Big Books & Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller – Détails, épisodes et analyse

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 latest book, “Blind Spots,” examines how health care can go so wrong. He chalks much of it to groupthink and a growing inability for science to identify its own biases.

His diagnosis? Humility.

“Medical science is about transparency and civil discourse. Great ideas and truths have always emerged from a healthy debate within the scientific community,” he tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. “And tragically, what we’ve seen in the modern era is a small group of people making the decisions for everybody — many times with a paternalist and hierarchical philosophy.”

Guest:

• Dr. Marty Makary is a surgeon and public health researcher at Johns Hopkins University. His newest book is “Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health.”

When faced with the realities of climate change, marine biologists must hold two competing thoughts simultaneously: The seas are warming, the fish are waning, the corals are bleaching. But that doesn’t mean the global ocean is doomed. After all, this is the planet’s largest ecosystem. It knows how to adapt.

The question is really: Will we enable it or hinder it?

Helen Scales lives at the balance of those two intersecting points. A marine biologist, writer and broadcaster, Scales is honest about the scale of change. But as she tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, she believes it’s not too late. We still have time to figure out how to co-exist sustainably. Her new book, “What the Wild Sea Can Be,” explores practical solutions — like no-fish zones and banning undersea mining — that can give the planet’s oceans time to heal.

Guest:

• Helen Scales is a marine biologist, a writer and a storytelling ambassador for the Save Our Seas Foundation. Her newest book is “What the Wild Sea Can Be.”

Subscribe to Big Books and Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS or anywhere you get your podcasts.

Subscribe to the Thread newsletter for the latest book and author news and must-read recommendations.

It was a celebration at St. Paul’s Fitzgerald Theater Tuesday night, as the 25th season of Talking Volumes launched with Haitian-born writer Edwidge Danticat.

She joined host Kerri Miller on stage to talk about the vulnerability inherent in her new book of essays, “We’re Alone.” They also talked about the challenges facing the Haitian-American community at this moment and how Danticat’s own family — who moved to American when she was 12 — faced the immigrant journey.

Speaking of the violent threats facing the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio, Danticat said: “It reminds me of a collective fragility, right? One of the things that is very precarious for immigrants, especially new arrived immigrants, is this idea that we don’t always get to decide where we call home. … And it can go generations, where you think, ‘Oh I thought I was home, but this person who has more power thinks this is not my home, and they have the mechanisms to disavow me of that notion.’”

There was plenty of laughter too, including Danticat’s surprising confession about the weirdest thing she’s brought with her on book tour, how she navigates being an author on social media and what it means to her to be a “witnessing writer.” Plus, there was evocative music from Minneapolis musician LAAMAR.

You can still get tickets online for the rest of the 25th season of Talking Volumes, which will feature Alice Hoffman, Louise Erdrich and Kate DiCamillo.

Minneapolis author Shannon Gibney made waves in 2015 when she published her novel, “See No Color.” The experiences of main character Alex Kirtridge — a Black girl adopted by a white family — were partially informed by Gibney’s own life as a transracial adoptee.

• 
  
  From the archives: Shannon Gibney on 'Dream Country'
  
  

Gibney returns to her own story with her new memoir, “The Girl I Am, Was and Never Will Be.” But this time, she mines different timelines — that of her own life, growing up as a mixed race adoptee in Ann Arbor, Mich. — and an alternate reality where her biological mom doesn’t give her up, and Shannon Gibney grows up as Erin Powers, the name she was given at birth.

Race, identity and adoption are powerful themes in what she calls a '“speculative memoir.”

This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Gibney joins host Kerri Miller to talk about why she chose this genre to tell the parallel stories of her life, and how she filled the holes in her history that adoption left behind.

Guest:

• Shannon Gibney is a writer and a professor of English at Minneapolis College. Her books include the novel, “Dream Country” and the new speculative fiction memoir, “The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be.”

To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above. 

Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or RSS.

Subscribe to the Thread newsletter for the latest book and author news and must-read recommendations. 

Minneapolis author Shannon Gibney made a splash with her first novel, "See No Color," drawn from her life as a transracial adoptee. It won the 2016 Minnesota Book Award for Young People's Literature.

She returns to writing about her own life in her just released memoir, “The Girl I Am, Was and Never Will Be.” But this a memoir unlike most. Gibney calls it speculative fiction. It explores both her life as it was — and as it might have been, had she not been adopted by a white family.

It’s a unexpected and enterprising way to wrestle with life’s “what ifs.” Gibney and host Kerri Miller will talk about it on this Friday’s Big Books and Bold Ideas.

While you wait, enjoy this conversation from the 2018 archives, when Gibney had just published her second book, "Dream Country.” It traces the oft-neglected history of free Blacks and former enslaved people who sailed back to Africa to colonize what is now known as Liberia.

Guest:

• Shannon Gibney is a writer and a professor of English at Minneapolis College. Her books include the novel, “Dream Country” and the new speculative fiction memoir, “The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be.”

To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above. 

Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or RSS.

Subscribe to the Thread newsletter for the latest book and author news and must-read recommendations. 

Modern English loves an idiom. We use them all the time. “Take the cake.” “Eat crow.” “Deader than a doornail.” “By hook or by crook.” “Cut the mustard.” “Left in the lurch.”

But do we really know what they mean?

That was University of Minnesota linguistics professor Anatoly Liberman’s question when he set out to write a dictionary of common English language idioms. His new book, “Take My Word For It,” is the first truly all-encompassing etymological guide to both meanings and origins of idioms that surround us every day.

Liberman is a favorite guest on Kerri Miller’s show, and this week, he returns to talk about the history of idioms, both popular and obscure. It’s not rocket science, but it is a delightful and engaging conversation that will leave you feeling as right as rain.

Guest: 

• Anatoly Liberman is a linguist and professor of languages at the University of Minnesota. His new book is, “Take My Word For It: A Dictionary of English Idioms.”

To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above. 

Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or RSS.

Subscribe to the Thread newsletter for the latest book and author news and must-read recommendations. 

Is there a word or phrase that you grew up with, something you felt was unique to your family?

Maybe it was an expression your parents or grandparents used to show affection or describe frustration, only to eventually discover it had foreign origins? Or perhaps you still wonder where it came from?

Borrowed words have flooded most languages, including English.

In August 2021, Anatoly Liberman, beloved etymologist and professor of languages at the University of Minnesota, joined MPR News host Kerri Miller to explore the roots of familial words.

In that interview, he mentioned he had just finished a dictionary of idioms. That book finally published in January 2023. This Friday on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Liberman is back with Miller to discuss it.

In the meantime, enjoy this joyous conversation about familiar words from our archives.

Guest: 

• Anatoly Liberman is a linguist and professor of languages at the University of Minnesota. 

To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above. 

Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or RSS.

Subscribe to the Thread newsletter for the latest book and author news and must-read recommendations. 

What does it mean to stand on the soil where enslaved people lived, worked and died — and to see, surrounding it, monuments to the people who did the enslaving?

That’s the question at the heart of Clint Smith’s book, “How the Word Is Passed.” After a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee came down in his hometown of New Orleans, Smith began a quest to understand America’s historic and contemporary relationship to slavery. He did that by visiting sites like Monticello Plantation, where Thomas Jefferson wrote about freedom while enslaving hundreds, and Blandford Cemetery, where 30,000 Confederate soldiers are buried, and shared his powerful reflections in his book.

“How the Word Is Passed” was a New York Times bestseller, the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award of Nonfiction and one of the New York Times Best Books of 2021. Now out in paperback, “How the Word Is Passed,” invites us to be honest about America’s history, and to reckon with how slavery’s legacy still shapes us today.

This is a can’t miss Big Books and Bold conversation between Smith and MPR News host Kerri Miller Smith as they talk about his book, his reflections on America and how current events echo those of the past.

Guest:

• Clint Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of “How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America,” which just released in paperback. His latest book of poetry, “Above Ground,” comes out in March 2023.

To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above. 

Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or RSS.

Subscribe to the Thread newsletter for the latest book and author news and must-read recommendations. 

When a racially segregated community is suddenly forced to integrate high schools, it inextricably intertwines families on opposite sides of the divide.

How two of those families navigate the chaos — and its ripple effects for years to come — is at the heart of Naima Coster's novel, “What's Mine and Yours.”

Coster joined MPR News host Kerri Miller for the season finale of the 2021 Talking Volumes series, Talking Race. We hope it will whet your appetite for Miller’s conversation with Clint Smith this coming Friday, when they will talk about his book, “How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America.”

Guest:

• Naima Coster is the author of two novels. Her most recent is “What’s Mine and Yours.”

To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above. 

Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or RSS.

Subscribe to the Thread newsletter for the latest book and author news and must-read recommendations. 

The American West wouldn’t have been settled without the women who braved the frontier. Katie Hickman’s new history, “Brave Hearted: The Women of the American West” uncovers their stories.

But she doesn’t stop at the white women settlers who traveled by wagon or on foot. Drawing on diaries, letters and memoirs, she also brings to life Black enslaved women who went west with their master’s families, Chinese women who were brought by sex traffickers to the West Coast, and the Native American women who called the West home long before any settlers arrived.

Hickman paints colorful and dramatic accounts of these women’s lives with a novelist’s eye for detail.

This week, on Big Books and Bold Ideas, she talked about her research with host Kerri Miller, shared some of the stories she uncovered and offered important correctives about what really happened during the largest mass migration in American history.

Guest:

• Katie Hickman is a is the best-selling author of ten books, including her most recent, “Brave Hearted.” Kati lives on a converted barge on the Thames in London with her partner, the designer Matthew Ruscombe-King.

To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above. 

Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or RSS.

Subscribe to the Thread newsletter for the latest book and author news and must-read recommendations.