Big Books & Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller

Jan 31 2025 150 ep. 55 mins 1.6k

Big Books & Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller Podcast artwork

Where Readers Meet Writers. Conversations on books and ideas, Fridays at 11 a.m.

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In her new memoir, Sarah Hoover offers an unflinching take on the first year of motherhood

Jan 31 2025 52 mins

Sarah Hoover knows her new memoir, “The Motherload,” isn’t flattering. She’s made peace with the fact that “people will judge me on the internet,” as she says on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas.She’s telling her story anyway because she believes an honest rendering of modern motherhood is necessary. “In my defense, birth and motherhood did not match up to the

Histories collide at the dawning of a new age in ’The New Internationals’

Jan 24 2025 57 mins

David Wright Faladé didn’t learn the truth about his lineage until he was 16. That’s when his mother told him that his biological father was a West African student she initially met in post-war Paris, as she grappled with the trauma of her Jewish family surviving the Holocaust. It was a shock to a mixed-race boy growing up in the panhandle of Texas, playing football and drinki

On the brink of the inauguration, historians reflect on America's trajectory

Jan 17 2025 51 mins

President-elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated for a second term on Monday, Jan. 20. So this week, Big Books and Bold Ideas asked two historians who’ve written about America’s past to reflect on America’s future and give us a broader view of where we are. They point to eras in our past that predict our present. They also discuss what they’ll be watching for as Trump retur

Naturalist Robin Wall Kimmerer on her new book, ‘The Serviceberry’

Jan 10 2025 57 mins

Robin Wall Kimmerer embodies an abundance mindset. The naturalist and author sees the world through the lens of her Anishinaabe ancestors, where interdependence is reality, and humans are neither above nor below the natural world. We are just one part, kin to every animal and plant and stream. Her beloved book, “Braiding Sweetgrass,” laid out this philosophy. Published in 2013,

Why some college students aren’t reading books

Jan 03 2025 51 mins

In Nov. 2024, The Atlantic’s cover article rang alarm bells among readers, writers, college professors and parents alike. The article was headlined: The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books.The premise is that many students admitted to elite colleges arrive having read very few books all the way through.“It’s not that they don’t want to do the reading,” says the

Christopher Bollen unleashes ‘Havoc’ with his new thriller

Dec 27 2024 56 mins

Maggie Burkhardt is 81, a deceptively sweet former Wisconsinite who now resides in Egypt at a once-fashionable hotel. She’s landed there somewhat mysteriously, but hotel staff and guests alike are charmed by her eccentric wit — until they find themselves on the receiving end of her “help.”Widowed Maggie believes it is her life’s mission to fix what she perceives as broken

A bereaved single father navigates a new path forward in ‘I Will Do Better’

Dec 20 2024 51 mins

Charles Bock is honest from the beginning of his new memoir, “I Will Do Better”: He never wanted to be a dad. He was much more interested in pursuing his literary dreams than shepherding a child to adulthood. But his wife really wanted a baby. And he didn’t think it would be right to tell her no. “In the book, I say: She wants to be a mom? OK. Let her. I’ll continue with

In her new book, journalist Brigid Schulte asks what if work wasn’t such a grind?

Dec 13 2024 52 mins

The pandemic shook up the way many of us work. It accelerated change in a system often slow to adapt. But more change is needed, argues journalist Brigid Schulte. Her new book, “Over Work,” is centered on the idea that work has not really worked for “far too may people for far too long.” Americans increasingly say they are dissatisfied with their jobs and burned out. It’s

The gut's curious history

Dec 06 2024 53 mins

The gut is all the rage these days. Many an influencer has built a platform on how to keep our digestive systems happy, healthy and moving. But humans have long fetishized the gut. Doctors and philosophers have deliberated its influence on our emotional stability. Theologians declared it wicked. Disposing of bodily waste in both sanitary and silent ways is a mark of modernity. Hist

Dr. Marty Makary on medicine's blind spots

Nov 22 2024 48 mins

If you stopped eating eggs for fear it could raise your cholesterol, or you avoided giving peanuts to your toddler to prevent allergies, or you stayed away from hormone replacement therapy because you were told it could cause breast cancer — you are a victim of what Dr. Marty Makary calls “medical dogma.” Long known as an iconoclast in the medical community, Dr. Makary’s la