Wavemaker Conversations: A Podcast for the Insanely Curious

This conversation will help make your children (and you, too) better writers. Last time Jack Gantos was on Wavemaker Conversations, he shared his unforgettable journey to a terrifying prison sentence in a federal penitentiary and then to a prolific writing career. Now, with his new book, Writing Radar: Using Your Journal to Snoop Out and Craft Great Stories, his goal is to help young writers who find the blank page terrifying. The book is written for 3rd grade and up. That includes all of us...

Author Will Schwalbe is one of the funniest serious readers you’ll ever hear.  In our conversation, before a packed house at The Nantucket Book Festival, Will and I talk about his latest work, Books for Living, in which he treats us to a tour of books we might love to read – but may have missed – and shares his perspective-changing takeaways for how to live a more meaningful life...

When Ruth Reichl became the restaurant critic for The New York Times, she learned there was a bounty on her – $1,000 for any worker who recognized this make-or-break critic when she sat down to eat.  Reichl shares the backstory of her elaborate, yet necessary, disguise; her courageous first review of how New York’s most heralded restaurant treated her when they didn’t have a clue who she was; and what changed once they realized...

New York Times bestselling author Julie Lythcott-Haims says she is “so American it hurts...

Michael visits one of the most influential and beloved figures in the field of psychotherapy on the eve of the release of his memoir:  Becoming Myself.  At 86, after a recent health scare, The Atlantic magazine wrote:  "As a psychotherapist, Irvin Yalom has helped others grapple with their mortality. Now he is preparing for his own end."  Not quite.  Yalom's legions of fans will be gratified to hear his impassioned response to that analysis in this intimate Wavemaker Conversation...

6’2” Carey Kauffman, a March Madness veteran of the Duke University Blue Devils, couples her insights from a life in basketball with her experience as the mother of two children born with rare diseases.  Kauffman, the daughter of an NBA all-star. will help make you one of the most insightful people in the room during the Final Four – and help give your kids an edge if they play the game.  But it’s her mission in life, which she pursues through her company WellSelf 360, that will inspire you...

You may be tempted to scream -- “don’t do it, Jack!” -- at the outset of this podcast.  My conversation with author Jack Gantos, at the Nantucket Book Festival, begins with a choice he made in 1971 that led him to a horrifying year-and-a-half as an inmate in a federal penitentiary.  He describes the crime and the time in unforgettable detail...

You may be tempted to scream -- “don’t do it, Jack!” -- at the outset of this podcast.  My conversation with author Jack Gantos, at ...

Bob Chapman turned a small, teetering 19th century manufacturing company that served the beer industry, into a 2.5 billion dollar enterprise. He owes his success ...

Bob Chapman turned a small, teetering 19th century manufacturing company that served the beer industry, into a 2.5 billion dollar enterprise. He owes his success to a traumatic experience, which forced him to find value that others couldn’t see. He figured out how to protect thousands of American jobs, rejecting the option of cheap, foreign labor. And he developed a new way of leading – focused on empathetic listening -- that he believes can help businesses, families, and our nation thrive...