News Nerds

This week, we continue to hear from the candidates running to be Montana’s next governor. Libertarian Kaiser Leib worked as a software developer before starting his stand up comedy production company in Helena. We’ll talk today about how he views taxation, transgender rights, and climate change and how tangible libertarian ideals really are. After last week’s presidential debate, it was interestin...

From 1995 to 2020, Ryan Busse worked in the gun industry as the vice president of sales for Kimber America. This sparked his 2021 book, Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America , and a period in his life when he began to question his political beliefs. His sons were 2 of the 16 plaintiffs in Held v. Montana, a landmark climate lawsuit fought against the state government th...

During the pandemic, I learned to love cooking. I picked up a copy of the Art of Simple Cooking ad started experimenting with salad dressings, pie dough, and breads. My guest today is who I have to thank for that. Alice Waters built her restaurant, Chez Panisse, off of the food culture in France, where she visited at 19, and the values of Maria Montessori. Waters focused on organic, local, and sea...

Hi, Technically we're off for the summer, but it's fun to break rules. Today, a conversation about religion, parenting, acting, and comedy with David Cross. Cross is best known for partnering with Bob Odenkirk in the 1990s to create Mr. Show, and acting in shows and movies such as Arrested Development, where he played the Tobias Funke, and Alvin and the Chipmunks, where he played the villa...

Today we talk to forensic pathologist Werner Spitz. Dr. Spitz is 96 but shows no signs of retirement. As we’ll find out, he wouldn’t even want to retire on his 100th birthday in 2026. Spitz was born in what was then Germany and is now Poland in 1926 to a Jewish family and moved to France early in Hitler’s rise to power. The family moved to Israel, where Spitz would later receive an MD. After he mo...

-Ezra

This week, the search for the perfect interview. Public Radio host Barbara Bogaev will join us to talk about her experience growing up in Philadelphia listening to Fresh Air with Terry Gross to eventually guest hosting the show. Bogaev also hosted the radio documentary series Soundprint and Weekend America. She has also guest hosted Marketplace Weekend and programs at KCRW in Santa Monica. Today,...

I think it’s rare for a biography to be so well written that almost every aspect of a figure’s life is detailed. My guest today, Jonathan Eig , seems to have done just that and managed to keep my attention for more than 600 pages. Jonathan is the author of 5 other nonfiction books, as well as 4 children’s books. He was also a reporter. His upcoming book, King: A Life , chronicles the rise of Marti...

Today, a conservative view of the April 4th Trump indictment brought by Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg. My guest today, Peter Ticktin, was a lawyer for Donald Trump who worked on a legal case against the Clinton campaign, the DNC, and other Democrats. Ticktin and the other lawyer working on the case argued that the Clinton campaign leveraged accusations relating to Russian election collusion against th...

When a gunman killed 20 first graders and 6 educators on December 14, 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School, many called for bipartisan action. My guest today will explain that this action never really came and in addition, conspiracy theorists including Alex Jones spread false claims that the shooting was staged by the government. Elizabeth Williamson is a feature writer for the New York Times and...

Today we hear two interviews about youth in the limelight. First an interview with the CEO of Global Citizen Year, Erin Lewellen. She grew up in rural Oregon as the daughter of a logger and schoolteacher and now heads a nonprofit that sends high school graduates around the world on a global gap year to help solve specific problems in the world. This semester is in Cape Town, South Africa where stu...

Food royalty Mark Bittman joins us today to talk about a career spanning from the late seventies and early eighties until now. Of course he’s the author of the 1998 cookbook How To Cook Everything and the series that followed, he worked with the New York Times for 30 years including at his minimalist column, and has made America aware of the systemic problems embedded in how we eat with books like...

Rikers Island in New York City houses a complex of ten jails. Although some might think of the facility in terms of statistics and numbers, Reuven Blau and Graham Rayman's new book, Rikers: An Oral History documents Rikers' history from the 70s until today from the point of view of people that spent parts of their lives at the prison. The pair of journalists interviewed more than 130 incarcerated...

Have you ever thought about what New York City was like before Europeans settled the area? This is just one of the many questions answered by Michael Kimmelman’s latest small gem of a book, The Intimate City: Walking New York . The book combines Michael’s own knowledge of the city with other points of view. He invited planners, professors, and architects to join him on walks ar...

Today we’ll analyze last week’s State of the Union Address with Peter Baker. Peter is the chief White House Correspondent for the New York Times . Biden is the third president Baker has covered with the times. He previously covered Bill Clinton and George W. Bush for the Washington Post. In between his time covering the White House at the Post, he was a Moscow Bureau Chief with his wife Susan Glas...

If last week’s show was for the history buffs today is for the people that love to eat. Today we have a gargantuan show with Christopher Kimball of Milk Street and Matt Sartwell of Kitchen Arts and Letters. First, we’ll play my recent interview with Christopher Kimball, the cook with the bowtie. You might know him for his work with America’s Test Kitchen where he founded the classic food maga...

Today we have a show for the history buffs out there. Nearly eighty years ago, a historic conference took place in Tehran. The three leaders fighting against the Nazis in World War II, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met in Iran after exhaustive planning and correspondence.  They knew that the conference would help the three nations come together and agree on key issues in the war....

This week marks the one year anniversary of a chain of deadly tornadoes that travelled through Kentucky and the surrounding states. 80 Kentuckians died in the tornadoes and many more were injured. One of the hardest hit towns in Kentucky was Mayfield. Many businesses were affected by the storm including Carr’s Steakhouse. Last year I talked to Daniel Carr, who is an owner...

The U.S. military has been racially integrated for less than a century, and the nation has fought some of the most significant wars with segregated troops. As this week’s guest will tell us, the often overlooked role of African Americans in the second World War is important; black troops fought in combat, supplied other troops with food and ammunition, and built key infrastructure that allied...

I'm back from Italy with an interview with one of the great foodies of America. You might know J Kenji Lopez Alt from his cookbooks or maybe his work at Cook’s Illustrated and Serious Eats or maybe from social media, where he has hundreds of thousands of followers. Lopez Alt is known for his scientific approach to cooking in his books, videos, and articles. Well, this week, Kenji was in town,...

 Following a slow start to the hurricane season, Hurricanes Fiona and Ian left many without electricity or even a house to return to after the storm. This week we’re joined by National Public Radio’s Miami correspondent Greg Allen, who has been covering the hurricanes. Allen got his start in radio in Pennsylvania where he hosted a weekly folk music program. After work at severa...

On this week’s News Nerds, remembering England’s Queen Elizabeth who died earlier this month at 96. Journalist Robert Hardman joins us to talk about his book, Queen Of Our Times: The Life of Elizabeth II , which was published in March of this year. Robert writes for the Daily Mail and has worked covering the royal family for more than 25 years. He’s the author of 4 additional books about Quee...

Yo, News Nerds, I'm so glad to be back! This week I (virtually) sat down with NY Mag correspondent, Gabriel Debenedetti.  The complicated relationship between Barack Obama and Joe Biden is mostly thought of through the lens of their two terms in the White House , but today’s guest, New York Magazine writer Gabriel Debenedetti tells us that the relationship spans...

  We'll be gone for the summer, so I thought that I would leave you with a treat. Every week day this summer we'll be posting a new mini crossword that you can print or solve online. Have fun with those! This past week was noteworthy for the Supreme Court; along with rulings on religion and gun rights, the court overturned Roe Vs. Wade, a landmark decision that guaranteed the right to an abor...

This week on News Nerds we’ll be speaking with Pulitzer Prize winning writer Kathryn Schulz. Her new book, Lost & Found grapples with the loss and then later discovery in Kathryn’s recent life. The book is split into three sections, lost, where she recounts the event of her father’s death and her grief afterwards, found, when we learn of her relationship with fellow New Yorker writer...