Newsmakers meet New Yorkers as host Brian Lehrer and his guests take on the issues dominating conversation in New York and around the world. This daily program from WNYC Studios cuts through the usual talk radio punditry and brings a smart, humane approach to the day's events and what matters most in local and national politics, our own communities and our lives. WNYC Studios is a listener-supported producer of other leading podcasts including Radiolab, On the Media, Death, Sex & Money, Nancy, and many others.
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Year-End History Dive
As 2020 draws to a close, enjoy this dive into history with some of our favorite guests:
- Kenneth C. Davis, author of the "Don't Know Much About" series and the young adult history, More Deadly Than War: The Hidden History of the Spanish Flu and the First World War (Henry Holt and Co., 2018), talks about one unintended consequence of the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic;
- As part of the Books That Changed My Mind series, hear from two historians who wrote mind-changing books: Isabel Wilkerson (The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration) and Stephanie Coontz (The Way We Never Were: American Families And The Nostalgia Trap).
- From water tanks to public school door knobs, from the Anthora coffee cup to the black and white cookie, Sam Roberts, urban affairs correspondent for The New York Times, and now the author of A History of New York in 101 Objects (Simon & Schuster, 2014), presents a history of the five boroughs through intriguing artifacts. Note: Follow along with the "slide show" at the link below.
- David Blight, professor of American history and director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University, talks about his book Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (Simon & Schuster, 2018).
- Stokely Carmichael was a controversial figure in black rights, straddling both the non-violent and Black Panther movements. In his biography of Carmichael, Stokely: A Life, Peniel Joseph, now professor of history and director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. (Basic Books, 2020), traces Carmichael’s life and what it says about the struggles for black power.
- Ann Powers, NPR Music critic and correspondent, talks about the evolution of popular music in America and her book, Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music (Dey Street Books, 2017).
These interviews were edited slightly for time, the original versions are available here:
What the Spanish Flu Had to do With Women's Suffrage (Mar. 9, 2018)
Books That Changed My Mind: History (Nov. 13, 2014)
New York in 101 Objects (Sept. 23, 2014)
The Life of Frederick Douglass (Jan. 11, 2019)
Stokely Carmichael's Life (Mar. 5, 2014)
How Pop Music Influences Americans (Aug. 22, 2017)