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.”

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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Everyone's heard the story of the shootout at the O.K. Corral. It's been immortalized in over 40 feature films and written about in 1,000 books.

But Mary Doria Russell refused to accept the story as we know it. Her 2015 novel novel digs for truth in the conflict that made Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday household names.

While researching “Epitaph,” Russell tracked down diaries, census records and first-hand accounts of the O.K. Corral shootout.

“It has been simplified and scrubbed up and changed and ultimately you have fiction based on fiction based on fiction,” Russell told host Kerri Miller. “What I was trying to do was get back to the real people, peel away the mythology, find the core of historical truth and work with that instead of just accepting the way it had been portrayed in movies for years."

It’s a fascinating conversation from our archives, one that we hope will whet your appetite for another book that dives into the true story of the American West. This Friday on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Miller talks with Katie Hickman, whose new book “Brave Hearted” tells tales of women of the American West.

Guest:

• Mary Doria Russell is an award-winning author of seven bestselling novels, including two novels about the West, “Doc” and “Epitaph.”

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

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When we first meet Cristabel, the heroine of Joanna Quinn’s debut novel, “The Whalebone Theatre,” she is only three. But she is already sure of herself, in the pure and defiant way that young children often are. She knows she was born to be a leader.

But how does she get there? That’s the story at the heart of Quinn’s delightful book, which follows Cristabel and her half-siblings as they grow up on the family’s lush estate in 1920s England.

The grownups are dizzy with relief that World War I has ended, so they mostly exist in a haze of alcohol and amusements. The children are mostly left to themselves. That’s how they end up staging their own theater, in the skeleton of a beached whale, which provides a backdrop and a direction to their young lives.

When World War II breaks out, Cristabel and her siblings, now grown, find themselves in a more serious production: playing roles in the allied military effort. And they don’t know how this story ends.

Quinn’s novel takes us from seaside England to occupied Paris, from the height of luxury to the horrors of war. “The Whalebone Theatre” was an instant best seller in the U.K., and a New York Times best seller.

This week, on Big Books and Bold Ideas, she joined host Kerri Miller to talk about the insightfulness of children, how art helps us to recognize ourselves, and why — despite the glamour — she would not want to live in 1920s England.

Guest:

• Joanna Quinn is as fiction writer with a background in journalism. “The Whalebone Theatre” is her first novel. She lives in Dorset, England, where her book is set.

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

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Farming is a bedrock industry in Minnesota. While the number of farms has been falling for decades, partly due to consolidation and partly due to crop shifts, Minnesota remains sixth in the nation when it comes to agriculture production.

Could rural Minnesota communities also lead the way when it comes to conservation farming?

MPR News host Kerri Miller brought that topic to Buck Mills Brewery in Detroit Lakes on Monday, Sept. 9, for a Rural Voice town hall discussion. Farmers, biologists, agriculture leaders and community members gathered to talk about what’s already being done and what potential remains.

They discussed everything from how to cultivate a mindset shift in farmers to how to incentivize regenerative practices. They also addressed how consumers around the state can play a role in helping Minnesota farms be good stewards of the land.

This is the third Rural Voice town hall of the 2024 season. Past discussions include the launch at the State Fair and a conversation held in Red Wing about building civic-minded communities.

The final town hall will be in Worthington on Thursday, Sept. 19, when Miller will host a dialogue about the interplay between rural Minnesota communities and the newest wave of immigrants who are making homes there.

William Moyers was one of the lucky ones.

Sober for decades after years of addiction to alcohol and crack cocaine, he became a model of success and redemption. He started working at the Hazelden Betty Ford, and in 2006, he published a vulnerable memoir, “Broken,” about his journey out of addiction.

But then he was prescribed pain killers after some dental work. And he found himself addicted again. Only this time, he had a public persona. People looked to him for hope. And he found opioids a much harder substance to break free from.

What happened next is captured in his new memoir, “Broken Open: What Painkillers Taught Me about Life and Recovery.” Moyers said it changed his focus from sobriety to recovery, and it caused him to rethink how addicts can get there.

This week, he joins host Kerri Miller in the studio for an conversation about what true recovery looks like. “It’s really messy,” he says. “It’s particularly messy for those of us who are public advocates for organizations like Hazelden Betty Ford who are putting their stories out there to inspire others to get well. My story has helped thousands and thousands of people, and I’m glad for it. But there’s more to it, which is why I have to tell this story.”

Guest:

• William C. Moyers is the vice president of public affairs and community relations at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. His new memoir “Broken Open: What Painkillers Taught Me about Life and Recovery.”

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How do we restore trust in civic institutions and nurture a renewed sense of possibility in a shared future?

That was the central question animating the Rural Voice community discussion MPR News host Kerri Miller led at the Sheldon Theatre in Red Wing on Thursday.

She was joined by political scientist and Minnesota native Brian Klaas, who set the stage by describing the bleak realities of the political landscape in America right now. People feel disempowered and divided. Trust in institutions is low. Democracy feels fragile.

But the citizens of Red Wing believe there is hope. They shared stories from their own community of how real problems have been solved, despite political differences.

They talked through some of the obstacles, like how to be more inclusive and how to deal with the constant drumbeat of negativity in online spaces. And Klaas gave examples of how citizen assemblies — a relatively new process to this country — can break through the partisan gridlock.

This is the second Rural Voice conversation of the 2024 season, which launched at the Minnesota State Fair. Rural Voice is a series of town halls hosted by Miller about the rewards and challenges of making a home in rural America.

The 25th season of Talking Volumes launches later this month. To celebrate, we thought we’d bring you one of our favorite conversations from last year.

The 2023 season finale of Talking Volumes brought author and columnist Margaret Renkl to Minnesota hours after the first snow carpeted our Northern landscape.

She declared it “magical” — a theme familiar to those who’ve read her New York Times columns or her newest book, “The Comfort of Crows.”

In it, the self-described backyard naturalist details what she saw in her Tennessee half-acre backyard over the course of 52 weeks. She laughs at the bumblebees and fusses over foxes. She laments the absence of birds and butterflies that used to be proliferate. But she also refuses to give in to despair.

For those of us paying attention, she told MPR News host Kerri Miller, it would be “easy for the grief to take over.”

“But what a waste it would be if we did that,” she added. “If it’s true, that we’re going to lose all the songbirds — at least the migratory ones — how much more are we obliged to notice them and treasure them while we have them?”

Don’t miss this warm and candid conversation about the gift of nature, the solace of observation and the gospel Renkl finds in her own backyard.

And get your tickets for the 25th season of Talking Volumes, which includes authors Edwidge Danticat, Alice Hoffman, Louise Erdrich and Kate DiCamillo, here.

The third season of Rural Voice kicked off at the Minnesota State Fair on Monday, Aug. 26. It was a steamy day, but it didn’t discourage rural change makers who gathered at the MPR booth for a lively and hopeful town hall with moderator Kerri Miller.

The question before them: How is rural Minnesota changing, and how are rural communities thriving in the midst of it?

Participants included Northland Foundation CEO Tony Sertich, who emphasized that rural communities no longer need “jobs, jobs, jobs” but “workers, workers, workers.” Teresa Kittredge from 100 Rural Women talked about the importance of mentorship in rural communities, especially when it comes to leadership paths for women. Ben Winchester, a rural sociologist at the University of Minnesota, discussed the implications of a “brain gain” in rural areas, instead of a “brain drain.” Senator Rob Kupec, DFL-Moorhead, stressed the desperate need for housing, a point everyone agreed on, including Kitty Mayo, editor at Lake County Press. Scott Marquardt, president of the Southwest Initiative Foundation, shared his excitement over the potential for renewable energy and innovation in rural parts of Minnesota.

Other urgent issues mentioned: the need for more robust child care in rural areas, the importance of mental health services and fresh ways to welcome newcomers.

If you are rural living, rural loving or just “rural curious,” you don’t want to miss this conversation at 9 a.m. Monday, Sept. 2. And then get involved. Miller is taking Rural Voice on the road in September. She’ll be in Red Wing on Sept. 5 to talk about how to build civic-minded communities; Detroit Lakes on Sept. 9 to discuss sustainable agriculture; and Worthington on Sept. 19 to consider how rural communities thrive when immigrants put down roots. Register online to attend.

Jo Hamya’s new novel, “The Hypocrite,” opens as the trap is being laid.

Sophia, a 20-something playwright, has invited her father, a famous and provocative British novelist, to come see her new work. As the play begins, he is shocked to realize he recognizes the set. It’s a replica of the kitchen in his vacation home near Sicily. Then the lead actor saunters onstage wearing the author’s favorite shirt and proceeds to have loud sex with a woman he just picked up at a bar. The audience roars. The author is undone.

At the same moment, Sophia is having lunch with her mother at a nearby cafe and fretting over what her father will think of the play. Her mother, the writer’s ex-wife, is both sympathetic and cavalier, weary of dealing with self-absorbed artists and yet unable to abandon her martyrdom.

Who is the hypocrite here? All of them.

Hamya’s novel is a bracing, complex and uncompromising look at the generation conflicts in our present age. She joins MPR News host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about “The Hypocrite” and so much more — including our current cancel culture, how to write a play within a novel and why she took pains to avoid writing actual sex scenes in her book.

Guest:

• Jo Hamya is a London-based writer. “The Hypocrite” is her second novel.

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The first sentence of Frank Bruni’s new book says it all. It reads, “Let me tell you how I’ve been wronged.”

More and more Americans are living mired in resentment, says Bruni, convinced that they are losing because someone else is winning. And it’s poison to our collective culture.

In his new book, “The Age of Grievance,” he writes: “[Grievance] turns everything — beer, M&M’s, Skittles, restaurant chains, theme parks, athletic teams, athletic competitions — into cultural battlefields. For many Americans, the war zone is infinite.”

This week, Bruni joins host Kerri Miller on Big Books and Bold Ideas, as part of our Democracy in America series, to discuss how we got here and how we move forward. In the age of toxic social media and divided national politics, can we learn to inoculate ourselves and our communities against grievance?

Guest:

• Frank Bruni is a longtime correspondent and opinion columnist for The New York Times. In 2021, he started teaching at Duke University’s school of public policy. His new book is “The Age of Grievance.”

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

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When A.J. Jacobs decided to immerse himself in early Americana, he didn’t think about the fact that the required wool stockings wouldn’t have elastic.

“They would fall down to my ankles,” he laughs. “I had to put on little sock belts every morning. I’ll never get back that time.”

But no matter. He was committed to getting into the headspace of the Founding Fathers, because he wanted to better understand the reasoning and the intentionality of America’s foundational document

The result is his new book, “The Year of Living Constitutionally.” It’s part performative art — “I went method,” he says — and part intellectual adventure. While writing with a quill pen, lighting his house with beeswax candles and wearing a tricorn, Jacobs researched and talked to dozens of scholars about how to best interpret the Constitution.

“We see it as etched in stone,” he tells host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. “But it was really deeply fluid. If we recapture that mindset, maybe we will be more flexible in our thinking today.”

Guest:

• A.J. Jacobs is a journalist and an author. His past books include “The Year of Living Biblically” and “Drop Dead Healthy.” His newest is “The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man’s Humble Quest to follow the Constitution’s Original Meaning.”

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

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Debut novelist Sarai Johnson created four generations of Black mothers and daughters to tackle the questions that came up in her own life: What does forgiveness look like? Can cycles of trauma be broken? Can a daughter truly leave her mother’s mistakes in the past?

“Grown Women” expertly probes for answers via the lives of Evelyn, Charlotte, Corinna and Camille. Resentment lingers like a cancer, even as each generation of women struggles to not repeat mistakes that wound. Is it possible for them to find a modicum of forgiveness? Or will the cycles of neglect, half-lies and emotional distance repeat?

This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Johnson joins host Kerri Miller for a vulnerable conversation about mothers and daughters and trying your best, even when your best isn’t enough.

In his 2019 Pulitzer-Prize winning novel, “The Overstory,” Richard Powers imagines a world where only a few acres of virgin forest remain on the continent. A group of strangers band together to protect those few remaining trees, and in the process, discover the trees are communicating with each other.

Powers’ new novel, “Playground,” turns the same eye to the planet’s oceans. As he tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, his hope is that the power of storytelling will animate humans to behold the sea with fresh wonder — and act to preserve it before it’s too late.

“These last three novels of mine are attempts to find ways of telling stories that challenge that separateness or sense of entitlement,” he says, “that sense that we are the essential and perhaps the only interesting game in town and that everything else is a resource for our project.”

Guest:

• Richard Powers is the author of fourteen novels, including “The Overstory,” “Bewilderment” and “Orfeo.” His new book is “Playground.”

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

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Claire Messud has long wanted to write a novel inspired by her family’s history in Algeria, thanks to a handwritten memoir, more than 1,500 pages long, penned by her paternal grandfather. It was rich with stories and history and photos about her ancestors, who were born in French Algeria but then expelled from their homes in 1962 when Algeria won its independence.

Her new novel, “This Strange Eventful History,” was inspired by that personal past. It sprawls across generations, geography and time, moving from 1940 to 2010, and across multiple points of view.

In fact, MPR News host Kerri Miller says the way Messud plays with time is one of the vital threads of the book — and Messud admits time is almost a character in the novel. “The past informs the present,” she says. “People’s dreams and hopes for the future inform the present, and in a funny way, the ghosts of the past — the people who are no longer there but whose voices swirl around in our head — make sure the past is always with us.”

Join Miller and Messud on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to take a journey into memory, time and the longing for home.

Guest:

• Claire Messud’s novels includes “The Emperor’s Children” and “The Woman Upstairs.” Her new novel is “This Strange Eventful History.”

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New York Times bestselling author Nicola Yoon’s new novel, “One of our Kind,” is one of the most talked about books of the summer. On this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, Yoon joins MPR News host Kerri Miller to talk about what led her to write a book about finding the sinister in a Shangri-La. When does our natural bent to protect and enjoy become destructive? What is the true meaning of community?

Lily Chen is not endowed with good fortune — despite the fact that her scientist mother managed to grow a backyard of four-leaf clovers. She doesn’t win raffles or lotteries. She scrapes out a meager living as an unpaid intern with the hopes that it might give her a shot at an entry-level gig.

In short: Not lucky.

But then a chance encounter upends her life and changes her idea of what fortune really is.

Rachel Khong’s new book, “Real Americans,” is already a New York Times bestseller and one of the hottest novels of the summer. She joins MPR News host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about teasing out the truth between luck and choice, soul mates and chance.

The Civil War is remembered for its sweeping battles: Gettysburg, Atlanta, Antietam. Less known are the small troops of men, enlisted by both sides, to fight far from the battlefields.

These ruthless soldiers relied on stealth to sneak behind enemy lines — often wearing their opponent’s uniform — and destroyed supply lines, assassinated military officials and gathered critical information.

Today, we know this kind of warfare as shadow ops — which is a specialty of military historian Patrick K. O’Donnell. A roadside marker he happened to see in rural Virginia ignited years of research into the Civil War era special forces who were tasked by President Lincoln to undertake spy operations and secrete missions against Confederate units.

This week, he joined MPR News host Kerri Miller on Big Books and Bold ideas to talk about his new book, “The Unvanquished,” which masterfully tells the story of this forgotten chapter of history.

Taiyon Coleman has been writing since she was a child. At age 8, she announced to her family that a novel was in the works.

Today, she’s a published author and a professor of literature at St. Catherine University. But the road from there to here wasn’t as straight-forward as you might think.

Coleman joins host Kerri Miller on Big Books and Bold Ideas this week to talk about what happened in the in-between. Some of it is detailed in her new collection of personal essays, “Traveling without Moving: Essays from a Black Woman Trying to Survive in America.”

But the deeper story is held in Coleman’s body, in her voice, in her strength. Don’t miss this vulnerable and moving conversation about mothers and ancestors, writing and truth-telling and the power of being a teacher.

Guest:

• Taiyon J. Coleman is a poet, a author and a literature professor at St. Paul’s St. Catherine University. Her new book is “Traveling without Moving.”

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America is steeped in the notion of rugged individualism. It’s comforting to think success is based on our own hard work and self determination.

But social scientist Robert Mark Rank says random chance governs far more of our lives that most of us want to admit.

This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Rank joins MPR News host Kerri Miller to talk about his new book, “The Random Factor.” He shares how luck and chance play a crucial role in shaping history, the natural world and our everyday lives.

Noor Khan is still reeling from the disintegration of her family when she stumbles across a library cart stacked with books in her new small-town high school.

In her heart, she just wants to finish her senior year and get back to Chicago as quickly as possible.

But when she learns the books are being removed by a group of parents trying to ban literature they deem as obscene, she is enraged.

Will her values force her to act, even if doing so puts a target on her back? Or is the fight not worth the cost?

That’s the premise of Samira Ahmed’s new YA novel, “This Book Won’t Burn.” No stranger to book bans herself, Ahmed joins host Kerri Miller this week on Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about the freedom to read and how teenagers today are finding the courage to act against a national movement to ban books.

Dystopian novels aren’t known for being hopeful.

But that’s exactly what Leif Enger brings to the genre with his new book, “I Cheerfully Refuse.”

The beloved Minnesota author joined MPR News host Kerri Miller at the Sheldon Theatre in Red Wing on June 4 for a special “on the road” version of Talking Volumes.

Their conversation revolved around books: the unpredictable journey of writing them, the sometimes haphazard way of finding them, the way a good book leaves a mark that cannot be erased. As Enger’s protagonist Rainy says, “I banged and barged through dozens and hundreds of books. Did I understand it? Not by half, but when it thunders you know your chest is shaking.”

They also touched on how to maintain hope when the world around you feels like it’s going up in flames. “I Cheerfully Refuse” is set in the “near future” when climate change, wealth concentration and religious zealots who are proudly illiterate flourish.

But Rainy and his cherished wife, Lark, “refuse apocalypse in all its forms and work cheerfully against it.” When tragedy strikes, and Rainy is forced to set out in a small sailboat on a near-sentient Lake Superior, hoping to reunite with Lark, the quest unfolds.

Spoiler alert: Despair never wins.

Guest:

• Leif Enger is the author of many books, including the 2001 breakout hit, “Peace Like a River.” His new novel is “I Cheerfully Refuse.” Before he became an author, Enger worked as a reporter for MPR News. He lives in Duluth with his wife, Robin.

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What do you imagine your death will look like?

It’s not a morbid or depressing question to Alua Arthur. She’s a death doula, and she firmly believes that giving thought to that question is the key to living a meaningful life.

Arthur herself thinks about dying a lot. As she tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, she has detailed plans for what she’d like her deathbed to be like. But more importantly, she says living with an awareness of mortality helps her live with intention.

“Every day that I live is a day that I can get closer to the life that I actually want,” she says.

Arthur’s new book, “Briefly Perfectly Human” is both memoir and a surprisingly joyful treatise on why facing mortality is the key to living well. Don’t miss this wise, tender and inspiring conversation.

Guest:

• Alua Arthur is a recovering attorney and the founder of Going With Grace, a death doula training and end-of-life planning organization. Her new book is “Briefly Perfectly Human.”

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Who knew boring could be an asset?

In Lea Carpenter’s new spy novel, “Ilium,” we meet our young and restless unnamed narrator on a day when she’s urging herself to be less mundane, to take more risks.

She has no idea that the spies she’ll soon be working for want her precisely because she’s inexperienced, untested and ordinary.

She quickly gets pulled into a high-stakes mission against a target who has a complicated backstory when it comes to American intelligence forces.

Carpenter joined spy novel enthusiast Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. They talked about how Carpenter’s own family history inspired her interest in America’s intelligence agencies, why women are exceptionally good spies, and how family life both complicates and clarifies the work.

Guest:

• Lea Carpenter is a novelist and a screenwriter. Her new book is “Ilium.”

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Beloved children’s author Kate DiCamillo published three new books this year: “Ferris,” “Orris and Timble: The Beginning,” and “The Hotel Balzaar.” She has two more coming next year — plus 2025 marks the 25th anniversary of the book that started it all, “Because of Winn-Dixie.”

She is a prolific writer, a lifelong reader and a delightful human. Which made her the perfect guest to close out Talking Volumes celebratory 25th season on Tuesday, Oct. 29.

No stranger to the stage at the Fitzgerald Theater, DiCamillo came with stories and quips. She and host Kerri Miller talked about the impact of Winn-Dixie on DiCamillo’s life, what she knows now that she didn’t know then, and how stories can change your life.

It was an evening full of wonder and laughter. Singer-songwriter Humbird was the special musical guest.

Birds, bats, freshwater mussels and a small catfish. They all slipped away in 2023, among the 21 species declared extinct by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Grief is a rational response. So are the questions novelist and conservationist Lydia Millet articulates in her new book, “We Loved It All.” A blend of memoir and ecological truth-telling, Millet’s first nonfiction work examines what the vanishing will mean for the coming generations and for our sense of self.

“No one wants to tell our children how glorious it was before you were around,” she writes.

Millet joins host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about how she carries hope, even as she mourns the destruction in the natural world.

Guest:

• Lydia Millet is a novelist and conservationist. Her new book is, “We Loved It All: A Memory of Life.”

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Big Book and Bold Ideas talks with authors from around the globe.

But our favorite moments come when host Kerri Miller sits down with Minnesota writers to talk about story, craft and how calling this state home influences both.

This week, we took a look back at some conversations with notable Minnesota authors, including Shannon Gibney, who just won her third Minnesota Book Award, Hmong writer Kao Kalia Yang and not-ashamed-to-be-a-mystery-writer William Kent Krueger.

Jamie Figueroa’s new memoir, “Mother Island” is stylistically unique. She combines prose and creative nonfiction, myth and short stories to explore her memories.

But the heart of the book — her push-pull relationship with her mother and her process of uncovering a true self — is as old as time.

Figueroa’s mother was taken from Puerto Rico as a young child and raised in a New York City orphanage, separated from her native language, culture and ancestry. As many immigrants before her, she learned to keep her heritage distant, as a way to assimilate into a new country.

But Figueroa chafed at the disconnect — “my mother did not know how to define herself on her own terms” — and set out to remember.

As she tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, “[My mother] was concerned about how we were seen. She wanted to be included. Anything she could do to get closer to ‘white identity’ made it easier for her.”

“As a daughter, I respect those were the choices she was forced to make — and I feel like my life is lived in opposition to that.”

Guest:

• Jamie Figueroa is the author of the acclaimed novel, “Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer.” Her new book is “Mother Island.”

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Alexandra Fuller’s new memoir begins with the death of her 21-year-old son, Fi, and chronicles her attempts to grieve well in the searing aftermath of his loss.

Among other things, that meant acknowledging her kinship with others who had gone before her.

In her gorgeous new book, “Fi: A Memoir of My Son,” she writes: “The way a pilot sees wind and clouds, or a sailor reads currents and water, I look unconsciously for stories to remind me where I am, to remind me that, whatever I’m going through, millions have been here before, are here now, will be here again.”

She talks about finding solace in that continuity on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. As she tells host Kerri Miller: “As I was running to my son’s body … I knew that I would be ‘over the grief’ when I was able to find gratitude for the grief. I knew I would find out the quality of my God, for real. And I knew I had joined the vast throng of women who had raised me on the Southern African continent who had been here before.”

Don’t miss this thoughtful, tender and vulnerable conversation about non-linear grief — grief that is “a braid and a spiral and a knot.”

Guest:

• Alexandra Fuller is the author of many books, including “Don’t Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight,” and "Quiet Until the Thaw.” Her new memoir is “Fi: A Memoir of My Son.”

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Danny Ryan doesn’t see himself as ambitious — which is surprising, seeing as he’s both stolen and made millions. But in his mind, he’s just an average guy trying to survive in a world that would rather he not.

Ryan is the central character of Don Winslow’s sweeping crime trilogy that draws parallels to movies like “The Godfather” and “Goodfellas.” Readers first met Ryan as a mid-level Irish-American mobster in New England in “City on Fire,” which came out in 2022. One year later, Winslow released “City on Dreams,” which follows Ryan to Hollywood. And now, in 2024, Ryan is a Las Vegas casino mogul struggling to leave his life of crime in “City in Ruins.”

It brings both the series and Winslow’s writing career to a close.

But not before he joins host Kerri Miller one more time on Big Books and Bold Ideas.

Don’t miss this warm and intimate conversation that pulls at the fascinating threads of Winslow’s past — including his years spent as a Shakespeare director at Oxford, his stint as a private investigator and his abiding love of Africa. They also talk about how surfing taught Winslow to trust the writing process, why it took him 30 years to write the Danny Ryan series, and why he is confident that “City in Ruins” is his last book.

Guest:

• Don Winslow has written 21 novels, including “The Border, “The Force, and “Savages.” His new book, “City in Ruins” completes his Danny Ryan trilogy and his writing career.

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Americans overwhelmingly support gender equality. But not as many see themselves as feminists.

Elizabeth Cobbs says that’s because we don’t know our history. Her latest book, “Fearless Women,” chronicles how the fight for women’s rights began at the founding of our country, when Abigail Adams urged her husband to “remember the ladies” (and her plea was met with laughter), and continues through today.

Cobbs argues that women’s rights and democracy itself are intertwined, that as rights were afforded to women, the country itself became stronger. Each chapter of “Fearless Women” tells the story of women who fought for a new right: the right to learn, the right to speak in public, the right to own property, and the right to vote, among others. It is a timeline of feminism in America.

This week, Cobbs joined host Kerri Miller on Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about the freedom inherent in feminism, why it’s not partisan — despite what some insist — and why many of the women she wrote about in her book have been overlooked by history.

Guest:

• Elizabeth Cobbs is a historian and the Melbern Glasscock Chair in American history at Texas A&M University. Her latest book is “Fearless Women: Feminist Patriots from Abigail Adams to Beyoncé.”

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Myriam J. A. Chancy spent her childhood in Haiti and then moved with her family to Winnipeg. But those island roots shaped who she became and inspired her latest novel, “Village Weavers.”

It follows a complicated female friendship that spans decades and countries. Growing up in 1940s Port-au-Prince, Gertie and Sisi are enthralled with each other — until their families discover a secret and force them apart. As girls, they didn’t understand why. But as they grow and weave in and out of each other’s lives, the secrets and lies become a burden to great to carry.

Chancy joined host Kerri Miller for this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about the grief of a ruptured friendship, the love of ancestral lands and how Haiti today bears both the scars and the hopes of its past.

Guest:

• Myriam J. A. Chancy is the author of many novels, including the prize-winning, “What Storm, What Thunder.” Her new book is “Village Weavers.”

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When Kao Kalia Yang’s mother was a child growing up in Laos, she lived a comfortable life. Her father was a prosperous merchant. She was the only Hmong girl in the village to go to school. She felt valued.

The war changed all that. Hunted by North Vietnamese soldiers, Yang’s maternal family had to flee into the jungle and live a desperate existence for years. Eventually, her mother met a boy also in hiding, and they married. She was 16.

It was an extraordinary chapter in her mother’s remarkable life. Yet when Yang suggested that she record the full story, her mother doubted anyone would care.

• 
  
  Kao Kalia Yang writes about finding her voice and her mother's journey in two new books
  
  


• 
  
  For the first time, a Hmong story heads for the opera
  
  


• 
  
  Kao Kalia Yang started out writing her family’s refugee memoir. Now she’s sharing the journeys of others
  
  

Thankfully, Yang persisted. Her new book, “Where Rivers Part: A Story of My Mother” is one attempt to capture the drama of her mother’s life.

From a riverside village in Laos to a bleak refugee camp in Thailand to a new home in St. Paul, Yang tells the story through her mother’s eyes and captures the grief, determination and pride of the immigrant journey.

Yang joined host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to share what it was like to record the unvarnished truth of her mother’s life and why she couldn’t write this book until now.

Guest:

• Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong American speaker and writer. She is the award-winning of author of many books, including several about her family, including “The Latehomecomer” and “The Song Poet.” Her latest is “Where Rivers Part.”

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What do you see, hear and experience when you drop miles into the deepest parts of the ocean?

For journalist Susan Casey, it was transformative — even emotional. Her latest book, “The Underworld,” is a homage to the abyss and the scientists who explore it.

She also describes her own dives in deep-sea submersibles, through the oceanic “twilight zone,” which is rich with bioluminescent creatures, down to depths of 5,000 meters, where utter darkness still teems with life.

Casey joined MPR News host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to share stories about her dives and what she experienced in the abyss. She also talked about how the deep submersible community reacted to the tragic end of the Oceangate Titan sub last summer (“people were watching the creation of that sub with real fear”) and warns of the growing interest in deep sea mining.

Guest:

• Susan Casey is a science journalist who specializes in writing about the ocean. Her latest book is, “The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean.”

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If you’ve ever struggled to remember where you set down your phone, or how you know the person you just ran into at the grocery store, you’re not alone. Everyday forgetfulness is a part of living — and of aging.

But for neuroscientist Charan Ranganath, more compelling than what we remember is why we remember.

“The human brain is not a memorization machine; it's a thinking machine,” he writes in his new book “Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters.”

Ranganath, a leading memory researcher, joined MPR News host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about how memory works (spoiler: we’re not designed to remember everything) and how it shapes who we are today.

Guest:

• Charan Ranganath is a neuroscientist and a director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at UC Davis. His new book is “Why We Remember.”

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You might know Katharine Lee Bates wrote the poem that eventually became the song, “America the Beautiful,” after she visited the top of Pike’s Peak in Colorado and was overcome by its beauty.

But did you know she grew up a precocious youngest child in a family that struggled after the death of her father? And that she was a budding feminist who chafed at menial tasks like sewing and wished for nothing more than to be a scholar? And did you know she was only ever paid $5 for the song that would become America’s unofficial national anthem?

It’s another example of an ordinary person whose contributions to our country’s legacy are extraordinary.

That’s a class of people government teacher Sharon McMahon finds especially compelling. In her new book, “The Small and Mighty,” she highlights unsung Americans who changed history but didn’t make it into the textbooks (often, “because they weren’t a white man,” she reminds her readers).

It’s a take fans of her podcast, “Here’s Where It Gets Interesting,” will find familiar. A former government and law teacher, McMahon lives in Duluth. But she burst onto the national stage in 2020 when she took to Instagram to combat misinformation she saw swirling on social media after the election. Her direct yet amiable style garnered her account, @sharonsaysso, more than a million followers, who now look to her for historical and current event facts and context.

This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, McMahon joins host Kerri Miller to talk about “The Small and the Mighty,” why history matters more than ever, and how her belief in everyday Americans influencing democracy animates all her work.

At the center of Tommy Orange’s new novel sits a family nearly destroyed. It’s suffering the long-term effects of government-ordered separation, from decades of displacement and neglect, and from the white American philosophy best summed up by the phrase: Kill the Indian, save the man.

It’s a theme familiar to readers who loved Orange’s first novel, “There There.” In fact, “Wandering Stars” functions as both a prequel and a sequel to that best-seller.

Orange joined MPR News Host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to discuss how he weaves stories that are both historical and modern in an attempt to highlight the importance of family and honoring ancestors as a way to rebuild identity and belonging.

Guest:

• Tommy Orange is an author and a teacher at the Institute for American Indian Arts. His first book, “There There,” was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and received the 2019 American Book Award. His new novel is “Wandering Stars.”

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In many ways, the COVID-19 pandemic was public health’s finest hour. Millions of lives were saved, thanks to isolation measures. Vaccines were developed in record time. Systems were developed for contract tracing and testing. But it was also an apocalyptic moment for a system under strain.

As a result, trust in doctors and scientists has plummeted. A recent Pew Research Center poll found that Americans who say they have a great deal of confidence in scientists dropped from 39 percent in 2020 to 23 percent in 2023. And that decline happened across party lines.

What went wrong? How did public health officials alienate a populace they aimed to protect? Can an eroded sense of trust be restored?

Dr. Sandro Galea, epidemiologist and dean at the Boston University School of Public Health, seeks to some of those questions in his new book "Within Reason: A Liberal Public Health for an Illiberal Time."

Galea joined host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to share his post-pandemic diagnosis and offer remedies for how public health can transcend absolutism and intolerance in order to promote well-being for all.

Guest:

• Dr. Sandro Galea is a physician, an epidemiologist and the dean at Boston University's School of Public Health. His new book is, "Within Reason: A Liberal Public Health for an Illiberal Time."

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This week, Big Books and Bold Ideas is launching an election year series that asks: What is American democracy in 2024?

Americans come to that question with significantly different views. And what American democracy was when this country was founded isn’t necessarily what it is today or what it will be in the future. Democracy is dynamic.

Heather Cox Richardson spends a lot of time thinking about democracy. She’s a historian and the force behind the most popular newsletter on Substack, with more than 1.3 million subscribers. In 2023, she released her latest book, “Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America,” which is a reflection on the the evolution of American democracy.

On this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, Richardson joined host Kerri Miller to parse the current condition of democracy in America and lay out how the system can be exploited by authoritarians or supported by the populace.

Guest:

• Heather Cox Richardson is an author, a historian, a professor Boston College and the writer of Letters from an American, the most popular newsletter on Substack. Her latest book is “Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America.”

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MPR News host Kerri Miller has never skirted the topic of faith.

On her former weekday show, she regularly dialoged with leaders like Jenan Mohajir from Interfaith America, activist and author Anne Lamott, theologian Jemar Tisby, Sister Joan Chittister, and evangelical disrupter Rachel Held Evans. She even did a year-long series with women from a variety of faith backgrounds in 2019.

So it seemed fitting, during the 2024 winter member drive, to return to this theme and remember a few of the best conversations.

Included are portions of Miller’s recent discussion with Pastor Amy Butler, who penned the memoir, “Beautiful and Terrible Things;” Miller’s 2019 conversation with podcaster Misha Euceph about being Muslim in America; and a snippet of the 2023 Talking Volumes season finale with author Margaret Renkl about why Renkl left the Catholic church of her upbringing and found a new one in nature.

Choices made in a moment reverberate for generations, despite best intentions.

Vanessa Chan adeptly explores this concept in her debut novel, “The Storm We Made” — a work of historical fiction set in her home country of Malaysia, which was inspired by stories her grandmother would tell.

The main character is Cecily, a discontented housewife in 1930s Malaya, who is charmed into becoming a spy for the Japanese during the British occupation. She is increasingly disillusioned with the colonizing force and intrigued by a vision of “an Asia for Asians.” But her decisions ripple through the lives of her children in unforeseen and disastrous ways.

Chan doesn’t judge.

“Morality is very much dependent on circumstances,” the author tells host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. “You cannot tell when faced with survival whether or not you’ll be as heroic or as cowardly as you think you’re going to be.”

Tune in this week for a warm conversation about roots, family lore and unanswered questions.

“I wrote about the ambiguity of right and wrong when survival is at stake,” Chan says in her forward. “I wrote because, at the end of the day, remembering is how we love.”

Guest:

• Vanessa Chan is a Malaysian author. Her debut novel, “The Storm We Made,” was one of the most anticipated books of 2024 and has sold rights in more than 20 countries.

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Women spies pop up in Hollywood movies all the time. But as Liza Mundy’s new book reveals, it took determined persistence, personal risk and a lot of sacrifice for women to be welcomed as CIA operatives.

“The Sisterhood” is a meticulously researched, seven-decade history of women who worked behind the scenes at America’s premier foreign intelligence agency. Mundy details how women opened up new avenues of recruiting for assets, formed a team that uncovered a Russian mole operating within the agency and rooted out where Osama bin Laden was hiding.

She joined host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to share stories of the women who fought through blatant sexism to became some of the CIA’s most ingenious operatives.

Guest:

• Liza Mundy is an award-winning journalist and the New York Times bestselling author of five books. Her latest is “The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA.”

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