Or is that something that you just do and then you submit and you see if they like it? [00:15:50] Lorraine Nam: That's something that I do, that I find joy in and see. Usually the first eyes on my sketches are the publisher and the art director. And I actually have no idea what, at what stage they really share the sketches, if it's like at a more finalized stage or if it's an early on one, but I usually just go with my own ideas and see what they think about it. [00:16:20] Miko Lee: Wow. I didn't know that you could have that much say into it. That's lovely. You talked a little bit about using the library for research. Gosh, I imagine that Neil deGrasse Tyson, there's so much research on it, that must have been a deep dive. I'm wondering what the library meant to you as a child. [00:16:38] Lorraine Nam: Yeah. I grew up as a big reader. The library for me it was a magical space that I wasn't really sure what it was. My parents, because they grew up in Korea and moved here to the States, there was a big language barrier between us and they're also very not talkative people. They just took us to this place one day and it was our local public library and it was right before closing and we were able to check out as many books as we wanted in whatever type of book that we wanted. I felt like that was magical, that there was no limit to it. [00:17:19] Miko Lee: My last question is, what are you working on now? [00:17:22] Lorraine Nam: I'm working on a few books, actually. I'm juggling a few, but they're all very fun and different. I'm doing a book about a boy dreaming of flying, being a pilot. So I think that will be a really fun imaginative book. [00:17:43] Miko Lee: What is one of your books that you would've liked to read to your younger self? [00:17:50] Lorraine Nam: Mm, I probably Wei Skates On, the book with Nathan Chen. ‘Cause his story is about overcoming obstacles and being disappointed. And just feeling frustrated and upset. And I feel like that's an important lesson even in adulthood. It's not really resolved through words. It's more of like the, everyone is there for him, his family is there for him, and they all just want him to enjoy what he's doing and to not care about winning or losing. [00:18:33] Miko Lee: Lorraine Nam, thank you so much for chatting with us about your work and about the library as a magical place, appreciate talking with you. [00:18:42] Lorraine Nam: Thank you so much. I had so much fun talking with you. [00:18:45] Miko Lee: Welcome, amazing award-winning children's book author Uma Krishnaswami, I'm so happy to have you here on Apex Express. [00:18:54] Uma Krishnaswami: Miko, it's my pleasure to be here. [00:18:57] Miko Lee: I wanted to start with a question I ask all of my guests, which is, who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you? [00:19:05] Uma Krishnaswami: What a wonderful question. Who are my people? My people are children who are, my ideal readership is the eight to 12-year-old group. I write for children. I'm not particularly thinking about audience when I begin writing. But at some point I want my readership to feel validated, whether they recognize themselves as being in my stories or my stories are offering them a window into a world that they are not immediately familiar with. So I would say those are my people. [00:19:45] Miko Lee: And what is the legacy that you carry with you? [00:19:48] Uma Krishnaswami: I grew up in India. The year that I was born India had been independent for all of nine years. So I carry very much that colonial legacy. I also am an immigrant to two countries, early in my adulthood to the United States and about 12 years ago to Canada. So my legacy is one of moving and finding new roots, finding community. Those are the things that I try to carry forward in my stories. When I began writing, I lived in the US and I started writing when my son was born. So there I was with a little brown baby and I went looking for books that would represent him and I didn't find them. And I think that is what made me think in my early thirties that, real life people could write children's books because of course the books I had read as a child were all written by people from England and many of them were dead. I kind of thought you had to be dead and British to be a writer. So yeah, it's complicated, isn't it? All of that works into, what you think of as, as your legacy. Having done this for 30 plus years now. [00:21:03] Miko Lee: And you've written so many beautiful books. Tell us about a little bit more about that first book. [00:21:09] Uma Krishnaswami: So the very first book, it was called Stories of the Flood. I realized very quickly that I didn't really know what I was doing. I looked to folk tales and traditional tales as a way to teach me about story. My second book called The Broken Tusk Stories of the Hindu God Ganesha. That is the one that I consider as the book that taught me how to write. I had a wonderful editor [unintelligble] Thorpe at a small press in Connecticut, Linnet Books. She told me to lean into story and to see myself as a storyteller. In a way, every book I've written has taught me how to write. [00:21:47] Miko Lee: Can you tell us about your favorite book as a kid? [00:21:52] Uma Krishnaswami: My favorite book as a kid, it would have to be Winnie The Pooh. [00:21:58] Miko Lee: And what was it about Winnie the Pooh that enamored you? [00:22:01] Uma Krishnaswami: I came to it very early and aunt had traveled to England and she brought me my copy of winnie the Pooh in the House of Poo Corner. And I read them, sitting in very Indian gardens, sometimes up in trees. I spent lots of time up in trees and I took my own geography and placed it over the geography of the book. , So that for me, the a hundred acre wood had lime trees and banyan trees and possibly mango trees. It didn't occur to me, until much later when I read an Enid Blyton reader. I had my moment of disillusionment with Enid Blyton and that's when it really occurred to me that there was an us and a them in, in some of the storytelling I was consuming. [00:22:49] Miko Lee: What age was that where you recognized that? [00:22:51] Uma Krishnaswami: My post-colonial moment? [00:22:53] Miko Lee: Yes. [00:22:54] Uma Krishnaswami: I might have been a 11. [00:22:56] Miko Lee: Oh, wow. And were you still living in India at that time? [00:22:59] Uma Krishnaswami: Yeah, yeah. 11 was a very formative year for me. My grandfather passed away, so it sort of brought mortality , into the framework for me. Also that was my year of disillusionment with Blyton. 'cause I read The , river of Adventure. And the villain in it had my name. He was called. Uma, Raya or Raya Uma or something like that. And yeah, I was just shocked. Just totally shocked. It was pure coincidence, I'm sure. She probably just, pulled the name out of the air and plunked it in. But. I began to notice that he was described as dark skinned and he was described as cunning. All this language that had slid right past me before began to be apparent. So, yeah, [00:23:47] Miko Lee: I love that. That is so amazing. This name, like what? That's my name as the villain. [00:23:53] Uma Krishnaswami: I'm the Bad Guy. No, I'm not. [00:23:56] Miko Lee: And all of your books are such a wonderful clap back to that because you have a multitude of characters and so many different worlds. Initially reached out to you because I started reading book Uncle this trilogy of books that are so lovely. Can you first share a little bit about what the Book Uncle's Trilogy is about. [00:24:16] Uma Krishnaswami: Okay, so it didn't start out as a trilogy. It didn't even start out as a book. It started out as a short story and then it didn't quite fit. It wasn't a picture book. It seemed to have more layers than that, so it kind of grew. But what started Book Uncle and Me was I was visiting my parents in India. At the time, and I was on this very busy urban street and there was this kid sitting on this on the, on the sidewalk. Um, it was kind of a broken brick sidewalk, and she was sitting cross-legged right in the middle and she was reading book and she was just oblivious to the crowd going around her and the. Buses on the road and there were, you know, random goats and dogs running around and she just was ignoring everything and she was absorbed in her book. And I remembered that I had been that kind of reader as a child. There was an election going on at the time as well, and I thought, I wonder what would happen if I put those two things together. And that is how Book Uncle came to be. [00:25:14] Miko Lee: And then there was just, you wanted to live in those characters more, so you ended up writing additional books? [00:25:20] Uma Krishnaswami: Hmm and that's a very good question. And actually no, I didn't, I thought I was done. I wrote Book Uncle and Me back in, I'm say 2009, 2010, something like that. I probably started it in 2010. Um, it got published originally in India in 2012, I believe. And then it was picked up by Ground Wood in Canada and published in Canada and the US so North American edition in 2016. And I thought, you know, I'm done. I'm writing other things. And then come the pandemic and we're all in lockdown. And like a lot of writers, I was doing, um, many, many, virtual. Presentations and programs. Um, and I did something through the North Vancouver Public Library and, there were kids zooming in from, you know, some from home, some from their bubbles, some from classrooms, whatever. And we were talking about book uncle and one of the kids, I think in third grade maybe, she said, Are you gonna write a sequel? And I am just joshing, right? I am. I said, yeah, should I? And they're all going, yeah, you should. And you should write three because you've got three characters you should give them each a [story]. And I'm like, all right guys i'll think about it. I absolutely will but not really taking it seriously. And then as often happens. the session ended and, you know, there we were all in lockdown going nowhere. And I thought maybe, maybe there's something there. Maybe I could return to that. And in a way I was kind of intrigued because I hadn't, had never thought about a trilogy and I was interested in how that would play out. Um, and it was kind of a writing challenge to myself, but honestly, once I started writing Birds on the Brain, which was book two it just kind of, I hesitate to say wrote itself 'cause I, that just seems, you know, so kind of woo woo. But, um, it did, it did. Uh, the, the kid came in and she took over and then a bird flew onto the rooftop and there I was on my way. So that's the story of, of how that that happened. In retrospect, I'm really sorry I didn't ask that child's name because I would've absolutely loved to have acknowledged her in the book. But thank you child from North Vancouver, whoever you are. [00:27:40] Miko Lee: That is so amazing. That's by request, by audience request. You fulfilled this goal of a trilogy and and I I love that they even said, not just a sequel, but a trilogy. [00:27:52] Uma Krishnaswami: Oh, they were. Yeah. They had it. I mean, they had, then they, they figured it out, which was really lovely. [00:27:58] Miko Lee: And those, that trilogy is really geared, as you were saying to the second and third grade audience and I So many of your books are written around kids that can make a difference. What is it about that age that appeals to you and that motivation to show them how they can change the world? [00:28:16] Uma Krishnaswami: I think they have this really, strong sense of what's fair. It's the age at which, you know, you start pushing back against what you see as small unfairnesses in your life. Parental restrictions quite often, or older siblings. You're pushing back. You're doing a little bit of finding who you are. And I think that uh, you begin to get a sense of awareness of the big world outside your small circle. And I think also one of the things that drives me, with writing to this age is that, I feel that it is so unfair that grownups, the adult world, has created so much injustice. And we just kind of expect the next generation to step up and step into it and, and do the best they can. and it just, it doesn't seem right not to at least give them the wherewithal to think about that. And they do, they have children have voices and their voices matter. As we found out with, the climate strikes. I mean it really was young people who brought those messages out into the world and forced us to think about them and talk about them. So, I think that we owe children that. [00:29:34] Miko Lee: So which of your books would you want to read to the second or third grade Uma? [00:29:43] Uma Krishnaswami: [Laughs] Maybe Book Uncle and Me. Because I think there's a lot of second and third grade Uma in that book. I was a compulsive reader like Yasmin. I would've absolutely read a book every day for the rest of my life if I'd had that many books available to me. I didn't. So I read the ones I had over and over again. I lived in an imaginary world, quite a bit of the time. [00:30:06] Miko Lee: Speaking of having access to lots of books, I'm wondering what your relationship was like to libraries, both as a child and then now. [00:30:15] Uma Krishnaswami: I'm a proud and inveterate library goer. I put holds on things. I go browse on shelves. I download eBooks and audio books. I always have a pending list. I'm very, very grateful for libraries and also for librarians whom many of whom I have come to know over my life and am immensely grateful for. I did not have access to libraries much as a child. We didn't have a public library system that was free and available and open to everybody. There were the kind of unofficial lending library types that I feature in Book Uncle and Me. There are sadly fewer of them now, but you still find them on street corners in India. I remember taking a book and giving one and then getting one back in return. That was, that was part of my life in some of the places we lived. [00:31:07] Miko Lee: Did you know an actual book uncle? [00:31:10] Uma Krishnaswami: I didn't actually pay much attention, to the people who handed those books out. I was much more, focused on the books I was getting. There are characters who I've seen who have run these things. I once had somebody email me and say, I'm a book uncle. This is what I do. So that was really nice. [00:31:31] Miko Lee: That's sweet. I wanna roll back and talk a little bit more about your artistic process. I'm wondering if you, as a writer, as illustrator, you can sometimes be in your own world, and I'm wondering what your process is. [00:31:43] Uma Krishnaswami: My place is right here. This is my office room, and I'm standing at a treadmill desk, and usually what I will do, is when I'm writing, I will turn that on very, very slowly. I usually start out at the idea stage with a notebook and a pen. I have fountain pens with very varied colors of ink, and I use those always to write my initial notes and questions about a new story idea. I don't go to the computer and the keyboard until the idea has started showing up quite a few times. In, perhaps in a few iterations, almost as if I'm actually pushing it away at first, you know, saying, don't scratch up my window until you are developed a little bit more. I'm not going to, indulge, the initial shallowness that usually the first idea is often not what it's gonna end up being. I question that, and sometimes this is gonna sound really crazy, but, if I write those questions many times over in different colored inks, the answers begin to break out in clumps. Once I've begun to think, okay, well maybe I, I know what I could do with this. That's when I open up a file. [00:32:56] Miko Lee: Ooh share a little bit more about the different colored inks. How does that work? [00:33:00] Uma Krishnaswami: Um, right over there, there's a whole row of inks, and right over here is a fountain pen, and I have several of them. I change the ink colors, and when I get stuck with something, it really does help to write those questions to myself, in a journal notebook. I have a terrible handwriting, so I used to really worry about when people gave me nice notebooks. Little empty notebooks with beautiful glossy pages. I used to think, God, my writing is so awful. I feel like I'm desecrating this beautiful book. I've gotten over that and it's actually really helpful to physically write that thought for me is very, very useful. [00:33:39] Miko Lee: And when you see the different colors, is it like words that stand out to you, that you piece together? Yeah. [00:33:44] Uma Krishnaswami: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or sometimes I'll write something, in a paragraph, and then I'll break it up and write it in a lineated way, maybe in a different color. You just start seeing things differently when you try different ways of thinking about the same thing. It's all a trick to get the kind of managerial editorial mind out of the way. You need her later, but I don't need her when I'm trying to shape something. [00:34:13] Miko Lee: The, for the creative process. Mm-hmm. The multiple colors just helps [00:34:16] Uma Krishnaswami: Right. [00:34:16] Miko Lee: Pull you into that. [00:34:17] Uma Krishnaswami: Yeah. It just loosens, it loosens my mind up so I don't feel so focused on the objective. I often tell myself, I think Linda Sue Park used to say this. You don't have to write a whole novel. You just write a scene. And so that's what I tell myself, I'm a sceneist. I'm not a novelist. I'm just a sceneist. I write one scene. And that's all I need to write. Then I will write another one and so forth. [00:34:38] Miko Lee: And do you use sticky notes or something to keep those scenes separately or [00:34:42] Uma Krishnaswami: just all kinds of things? I use sticky notes. I use little boards on which I draw plot lines, and then I write, notes to myself. I use the journal notebooks. I've started using Scrivener and I actually have found that helpful but not until I've got something, in enough shape to plug things in. [00:35:01] Miko Lee: Oh, I love hearing about artistic process. That's so fascinating. I appreciate you and you're showing your beautiful pen and everything. It's so great. [00:35:08] Uma Krishnaswami: It's messy, right? One of the things I've learned is to lean into the messiness and not try to organize things too fast, too early. [00:35:16] Miko Lee: Mm-hmm. Giving yourself the time for the creative juices to flow. [00:35:20] Uma Krishnaswami: Yeah. Yeah. [00:35:21] Miko Lee: So my last question is, what are you working on now? [00:35:25] Uma Krishnaswami: I've actually just got done with edits on a picture book, which is going to be called Mango Sun. And then I'm working on another picture book. That's just gone to my agent. It's got to do with wildlife rescue and conservation in the Himalayas. It's an Indian setting, but a very different setting from Mango Sun. [00:35:44] Miko Lee: And most of the ideas from your books are just coming from your imagination or something you read or where are you pulling from to get your inspiration? [00:35:52] Uma Krishnaswami: Everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. I have a picture book that came out of a trip that we took to Galapagos and will it ever take form? I don't know, it's about the rewilding of an island , and how when you bring one species back, the other one follows. Some of it's from my childhood. I have two picture books that came out of a memory of planting a mango seed and watching it grow. [00:36:21] Miko Lee: Sounds lovely. Two of my favorite things, mango and Sun [laughs], appreciate you joining us and sharing about your artistic process and your amazing book. And I'll put a link to your website in our show notes. And thank you so much for joining us and talking to us about Book Uncle and your work. [00:36:37] Uma Krishnaswami: Miko, thank you so much. It's really a delight. [00:36:41] Miko Lee: Welcome, Maggie Tokuda Hall to Apex Express. [00:36:45] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Thank you so much for having me. [00:36:47] Miko Lee: I'm so happy to have you talking about, your wonderful book, love in the Library. But first I wanna, ask you a question I ask my guest, which is, who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you? [00:37:01] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Oh man. I feel like I have so many tribes that I identify with in different ways. , Gosh, who are my people? I mean, generally speaking, angry queer teenage girls very much my people. Tired Jewish aunties also my people. Exhausted Asian mothers also my people, [laughs] librarians and book people are my people. I, I, I don't know. I feel like I have so many people that I feel an affinity toward and an affection for, and kinship with. [00:37:38] Miko Lee: I like you naming all of those because we're multifaceted people and there's many different things that make up who we are. Yeah. And what is the legacy that you carry with you from all these tribes you're a part of? [00:37:50] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: From my mother, I carry a legacy of honoring the truth, like really believing that children are owed the truth and that part of being an adult is being courageous enough to tell it. but I also come from like a vibrant family of Jewish storytellers and I feel like I have that, that I carry with me as well. [00:38:17] Miko Lee: Thank you. So you've written the book Love in the Library about Tamma, a woman who works at a library in the Minidoka concentration camp during World War ii. [00:38:28] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Mm-hmm. [00:38:28] Miko Lee: And she meets George and falls in love. Can you tell me about how you very first heard this true love story of your grandparents? [00:38:40] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: I can't actually, I don't remember the first time I heard this story. It is a story that I've just always known. like for me it's very much a fabric of how I came to understand the world and my place in it. Like sky is blue, grandma and grandpa met in a prison camp, you know, normal stuff. And so, um, [00:39:00] Miko Lee: so it's just part of the family lore? [00:39:03] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Yeah. Like, it's not something my mother was ever shy about telling us. And I truly do not remember the first time she talked to me about it because I remember being very small and already feeling like I knew that story. [00:39:15] Miko Lee: Okay. Then how did you decide to turn it into a children's book? [00:39:19] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Yeah, so, in 2017 when President Trump took office for the first time, in his very first executive order was to sign the travel or Muslim ban where he was banning people from Muslim majority countries from coming to the United States. It was clear immediately that he was gonna be using his time and power to enact a white supremacist agenda. I knew I needed to do all the things that we're supposed to do. Like I called my representatives and I wrote my postcards and I marched and I did all those things. But I really did try to audit what I had to offer, particularly children in that moment. That was unique to me. And I realized I had this beautiful story in my own family, not just about the cruelty of those sorts of policies, but also the resilience and power of the people who they target. [00:40:05] Miko Lee: Ooh. Fired up the, that truth teller part of you just became ready to go. [00:40:11] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Yeah. [00:40:11] Miko Lee: Um, speaking of the impact of politics and what's going on and how that relates to books, I know that in April, 2023, Scholastic wanted to include love in the library in a collection around AANHPI folks, but they wanted to edit your amazingly fierce author's note. Can you share with our audience what happened? [00:40:34] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: I mean, first of all, thank you for calling it amazingly fierce. In my author's note, I talk about how what happened to my grandparents wasn't an isolated moment in American history and that it was racist, which I think is a, a reflection of a very basic understanding of that history. It, it's not, a creative extrapolation and. Scholastic offered to license the book, but my licensing offer came with a caveat, which was that I had to remove that entire paragraph. Um, and I had to remove the word racism from the text altogether. And so I decided to say no and say no publicly. And for about three months, my full-time job was talking about Scholastic, but also about our obligation to tell children, American history, honestly. [00:41:19] Miko Lee: And they wanted you to get word of the word racist. Did they say why? [00:41:24] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Yes, they basically said, the language is too strong and we fear that some teachers won't bring it in for fear of this political climate, which is the nice way of saying like, we have to sell into places where book bans are happening and we think that this language is too incendiary for people who would ban books, which to me was always really, Unsatisfactory logic, because books about Japanese American incarceration are banned all the time and they don't use as strident of language as I use in that author's note. baseball saved us, gets banned. They called us, the enemy gets banned. This story is already considered dangerous by the people who would ban books, so they were trying to hold a center that just doesn't exist. [00:42:04] Miko Lee: And so what did you end up doing? [00:42:07] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: I said no and said no publicly, just with like, sort of the hope of, sparking some intra community conversation among kid lit creators about what sort of edits are appropriate to offer people. I would, I still posit, that that's a completely inappropriate edit and that's about sanding down people of color's, history and perspective to cater to a white audience. And I was unwilling to do it. and Scholastic initially released like a very, incomplete apology. And then when they received a lot of pushback about that, they offered a much more full apology. They offered to meet with me and my publisher, the CEO of Scholastic and the head of their education divisions, which is the division that made me this offer. And then they also had me work with a restorative justice consultant, for like a year to try to figure out what they could do better. But what I said to them at the end of that time that I told them, I was extremely transparent that I would be talking about this publicly. So I don't feel bad saying exactly what I said to them here is, I think the exact same thing would've happened. It just would've happened more politely. [00:43:17] Miko Lee: Wow. [00:43:18] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: I don't think that they actually reexamined what their role is as a publisher of Books for Children under Unconsolidated authoritarianism. They just figured out how to ask people to make racist edits more, more, uh, gently. [00:43:33] Miko Lee: And you worked with them for one year with an RJ consultant. [00:43:36] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: I mean, like, not every day, but we had, you know, meetings over the months. And she was a smart lady. Like I don't think that she, you know, did nothing. I think she was trying her best, but I think that, you know, big institutions are very slow to institute cultural change and that that on the one hand has to happen from the top down, but also can't happen from the top down. [00:43:56] Miko Lee: Mm-hmm. [00:43:56] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: And so I genuinely believe that there CEO was trying his hardest to, to make a meaningful change, but without them really stopping and examining and questioning what their own role in this moment is in a critical way. I don't think that they are going to be able to have answered what I would've required for them to, for me to then accept their licensing offer. ‘Cause they made it again. [00:44:25] Miko Lee: So at the end of the one year long, they made the licensing offer to you again? [00:44:29] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Yeah. I think just to be kind, just as like a gesture of like, listen, we know we messed up. We'd love to license your book and I still said no because I don't think that they made meaningful enough change. [00:44:40] Miko Lee: Hmm. Wow. I love this. What did you learn from this experience? [00:44:47] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: That it is very unusual for people to blow the whistle within publishing, even when the examples are egregious. [00:44:54] Miko Lee: Tell me about your connection with Authors Against Book Bans. Did that come out of this experience with Scholastic, or were you involved actively involved in this prior to that? [00:45:05] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: No, it absolutely came as a result of my experience with Scholastic. Authors against Book Bans is an organization that I'm currently the president of. We're over 5,000 book creators across the country who are united under a single point of view, which is that the government shouldn't be allowed to tell us what to read. That's what we believe and that's what we fight for. And I got involved in founding the group along with specifically David Levithan, who's a really wonderful young adult and middle grade author, who had put together most of this group before I even came on board. Cause we realized that authors needed a central place to fight. There was no one organizing specifically us. And so Authors Against Book Bans was born out of necessity and, the dearth of a place that existed for us. Everyone would call on us to come speak, but it was extremely ad hoc. We weren't making any kind of unified movement, even though we all so passionately agree that, you know, book bans are anti-American and in violation of our First Amendment rights. And, you know, the freedom to read is a necessary freedom for a free and democratic society. and the reason I'd reached out to David initially was because I was hoping to put together something like Authors Against Book Bans, but just by myself, which is, maybe a testament more to my own personality [laughs] problems than anything else, but I was like, I'll just figure it out. And he was like, you know, I'm actually assembling a group that's trying to do this. Would you like to be a part of it? And that's how I came aboard. But I had gotten interested in it because as a result of the Scholastic fiasco, I was invited to give the keynote speech at the Idaho Library Association in 2023. I gave my little speech that I'd been giving a lot then, um, about how we have an obligation to tell American history honestly. And, people were like, the reaction was so emotional to it and so profound and like, I thought it was a good speech. I'm proud of the speech, but like it, something else was going on and I could feel it. And I started talking to the people who were there and when these librarians started telling me what they had gone through, just for making books like mine available to children, stalking, harassment, death threats. One of them had been followed home, like really frightening, scary things happening to them on like, in some cases a daily basis. I realized like I was gonna be a part of this fight. That was that. I wasn't gonna let them fight alone. And so, you know, in, in my advocacy work now, Idaho still holds like a very precious place in my heart because I think that it's a very forgotten state. When we think about places that need help, when we think about places that have been gerrymandered, when we think about places where there are so many good people who are disenfranchised and unable to affect meaningful change in their state level, governments. That have just been absolutely run roughshod over by Christian nationalists. We should be thinking about Idaho. They have, I think, like the highest neo-Nazi population in the United States. so it's a very direct line between my grandparents being incarcerated to the activism that I do now. And it wouldn't have happened without Scholastic's offensive offer. [00:48:22] Miko Lee: I did not realize that librarians were personally being assaulted or attacked or followed. For books. [00:48:29] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: You should watch, the librarian's documentary that's now streaming on PBS. Okay. Um, it's common across the country. Amanda Jones, who's an Authors Against Book Bans member no big deal, is a librarian in Louisiana that can't go grocery shopping in her own hometown anymore for fear for her own safety because she has taken a stand to like refuse to remove lgbtq plus books from her school library shelves. It's really dire. And I think people understand objectively that book bans are a problem in our country. I do not think that they understand how violent that this fight is. It's a really dark and hard time to be a librarian. So if you're a person who supports libraries, you should be thanking your librarians and letting them know one-on-one and in person face-to-face that you appreciate the work that they do, because there are people who are making their lives really difficult. [00:49:25] Miko Lee: Can you talk about what the library meant to you as a child? [00:49:30] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: I mean, honestly it was like a part-time babysitter. You're a kid, there's a library. Entertain yourself, you figure it out. I think the first time I really felt like a sense of belonging in the library was in middle school. We moved from LA to Northern California and I had to start a new school in seventh grade. I didn't really know anyone and it was embarrassing to not have people to eat lunch with and things like that. So I would eat lunch in the library. And the librarian was really kind about it. Like she never called attention to it. She never embarrassed me about it. She would let me sneakily eat in there, even though there was a very specific rule that you weren't allowed to eat in the library. she put, the Enchanted Forest Chronicles on an end cap once, and that's how I found them and ended up reading the entire series and that was really when I became a fantasy reader and you know, my debut novel was a fantasy novel. I still feel very much like a fantasy reader kind of at heart, and that started there. I mean, we never know when libraries are going to save a kid's life. [00:50:39] Miko Lee: Can we go back to how you ended up writing this book about your grandparents' experience? Sure. And what was the first spark for you to say, I wanna turn this into something. It's a family lore, but I want more people to know about it. [00:50:54] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: I mean, the Trump administration thing, [00:50:56] Miko Lee: it was truly that. You said it was [00:50:57] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Yeah. Trump was it [00:50:58] Miko Lee: Trump got elected. People should know this happened. [00:51:00] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Yes. What do you have to tell children in this moment If they're Muslim, they're scared, and if they're not, they need a way to understand what it means to feel afraid. Both of those things need to happen at the same time of like, you have to offer comfort to the children of the marginalized. You have to offer perspective to the children who have the privilege not to feel that fear. And so I have this story and what I love about this story is. I know that children are capable of holding the complexity of this story is both very romantic and very sweet, and also the circumstances it happened under were completely unfair. That's the kind of logic children are able to hold, and they should be given the opportunity to hold that kind of complexity because it'll serve them for the rest of their life because most of most situations we confront are complex. [00:51:57] Miko Lee: And how were you able to eke out more details of that story? Did you do family interviews or was it more from your imagination? [00:52:05] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: My mother is a journalist and she kept my grandmother's journals from the time she was in Minidoka. So some of it comes from my grandmother's journals. Some of it comes from working with my mother to make sure that it felt accurate, tonally and factually. ‘Cause she was not gonna let me publish a book that was nonsense. I always say it's Truman Capote true. ‘Cause the situation, the sensory details, all that stuff real, but the dialogue is made up. The dialogue is art. The dialogue is a way for children to understand how they might've been feeling. They never had succinct, quick conversations like this about their humanity and how they felt about each other. It was a long courting process, and so, you know. That part is made up for children, [00:52:49] Miko Lee: but you, but you did include actual quotes from her journal too, right? [00:52:53] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Yes. The book closes with her words, not mine. [00:52:57] Miko Lee: Can you give us those final words? [00:53:00] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: The miracle is in us as long as we believe in beauty, in change, in hope. Which are words she wrote while she was imprisoned in Minidoka. [00:53:11] Miko Lee: And how does that resonate with you in the time of now? [00:53:15] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: They are words that I desperately cling to in the hope that I can see them become manifest. [00:53:23] Miko Lee: And what are you working on now? [00:53:26] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Making Authors Against Book Bans as operational as possible. [00:53:31] Miko Lee: And what does that look like? [00:53:32] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: In late 2025, we became a nonprofit corporation. We have fiscal sponsorship under EveryLibrary, which is a really wonderful advocacy group that's a combination [501](c)3-(c)4, which means you can make tax deductible donations to them, but also they do overtly political work. And so now we can receive tax deductible, donations and continue to do the overtly political work that we do. We are an unapologetically political organization. We are more than happy to help get people elected who fight for the freedom to read, and we are delighted to show the door to people who would stand in our way of that freedom. [00:54:09] Miko Lee: And how can people get more involved in your work? [00:54:13] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: They could absolutely go to authorsagainstbookbans.com and make a donation. We need it [laughs]. We are one of the only organizations that receives donations that exists for the sole purpose of fighting book bans. Most every other group in our space have an angle that book bans affect them, and so they fight against them, but that's not their only purview. It is our only purview. So if it is something that you were interested in fighting, then you could make a donation to us. I would suggest signing up to be on the email list from EveryLibrary because they mobilize everybody, not just authors and book creators. And if you are a book creator, self-published, traditionally published, we don't care. Then you should sign up to be a member of Authors Against Book Bans and you'll get calls to action every Friday. [00:55:07] Miko Lee: Thank you so much for sharing with us about your book and educating us about the work you're doing and appreciate hearing from you. Thank you for joining us. [00:55:16] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Thank you for having me. [00:55:28] Miko Lee: Please check out our website, kpfa.org/program/apexexpress to find out more about our show and our guests tonight. We thank all of you listeners out there. Keep resisting, keep organizing, keep creating, and sharing your visions with the world because your voices are important. Apex Express is produced by Ayame Keane-Lee, Anuj Vaidya, Cheryl Truong, Isabel Li, Jalena Keane-Lee, Miko Lee, Miata Tan, Preti Mangala-Shekar and Swati Rayasam. Tonight's show was produced by me Miko Lee, and edited by Ayame Keane-Lee. Have a great night.. The post APEX Express – 4.9.26 – Library Joy appeared first on KPFA.
In 1949, aspiring writer Nelle Harper Lee moved from her home in small-town Alabama to New York City. She was following in the footsteps of her childhood friend, author Truman Capote. Within a few years she had penned a novel of her own, and called it To Kill a Mockingbird.To Kill a Mockingbird catapulted Harper Lee to the heights of literary fame. But just as she found success, she withdrew, overwhelmed by being in the public eye, and the pressure to produce another book as good as her first. Decades would pass before anyone mentioned the possibility of her publishing again - and this time, people wondered how much of a voice she really had in the publication of her second book.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Emily Bazelon, staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, co-host of Slate's "Political Gabfest" podcast, Truman Capote fellow for creative writing and law at Yale Law School and author of Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration (Random House, 2019), offers analysis of the oral arguments at the Supreme Court over President Donald Trump's executive order to end "birthright citizenship." Photo: People demonstrate outside the U.S. Supreme Court ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump's expected arrival on April 01, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Al Drago/Getty Images)
Producer's note: In case the title has stirred up some strong emotions, women account for 75-80% of this genre. Professor Catharine Lumby is an Australian academic, author and journalist, and is currently Chair of the Department of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney. Before transitioning to academia, Lumby had an extensive career in journalism, working as a feature writer and columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald, a news reporter for the ABC, and a columnist and senior writer at The Bulletin. She obtained her PhD from Macquarie University, after completing an Arts/Law degree at the University of Sydney, and went on to become the foundation Chair of the Media and Communications Department at the University of Sydney. Her academic career has included senior roles at UNSW, where she was the foundation Director of the Journalism and Media Research Centre, and at Macquarie University as Professor of Media, before returning to the University of Sydney as Professor of Media Studies. With research interests spanning gender, sexuality and popular culture, Lumby is also a widely published author and media commentator on gender and media, which makes her insights into the intersection of media consumption and social behaviors particularly impactful. Key Takeaways: The true crime genre has historical roots in 16th-century Britain and has evolved from public ballads to podcasts. Women's consumption of true crime is often linked to a desire for empowerment and understanding in a world with prevalent gendered violence. Fictional detectives use empirical reasoning as a counterpart to be analysed alongside faith-focused narratives in crime. The host's discussion touches upon legal responses to crime and human fascination with extreme acts, pushing listeners to consider moral and spiritual reflections. Empathy is highlighted as critical to understanding the broader implications of true crime stories, beyond mere voyeurism. Notable Quotes: "True crime is an opportunity to really perhaps understand things from the victim's point of view, the survivor's point of view..." - Professor Catharine Lumby "The Bible is a realistic book and it doesn't shy away from…difficult things." - Megan Powell du Toit "At its deepest, realising that none of us are that far…from what we might see as monstrous." - Professor Catharine Lumby "Empathy, for me, is the highest quality." - Professor Catharine Lumby "The cross itself is a kind of true crime. It's a realistic display of evil and ultimate redemption." - Michael Jensen Resources: Helen Garner's Works: Noted for her insightful writing on justice and human behavior. Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood": A seminal true crime book mentioned during the discussion. Teacher's Pet Podcast: Explored as a notable example of true crime media in Australia. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Fashion experts Zanna Roberts Rassi, Jenna Lyons and Elaine Welteroth break down the best looks from the Oscars alongside guest co-host Justin Sylvester. Jesse Tyler Ferguson stops by to talk about starring as Truman Capote in the one-man play “Tru." Jordin Sparks opens up about her role as Shimmer in the animated film “The Pout-Pout Fish." Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
In the new revival of the 1989 play "Tru," Jesse Tyler Ferguson stars as famed writer Truman Capote grappling with a social scandal that has left him cut out from his circle of elite New York City women. Ferguson discusses the play, which is staged in the Library of the House of the Redeemer for 34 performances only, running now through April 12. Photo by Emilio Madrid
Le 15 novembre 1959, à Holcomb (Kansas), la famille Clutter est retrouvée assassinée dans sa ferme, un crime qui bouleverse l'Amérique rurale. Fasciné par l'affaire, Truman Capote quitte New York pour enquêter sur place avec Harper Lee. Il rencontre les meurtriers, Perry Smith et Richard Hickock, et s'attache à comprendre leurs motivations. De cette immersion naît un genre nouveau : le « roman de non-fiction ». Publié en 1966, In Cold Blood (« De sang-froid ») mêle enquête journalistique et écriture romanesque. Le livre connaît un succès mondial et révolutionne la littérature américaine. Mais ce chef-d'œuvre marque aussi le début du déclin personnel de Capote. Merci pour votre écoute Vous aimez l'Heure H, mais connaissez-vous La Mini Heure H https://audmns.com/YagLLiK , une version pour toute la famille.Retrouvez l'ensemble des épisodes de l'Heure H sur notre plateforme Auvio.be :https://auvio.rtbf.be/emission/22750 Intéressés par l'histoire ? Vous pourriez également aimer nos autres podcasts : Un jour dans l'Histoire : https://audmns.com/gXJWXoQL'Histoire Continue: https://audmns.com/kSbpELwAinsi que nos séries historiques :Chili, le Pays de mes Histoires : https://audmns.com/XHbnevhD-Day : https://audmns.com/JWRdPYIJoséphine Baker : https://audmns.com/wCfhoEwLa folle histoire de l'aviation : https://audmns.com/xAWjyWCLes Jeux Olympiques, l'étonnant miroir de notre Histoire : https://audmns.com/ZEIihzZMarguerite, la Voix d'une Résistante : https://audmns.com/zFDehnENapoléon, le crépuscule de l'Aigle : https://audmns.com/DcdnIUnUn Jour dans le Sport : https://audmns.com/xXlkHMHSous le sable des Pyramides : https://audmns.com/rXfVppvVous aimez les histoires racontées par Jean-Louis Lahaye ? Connaissez-vous ces podcast?Sous le sable des Pyramides : https://audmns.com/rXfVppv36 Quai des orfèvres : https://audmns.com/eUxNxyFHistoire Criminelle, les enquêtes de Scotland Yard : https://audmns.com/ZuEwXVOUn Crime, une Histoire https://audmns.com/NIhhXpYN'oubliez pas de vous y abonner pour ne rien manquer.Et si vous avez apprécié ce podcast, n'hésitez pas à nous donner des étoiles ou des commentaires, cela nous aide à le faire connaître plus largement. Hébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
This episode of Bible Talk walks through Isaiah 21, which features an enigmatic, yet grand prophecy on the coming judgment of Babylon. Watch as Alex, Jim, and Sam discuss.
This week, the queens trade the classic panel format for a revamped Snatch Game of Love Island, bringing their celebrity impersonations to a dating-show parody. On the runway, the category is 80s Ladies, serving up big hair, bold shoulders, and even bigger references. In the end, Nini Coco takes the win, while Kenya Pleaser and Mia Star land in the bottom two. After a lip sync to “Head Over Heels” by The Go-Go's, Mia Star is asked to sashay away. A New Snatch Game Format The queens are surprised with a format shake-up: instead of sitting behind desks, they must flirt and volley with three suitors in a Love Island-style setting. Joe questions whether the twist helped or hurt the queens, while Nathan appreciates the physicality and change in pace. Made-Up Characters vs. Real Celebrities A major discussion point: should Snatch Game always require a real celebrity? With multiple queens opting for invented personas, the debate centers on whether fictional or generic characters dilute the challenge. Standout Performances Mikey Meeks as Drew Barrymore delivers a fully realized impersonation with strong voice work and confident interaction. Jane Doe as Truman Capote gives a polished, studied performance that checks all the technical boxes. Discord Adams as The Pope splits opinion — bold and committed, though not a traditional celebrity choice. Struggles of the Week Mia Star's Bloody Mary fails to generate consistent jokes or a strong comedic premise. Kenya Pleaser's Lizzo leans heavily into blue humor without sharp punchlines. Darlene Mitchell's Mrs. Claus receives limited airtime, raising questions about just how close she may have been to the bottom. The queens pay homage to iconic women of the 1980s. Highlights include: A vibrant Celia Cruz tribute with dramatic color and presence. A recognizable Olivia Newton-John moment, complete with era-accurate styling. A Dolly Parton-inspired silhouette that captures classic 80s glamour. Kenya's runway look draws criticism for fabrication and finish, further sealing her bottom placement. Kenya Pleaser vs. Mia Star Song: “Head Over Heels” – The Go-Go's The lip sync sparks debate. While Mia delivers strong musicality and performance, Kenya survives the week — suggesting that overall challenge performance weighed heavier than the final showdown. This episode raises bigger questions about Snatch Game strategy: Is it better to play it safe with a polished impersonation? Should fictional characters be allowed? And does a disastrous Snatch Game outweigh a winning lip sync? With the competition tightening and multiple queens proving technically strong, the margins are getting thinner — and the judging decisions more controversial. Be sure to join us next week as we continue to discuss, dissect, and deconstruct every moment of RuPaul's Drag Race Season 18. Follow Afterthought Media for bonus content, extended discussions, and exclusive episodes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Drag Race is the only show where you can see Drew Barrymoore, Truman Capote, Lizzo and the Pope all in one place, vying for the affections of three local actors. Snatch Game meets Love Island this week and while it's by no means a total heartbreak, they're not all a snatch made in heaven. Nini's David Attenborough feels a bit unnatural, Discord inspires a Conclave tangent, Athena is once again Greek and Mia's contrary Mary ends up cursing her in the end. Become a Matreon at the Sister Mary level to get access to Season 6 of Canada's Drag Race, plus brackets, movie reviews and past seasons of US Drag Race, UK, Canada, Down Under, Espana, Global All Stars, Philippines and more.Join us at our OnlyMary's level for our recaps of Season 4 & 5 of Drag Race plus even more movie reviews, brackets, and deep dives into our personal lives!Patreon: www.patreon.com/alrightmaryEmail: alrightmarypodcast@gmail.comInstagram: @alrightmarypodJohnny: @johnnyalso (Instagram)Colin: @colindrucker_ (Instagram)Web: www.alrightmary.com
The 1960 novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” became an American classic. The 1962 film adaptation earned 8 Oscar nominations, 3 wins, and Atticus Finch the #1 spot on AFI's 2003 list of greatest movie heroes. And the Pulitzer Prize awarded to Harper Lee is believed to be one factor behind her failed friendship with Truman Capote. In this fascinating podcast, we discuss the legacy of Harper Lee's “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and trace the long journey of this classic work. What elements of Harper Lee's own life are reflected in “To Kill a Mockingbird”? What does Mary Badham, who played Scout, consider her favorite memory from filming? What role did Harper Lee play in creating Truman Capote's book “In Cold Blood,” and what caused the long-time friends to drift apart? And why has Aaron Sorkin's adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird” for Broadway been referred to as a ‘rethink'? We discuss all this and more! Thank you to Scamanda creator/investigator Nancy Moscatiello for her shout-out at the top of the episode! Be sure to check out the podcast Scamanda, available everywhere podcasts are found, along with the docuseries of the same name, exclusively on Hulu. Our coverage of the case can be found in Episodes 198, 199, 205, and 206 (September & November 2025)! How to support Scandal Water: Rate, review, and subscribe! Follow the show on your favorite app or Scandal Water Podcast YouTube channel. Send your shoutouts to scandalwaterpodcast@gmail.com. Become a member on patreon.com/ScandalWaterPodcast or buymeacoffee.com/scandalwaterpod – which will also grant you access to fabulous bonus content! #OrderintheCourt #JuryDuty #Courtroom #ToKillaMockingbird #HarperLee #TrumanCapote #GregoryPeck #AtticusFinch #Scout #MaryBadham #InColdBlood #AcademyAward #Oscars #PulitzerPrize #JohnGrisham #BestSeller #NewYorkTimesBestSeller #ATimetoKill #TheFirm #Writer #AFewGoodMen #Film #Movies #Podcast #February
It's New York's hellacious summer of '77. Rampant crime, a city-wide blackout and the Son of Sam murders have knocked Gotham on its ass. When Lucien Lowe, a young poet on the downtown scene, is found dead in his East Village tenement with a heroin needle in his arm, overworked cops rule it an accidental overdose. But Ike's wealthy girlfriend Julie Baroda suspects murder and urges Ike's best friend, the artist and punk rock fashion designer Finn Burdon, to investigate.Despite Finn's own issues with heroin, he shows an uncanny talent for detective work. As Julie, Finn and police detective Benny Cherin dig deeper, their investigation ultimately encompasses some of the most famous names of 1970s New York, including William S. Burroughs, Jean-Michel Basquiat, CBGB owner Hilly Kristal, Allen Ginsberg, Lou Reed, Truman Capote, Roy Cohn, Fat Tony Salerno, Holly Woodlawn, Steve Rubell, Andrew Crispo, Bella Abzug, Leonard Cohen and many others. In the process, they begin to glimpse the outlines of a violent plot to sabotage the opening night of Hilly Kristal's highly anticipated new venue, The CBGB 2nd Avenue Theater, when Patti Smith is playing and it's packed with thousands.Set during the glory days of New York's downtown music, art, literary and fashion scenes, The CBGB Conspiracy mixes fiction with a host of real events and historical figures. Behind them all looms a character just as visceral and ultimately doomed: the crumbling New York of 1977.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/houseofmysteryradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Hello, media consumers! Welcome to the January Issue. This month, Bryan and David come together to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Truman Capote's ‘In Cold Blood' being published by Random House. This episode is broken into four chapters, just like the non-fiction novel. Bryan and David start Chapter 1 by discussing Truman Capote himself, and how he was the podcast guest before there were podcast guests (03:20). They have a conversation about who is comparable to Capote in the modern age (09:09), why non-fiction with the style of fiction hits the reader the way it does (17:22), and why Capote wanted to combine these styles (21:04). In Chapter 2, the guys dive into the relationship between Capote and the killers of the Clutter family (26:41), Capote's journalistic good luck (31:54), and his interviewing techniques (37:21). In Chapter 3, Bryan and David talk about what they made of ‘In Cold Blood' after re-reading it (1:01:51), Truman Capote's fabulism (1:05:48), and whether ‘In Cold Blood' would have been as successful if Capote had said it was almost all true (1:12:14). In Chapter 4, Bryan and David take a look at the impact ‘In Cold Blood' has had on the media (1:14:43). They discuss ‘In Cold Blood' being the invention of true crime (1:16:06), and what the heirs of the book are (1:22:32). The January Issue ends with Bryan and David recommending other books you might like if you enjoyed reading ‘In Cold Blood' (1:30:27). All that and more, here on The Press Box. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Guests: Chip McGrath and Gerald Clarke Producers: Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Emily Bazelon, staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, co-host of Slate's "Political Gabfest" podcast and Truman Capote fellow for creative writing and law at Yale Law School, and Rachel Poser, features editor at The New York Times Magazine, discuss their reporting on the The Federal Bureau of Investigation under the leadership of Kash Patel, after speaking to forty-five current and former employees on the changes they say are undermining the agency and making America less safe.
Journalists have spoken to forty-five current and former FBI employees. Many say that leadership is undermining the agency and making America less safe. On Today's Show:Emily Bazelon, staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, co-host of Slate's "Political Gabfest" podcast and Truman Capote fellow for creative writing and law at Yale Law School, and Rachel Poser, features editor at The New York Times Magazine, discuss their reporting on the The Federal Bureau of Investigation under the directorship of Kash Patel.
EPISODE 667 - Leslie R Schover - Fission - A Novel of Atomic Heartbreak, Oak Ridge and the Manhattan ProjectAfter retiring from her academic and clinical career as a psychologist, Leslie Schover has returned to her early love of writing fiction. She brings her knowledge of people, relationships, and sexuality to her novels. She grew up in Highland Park, in the suburbs of Chicago, and minored in creative writing at Brown University before receiving her PhD in clinical psychology at UCLA. Her mother did not want her to choose writing as a profession and told her that only someone as single-minded as Truman Capote, who had published a novel at age twenty-three, could be a successful author. Leslie spent most of her psychology career at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. She was one of a few pioneers in advocating for reproductive health in people dealing with chronic illness, especially cancer. She published three self-help books in the Jurassic age: Prime Time: Sexual Health for Men over Fifty (Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1984); Sexuality and Fertility after Cancer (John Wiley & Sons, 1997); and Overcoming Male Infertility: Understanding its Causes and Treatments (John Wiley & Sons, 2000). She was also coerced by colleagues, who wielded the powers of promotion and tenure, into writing thirty-five book chapters on sex and/or fertility after cancer, with the daunting task of avoiding self-plagiarization. She created all content for a digital health company, Will2Love.com, which received an Innovations Prize in the 2019 Astellas C3 competition for cancer care. Unfortunately, Will2Love, with its mission of helping people with cancer to solve sexual and fertility problems, did not survive the pandemic. Her first novel, Fission: A Novel of Atomic Heartbreak, is based in part on her parents' stories of life during the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. It will be published by SheWrites Press in January, 2026.https://www.leslieschoverauthor.com/Support the show___https://livingthenextchapter.com/podcast produced by: https://truemediasolutions.ca/Coffee Refills are always appreciated, refill Dave's cup here, and thanks!https://buymeacoffee.com/truemediaca
Was the 1967 film adaptation of Truman Capote's nonfiction novel ‘In Cold Blood' ground zero for our movie-and-true-crime obsession? In this bonus episode, Zeth does a deep dive into how the film broke all the rules while the infamous Hays Code was breaking down in Hollywood. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Was the 1967 film adaptation of Truman Capote's nonfiction novel ‘In Cold Blood' ground zero for our movie-and-true-crime obsession? In this bonus episode, Zeth does a deep dive into how the film broke all the rules while the infamous Hays Code was breaking down in Hollywood. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Emily Bazelon, staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, co-host of Slate's "Political Gabfest" podcast, Truman Capote fellow for creative writing and law at Yale Law School and author of Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration (Random House, 2019) , recaps this week's news from the DOJ – including the investigation into Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell, the resignation of six prosecutors over the Renee Good shooting, and the recent raid of a Washington Post journalist's home – and offers analysis about what it might say about the state of judicial independence.
Emily Bazelon, staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, co-host of Slate's "Political Gabfest" podcast, Truman Capote fellow for creative writing and law at Yale Law School and author of Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration (Random House, 2019) , recaps this week's news from the DOJ – including the investigation into Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell, the resignation of six prosecutors over the Renee Good shooting, and the recent raid of a Washington Post journalist's home – and offers analysis about what it might say about the state of judicial independence.
On this episode of Joe's Shelf, Joe curates a double feature of films inspired by our recent YouTube clip show on Rich Little's Christmas Carol. Kicking things off is the 1976 ensemble mystery parody Murder by Death, penned by Neil Simon and boasting an all-star cast including Peter Sellers, David Niven, Maggie Smith, Peter Falk, Alec Guinness, Elsa Lanchester, Eileen Brennan, James Coco, Truman Capote, and many more! For the second film, we watched Woody Allen's Play it Again, Sam (1972). You can listen to that discussion along with 50+ other bonus episodes only on our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/patreon-joes-it-148049853 Check out our YouTube channel for additional video episodes and more: https://www.youtube.com/@sidetrackspod You can also find us on X: Joe: https://twitter.com/joeramoni Ryan: https://twitter.com/ryanlancello And don't forget to check out our website and merch store: https://www.almostcultclassics.com
GGACP celebrates the birthday (December 30) of Emmy-winning television director James Burrows with this ENCORE of an interview from 2019. In this episode, James talks about the importance of the “straight man,” the influence of his legendary dad Abe Burrows, the societal impact of “Will & Grace” and the winning formulas behind “Taxi,” “Friends” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Also, Andy Kaufman comes to dinner, Woody Harrelson changes the game, Norman Lear writes a fan letter and James meets John Steinbeck, Truman Capote and Groucho Marx. PLUS: Sydney Pollack! Remembering Ruth Gordon! The comedy of Patchett and Tarses! The generosity of Jay Sandrich! And James directs an “All in the Family” reboot! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
It is a double drop this week to talk about one more of Truman Capote's lost treasures. Who knew Truman was an artist? And that his creative project was making snake bite kits? This tale explores this hobby, Truman's planned art show, and Gotham Book Mart's involvement in the whole affair. Continue your investigation with ad-free and bonus episodes on Patreon! To advertise on Done & Dunne, please reach out to info@amplitudemediapartners.com.
It is a double drop this week to talk about one more of Truman Capote's lost treasures. Who knew Truman was an artist? And that his creative project was making snake bite kits? This tale explores this hobby, Truman's planned art show, and Gotham Book Mart's involvement in the whole affair. Continue your investigation with ad-free and bonus episodes on Patreon!To advertise on Done & Dunne, please reach out to info@amplitudemediapartners.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
We welcome Cam Clarke for a fascinating deep dive into one of the most successful musical dynasties in American entertainment: The King Family. Cam takes us behind the scenes with the legendary singing group, and then Cam, a talented voice actor goes is and out of famous roles as we 'interview' some of his most beloved V.O. characters!Cam is the son of Alyce King, one of the original King Sisters, whose harmonies launched in the early 1930s and eventually grew into a multi-generational act that included children, grandchildren, cousins, and extended family, all uniting in song and populating iconic ABC series and specials throughout the 1960s. Cam walks us through the group's vaudeville roots, and their early days singing on the radio, all beginning on a Christmas morning where Cam's Mom, Aunts and Uncles each received a musical instrument and instructions from their music teacher Dad. His goal was to build a family band. He created a dynasty.We explore how The King Family evolved and rebranded across decades: From a Big Band vocal group in the 40's to jazz harmonies and the 50's blonde Hollywood glam look, to the TV friendly family ensemble of the 60s and 70s.Cam shares inside stories about how costumes were passed down from one child to the next and how King Sisters, King Kiddies, and King Cousins all fit into the ever-growing and evolving act.We also discuss Now They're All Here, Cam's large and glorious coffee table book on the King Family, inspired by George Plimpton's oral biography of Truman Capote, and written in the first person voices of King Family members over the past 100 years. And Cam speaks candidly about his own sexual orientation, sharing how he came out to his entire family at a typical family meal, as the conversation and the timing felt right. His truth was completely accepted.Plus, Jamie Alcroft, who will hold a position of honor on the non profit One Legacy Tournament of Roses Parade float on New Year's Day, joins us to talk about his important work with the LAFF4LIFE program and his experience as an organ transplant recipient!In current media --Weezy: Simon Cowell: The Next Act on NetflixFritz: The movie F1, streaming on Apple TV+Path Points of Interest:Cam ClarkeNow They're All Here: The King Family by Cam ClarkeCam Clarke on WikipediaCam Clarke on IMDBCam Clarke on InstagramThe King Family on WikipediaDonate LifeOne LegacySimon Cowell: The Next ActF1 on Apple TV
We are going to take a little jaunt with our man Dominick Dunne through Connecticut in this and future episodes. Dunne writes in June 2006 for Vanity Fair about a whole lot of scoops coming from the state of his home retreat. We begin with a line Nick got about a whole cache of secret papers left behind by Truman Capote investigating a case that he never will write about, although we have his research. Also, included are details of this grisly case in which Dean Corll, the Candy Man, murdered at least 28 men in Texas, soliciting the assistance of other teenagers, including Edmer Wayne Henley. It is a whole spiderweb of connected bits in this literary and true crime journey. Continue your investigation with ad-free and bonus episodes on Patreon! To advertise on Done & Dunne, please reach out to info@amplitudemediapartners.com.
We are going to take a little jaunt with our man Dominick Dunne through Connecticut in this and future episodes. Dunne writes in June 2006 for Vanity Fair about a whole lot of scoops coming from the state of his home retreat. We begin with a line Nick got about a whole cache of secret papers left behind by Truman Capote investigating a case that he never will write about, although we have his research. Also, included are details of this grisly case in which Dean Corll, the Candy Man, murdered at least 28 men in Texas, soliciting the assistance of other teenagers, including Edmer Wayne Henley. It is a whole spiderweb of connected bits in this literary and true crime journey.Continue your investigation with ad-free and bonus episodes on Patreon!To advertise on Done & Dunne, please reach out to info@amplitudemediapartners.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
The vexing difficulty of finding the perfect gift. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Host Ira Glass goes to a busy Target store one week before Christmas. Most shoppers he talks to don't think any of their gifts will be returned. (3 minutes)Act One: Ian Brown tries, after decades of failure, to give his mother the perfect Christmas gift. He and his brother attempt something they haven't done since they were kids: Rehearse and sing her a program of Christmas carols. (19 minutes)Act Two: We play a 1959 original recording of Truman Capote reading his holiday story A Christmas Memory. (18 minutes)Act Three: Caitlin Shetterly reports on a true-life holiday fable from rural Maine, complete with a misunderstood recluse with a heart of gold, a deserving family in need, and a very special Christmas tree farm with secrets of its own. (16 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.
In the 1970s, Studio 54 stood as the ultimate temple of disco, decadence, and hedonism. Lifelong friends and business partners Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager curated a coveted guest list, deciding who slipped past the velvet rope into a celebrity-studded playground that attracted everyone from Cher to Truman Capote to Imelda Marcos. But while Steve and Ian were meticulous about crafting the perfect mix of the rich, famous and beautiful, they were far less disciplined with their finances. Skimming cash became routine – and a series of missteps eventually brought their seemingly neverending party crashing down.Be the first to know about Wondery's newest podcasts, curated recommendations, and more! Sign up now at https://wondery.fm/wonderynewsletterListen to Scamfluencers on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/scamfluencers/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
GGACP celebrates the birthday (November 19th) of 4-time guest and friend of the podcast, the legendary Dick Cavett, by presenting this ENCORE of a fascinating interview from 2019. In this episode, Dick shares delightful (and hilarious) anecdotes about Jack Benny, Stan Laurel, Truman Capote and Walter Winchell (among others) and looks back on memorable sit-downs with Orson Welles, John Lennon, George Harrison and Laurence Olivier. Also in this episode: Peter Lorre fails the audition, Lily Tomlin storms off the set, Bob Hope comes to Lincoln, Nebraska and Jack Paar sabotages “Fat Jack” Leonard. PLUS: Oskar Homolka! “Chuckles Bites the Dust”! The return of Richard Loo! Johnny Carson disses Jerry Lewis! And Dick introduces “An Evening with Groucho”! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices