Author Interviews

Michael Pollan is out with a new book about the science behind psychedelics.

'Reluctant Psychonaut' Michael Pollan Embraces The 'New Science' Of Psychedelics

1:17pm May 15, 2018

by Terry Gross

Author Michael Pollan, who experimented with mushrooms, LSD and other psychedelics while researching his latest book, says: "I had an experience that was by turns frightening and ecstatic and weird."

Books
Arts

He Felt He Could No Longer Be Funny, Says Robin Williams Biographer

2:56pm May 14, 2018

by Terry Gross

Dave Itzkoff examines Williams' life and death in a new biography. Williams took his own life in 2014; an autopsy later revealed he had Lewy body dementia.

Queue Listen Now

Books

Reality TV And Murder In 'The Favorite Sister'

7:54am May 13, 2018

Jessica Knoll's new book The Favorite Sister combines murder with a reality TV show about powerful, ambitious women. She tells NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro reality TV is her guilty pleasure.

Jim Brown, a star running back for the Cleveland Browns in the late 1950s and early 1960s, is the subject of a new biography by The Nation sports editor Dave Zirin.

'Heroic, But He's No Hero': Revisiting Football Great Jim Brown

7:54am May 13, 2018

by Lulu Garcia-Navarro

Dave Zirin's new biography portrays a black liberation activist with a conservative streak, a man with an alleged history of violence against women and maybe the greatest running back in NFL history.

Books
Arts

Bloody-Scepter'd 'Tyrant' Explores Shakespeare's Take On Politics

8:07am May 12, 2018

by Scott Simon

Scholar Stephen Greenblatt says Shakespeare wrote his histories as a commentary on the era he lived in — and those plays still have important things to say about our current political climate.

How Black Leaders Unwittingly Contributed To The Era Of Mass Incarceration

4:34pm May 11, 2018

by Terry Gross

In Locking Up Our Own, Pulitzer Prize-winning author James Forman Jr. argues that African-American leaders helped shape policies that harmed black communities. Originally broadcast July 17, 2017.

Queue Listen Now

Books
Arts

My First Existential Crisis: The Sweet Story Of An Angsty 'Square'

5:07pm May 08, 2018

by Rachel Martin

Jon Klassen and Mac Barnett are writing a children's book trilogy about shapes who are just like us. The second installment follows a straight-laced square who wonders if he's really a genius.

Queue Listen Now

Brothers Jay (left) and Mark Duplass have been making films together since they were kids. Their new memoir is Like Brothers.

Books
Arts

Duplass Brothers On Working Together And Growing Apart: 'We Are Ex-Soulmates'

1:11pm May 08, 2018

by Terry Gross

Filmmaker siblings Jay and Mark Duplass have been making movies together since they were kids. More recently, Mark says, "We had to dig out space from that beautiful co-dependence."

Lidia Bastianich owns restaurants in New York, as well as in several other cities.

Books
Arts

How 'Peasant Food' Helped Chef Lidia Bastianich Achieve Her 'American Dream'

1:18pm May 07, 2018

by Terry Gross

Bastianich grew up eating farm-to-table meals with her Italian family. After they fled Europe as refugees and emigrated to America, she drew on those childhood meals in opening her first restaurant.

Books

Author Finds Resilience, Love And 'Beauty In The Broken Places'

6:54pm May 06, 2018

Allison Pataki was on an airplane with her husband when he suffered an extremely rare, nearly fatal stroke. NPR's Michel Martin speaks with Pataki about her memoir Beauty in the Broken Places.

Queue Listen Now