Dialogue with Marcia Franklin

Host Marcia Franklin talks with historian David Kennedy about Depression-era policies and whether they have parallels to the modern financial crisis. Kennedy, professor emeritus at Stanford University, is known for integrating both economic and cultural analyses in his works about particular historical eras, as he did in Freedom from Fear , a book about the Great Depression in the United States. T...

Host Marcia Franklin talks with Strobe Talbott, a former journalist and diplomat who was the president of the Brookings Institution from 2002 to 2017. Talbott, who wrote for Time magazine for more than 20 years, has also penned a dozen books. Franklin and Talbott talk about his passion for the subject of global warming, and whether the issue is still on the political radar for politicians and the...

Host Marcia Franklin talks with author and world traveler Pico Iyer, whose books and essays about the far corners of the world explore not just the dynamics of those cultures, but also travel itself and its effect on an "outsider." Iyer's many books include: Video Night in Kathmandu , The Lady and the Monk , Falling off the Map and The Global Soul . His most recent book when Franklin interviewed h...

Host Marcia Franklin talks with former child soldier Ishmael Beah, whose bestselling book, A Long Way Gone , details his harrowing experiences in the 1990s when he fought with the government-backed army in Sierra Leone as a teenager during a brutal civil war. Beah fled attacking rebels in his homeland at age 12 and was later picked up and forced to serve in the government army. He was eventually r...

Host Marcia Franklin talks with author and New Yorker magazine writer Philip Gourevitch about the stories he's covered, including the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. The two discuss what lessons Gourevitch thinks can be learned from these events, and why he is often drawn to subjects that make others look away. In The Ballad of Abu Ghraib , Gourevitch pieced together t...

Host Marcia Franklin talks with Dr. Abraham Verghese, a professor at the Stanford School of Medicine and an author of both fiction and non-fiction works. They discuss not only the themes of his work, but also his thoughts on healthcare reform and ways for doctors to establish better working relationships with their patients. Verghese's first book, My Own Country , was a poignant chronicle of how h...

Host Marcia Franklin talks with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gretchen Morgenson, then a financial editor and columnist at the New York Times who covered the country's financial crisis since its inception. They discuss the federal government's push to increase home ownership, which Morgenson sees as the underpinning of the financial collapse. The two also talk about various taxpayer-funded bai...

Writer Ethan Watters joins Marcia Franklin to discuss the themes in his book, Urban Tribes , which looks at the ways in which young, unmarried Americans create their own sense of family. Ethan Watters has written about psychiatry and social psychology for 20 years. He has also taught writing at Berkeley, Stanford, and California College of the Arts. In 1994 he co-founded the San Francisco Writers'...

Marcia Franklin talks with Indian politician, author and former U.N. Under-Secretary-General Dr. Shashi Tharoor. They discuss his revealing look at India's role in the global economy, The Elephant, The Tiger, and The Cell Phone: The Transformation of India in the 21st Century . After talking with Franklin, Tharoor was elected to the Indian Parliament in 2009 to represent the Thiruvananthapuram con...

Marcia Franklin talks with John Hockenberry, a longtime journalist who was the program director for the Sun Valley Writers' Conference. They discuss his view on changes in the media world, as well as advances in adaptive technology for disabled people. Hockenberry became a paraplegic in an auto accident as a teenager, but that didn't keep him from reporting all over the world. He recorded those wh...

Host Marcia Franklin talks with New Yorker writer George Packer, who has been to Iraq six times. Packer discusses his book on the subject, The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq , which the New York Times named one of the ten best books of 2005. He also talks with Franklin about the changing political landscape at home in America. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and visit the Dialogue websi...

Idaho Public Television host Marcia Franklin interviews Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Haynes Johnson about his nonfiction book, The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism , in which he examines the parallels between the McCarthy era of the 1950s and today's post 9-11 political arena. He also offers his views on Fidel Castro's place in Cuba, and opines about the current states of journalism and...

After the 9/11 attacks, were Americans any safer five years later? Marcia Franklin asks that question of counterterrorism expert Juliette Kayyem, who also discusses the recommendations of a report she co-authored, "Preserving Security and Democratic Freedoms on the War in Terrorism." Don't forget to subscribe, and visit the Dialogue website for more conversations that matter!  Originally Aired: 09...

Idaho Public Television host Marcia Franklin talks with Thomas Cahill, the former director of religious publishing at Doubleday and the author of The Hinges of History, a seven-volume series that examines the transitional moments in Western civilization. They discuss several of the volumes, including How the Irish Saved Civilization , The Gift of the Jews , Why the Greeks Matter and The World Befo...

Firoozeh Dumas, the Iranian-born humorist and author of Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America, talks with Marcia Franklin about growing up as an Iranian immigrant in California after the Iranian Revolution, why she felt it was so important to write her memoir, and the role of humor in her life. Don't forget to subscribe, and visit the Dialogue website for more conversations tha...

The recipient of the coveted Caldecott Medal, David Macaulay is the creator of children's books that explain how architectural wonders such as pyramids and cathedrals were built. He and host Marcia Franklin discuss his show, "Building Big," his books Cathedral and Mosque, and his philosophy on modern architecture. Don't forget to subscribe, and visit the Dialogue website for more conversations tha...

Idaho Public Television host Marcia Franklin talks with Robert MacNeil, the veteran journalist, author, and former co-host of the NewsHour on PBS. MacNeil, who was born in Canada, talks about becoming an American, how the news profession changed over the course of his career, and his love for the English language. Don't forget to subscribe, and visit the Dialogue website for more conversations tha...

Idaho Public Television host Marcia Franklin talks with award-winning Australian author Thomas Keneally about his novel Schindler's Ark , which was the basis for the Oscar-winning movie, Schindler's List . They discuss his experiences researching and writing the book, as well as his thoughts on adapting the story to film with Steven Spielberg. They also take a peek at Keneally's next book, The Com...

Marcia Franklin talks with Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), the last of the so-called "Big Six" leaders of the African-American civil rights movement. Don't forget to subscribe, and visit the Dialogue website for more conversations that matter!  Originally Aired: 11/14/2014 Lewis was the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from 1963 to 1966, and played a seminal role in some of...

In the lead-up to the November 2016 elections, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham joined Dialogue host Marcia Franklin to talk about presidential character. Meacham talks with Franklin about the qualities he believes are essential to being a successful president, and the unique nature of the 2016 presidential race. An executive editor at Random House, Meacham is well-known for his appearanc...

Host Marcia Franklin talks with investigative journalist Jane Mayer, the author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Mayer, a staff writer for The New Yorker, worked for more than three years on the book, an expansion of an article she wrote on Charles and David Koch for The New Yorker in 2010. The two brothers, the scions of Koch Industries,...

In his book, Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution , U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer lays out his judicial philosophy, that judges should decide cases in a way that allows the public to maximize participation in government through what he calls "active liberty." Marcia Franklin talks with Justice Breyer about the precepts of "active liberty, why he wanted to write the...

Host Marcia Franklin sits down with historian and law professor Annette Gordon-Reed about her book, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family . The book, which won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, explores the complex bonds between President Thomas Jefferson and one of his slave families, the Hemingses. Using primary source documents, as well as second-hand accounts, Gord...

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin talks about her book, Team of Rivals , which chronicles the sometimes fraught relationship between Abraham Lincoln and his cabinet members. The book was the basis for the 2012 movie, Lincoln , which was nominated for 12 Academy Awards. Goodwin talks about the lessons we can learn from Lincoln, who was the rare president who asked his main rival...

Welcome to "Dialogue with Marcia Franklin." The podcast includes dozens of interviews that Marcia has conducted over the past 25 years with some of the most respected writers and thinkers in the world. Take a listen, and subscribe for more "conversations that matter!"