Big Books & Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller

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 hi...

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 ” fu...

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 Amer...

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...

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 see...

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...

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 av...

Tracy K. Smith is known for her powerful poetry. She's a Pulitzer Prize winner and former U. S. Poet Laureate. Yet her newest book, “ To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul ,” is memoir — a classification she initially resisted. But as she tells MPR News host Kerri Miller, she eventually saw that her own story is a kind of microcosm of America’s story. It’s a meditation on who we’ve be...

Americans’ faith in the value of higher education is faltering . Unlike our global peers, the U.S. is seeing a steady decline in college enrollment and graduation rates, especially among young men. Since 1992, the sticker  price for four-year private colleges   has almost doubled and more than doubled for four-year public colleges, even after adjusting for inflation. Student debt is paralyzing. An...

Are you convinced the U.S. government knows more than it will reveal about UFOs? After doing a deep dive into the history, journalist Garrett Graff is too. But he doesn’t think the cover-up is a necessarily hiding alien life. “There are two obvious cloaks of secrecy that surrounds the government cover-up of its understanding of what UFOs and UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena) are today,” Graff t...

This year, Big Books and Bold Ideas is introducing an occasional series that will feature books on democracy. That series begins as we mark the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection. To gain context, we invited three historians and authors from different regions of the country to reflect on this American moment. Can history be a guide to where we are? Do we have the chaos and divisiveness w...

“Here is the world,” writes theologian Frederick Buechner. “Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.” Those words rooted Amy Butler through some of the darkest moments of her life. As Butler slowly embraced her call to be a pastor, she was rejected by her conservative evangelical family, who doesn’t believe women should be in pastoral roles. She was the first woman ever appointe...

For years, author Jedidiah Jenkins and his mother, Barbara, have flirted with the idea of a cross-country road trip together. The goal: to retrace Barbara’s route across America which she walked with her husband, travel writer Peter Jenkins, in the 1970s. But there is one problem: they have wildly disparate world views. Barbara is a baby boomer who lives in rural Tennessee. She supports Trump, lis...

Members of MPR and supporters of The Slowdown came together in mid-October to celebrate poetry with Major Jackson. The poet was in the Twin Cities to speak at the Twin Cities Book Festival , which is where he also learned that The Slowdown — a daily poetry podcast that he hosts — had won the prestigious Signal Award for Best Daily Podcast of 2023 . MPR News' Kerri Miller in Conversation with The S...

To humans, roads are so ubiquitous, they are almost invisible. They crisscross every continent and allow for travel, exploration and connection. But to wildlife, roads are dangerous divisions of habitat. Around a million animals are killed by cars every day. Roads change migration patterns, cut off animals from their food sources and create noise so loud that it drowns out the ability for some ani...

What word or phrase conjures immediate understanding in your family — but puzzled looks from everyone else? In one family, pizza crust is known as “pizza bones.” In another, children who weren’t allowed to say fart were instructed to use the word “foof” instead. This Thursday, MPR News host Kerri Miller talked about “ familect ” with word wizard Anatoly Liberman. Guest: Anatoly Liberman  is a ling...

To the strict Rastafari father of Jamaican poet Safiya Sinclair , Babylon was not just an ancient city. It was a symbol for corruption, for wickedness, for decadence and depravity. And it was everywhere. So he kept his family tightly controlled, separate from outside influences that could contaminate. It was in that environment that Sinclair first grew and then stifled. Her father’s Rastafari fait...

What book did you read this year that you immediately recommended to all your friends? That was the topic MPR News host Kerri Miller tackled Monday at 9 a.m. for a special live edition of her regular Friday show, Big Books and Bold Ideas. Instead of chatting with an author, Miller took calls and chatted with Glory Edim , the founder of Well-Read Black Girl, and Julie Buckles , the owner of Honest...

Can you imagine a day when families visit the moon for summer vacation? When travel to see Saturn’s rings up close is a romantic getaway? When humans living on Mars schedule tours of Olympus Mons — a volcano roughly the size of Arizona? The day is coming. But since it’s not possible quite yet, the would-be space traveler can do the next best thing: Take the scenic route through the galaxy with ast...

The 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 new book, “ The Comfort of Crows .” In it, the self-described backyard naturalist details what she saw in her Tennessee half-acre backyard over t...

On July 7, 2016, a Black gunman ambushed Dallas police officers working a peaceful protest, shooting 14 and killing five. The trauma surgeon who worked to save many of those officers — Dr. Brian H. Williams — made headlines when he spoke at a press conference after the incident. In an emotional moment, he confessed his complicated feelings as a Black man in America to the mix of race, policing and...

Viet Thanh Nguyen has a critical mind. He’s critic of populist politics. He’s a critic of history. He’s a critic of the country where he was born, Vietnam, and he’s a critic of the country he calls home, the United States. He’s even a critic of his own memories. But Nguyen says his captious lens isn’t meant to blister. It’s simply meant to reveal truth. And if you write truthfully, you will likely...

In C Pam Zhang’s dystopian not-too-distant future, the planet is covered in a crop-killing smog. Food as we know it is rapidly disappearing to be replaced by a gray, mung bean flour. Zhang’s protagonist, a young unnamed Asian chef, decides to flee her dreary career and lies her way into becoming the head cook at a mountaintop research community, where the sky is still clear and the uber-rich work...

Ann Patchett is a perennial favorite at Talking Volumes. So it’s no surprise that she sold out the Fitz for her conversation with host Kerri Miller on Sept. 28. What ensued was a raucous two hours of honest conversation. Just a few of the topics they covered: Ann’s “shiny new attitude” about book tours, how to be a feminist while still making dinner every night, why Ann keeps a drawer stocked with...

Lauren Groff’s new novel, “The Vaster Wilds,” begins in the bleak winter of 1609, when the residents of the early American colony of Jamestown are diseased and starving. A young servant girl, who was brought to the new world by a prosperous and indifferent family, decides to run from the desolation. But she leaves Jamestown not knowing her direction, her surroundings or even her name. Can she surv...