Library Talks

Neil Gaiman's reading from 2013 uses a rare prompt copy that belonged to Charles Dickens himself and now resides in The New York Public Library. Dickens marked it up and annotated it for the express purpose of performing the story in front of an audience, which he did regularly in the 1850s and 1860s.

Direct download: Neil_Gaiman_reads_A_Christmas_Carol.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

Is self-interest the only force motivating business? Or can altruism be an equally powerful driver? It's a question that Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Prize–winning father of microcredit, answers in his latest book, A World of Three Zeros: The New Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Net Carbon Emissions. He spoke with fellow economist Jeffrey Sachs.

Direct download: Muhammad_Yunus__Jeffrey_Sachs.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

The titan of American poetry was at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in November to talk about her latest collection, A Good Cry. She spoke with Joy-Ann Reid, the host of MSNBC's AM Joy. 

Direct download: Nikki_Giovanni_Joy-Ann_Reid.mp3
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The Pulitzer Prize–winning literary historian and Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright discuss Greenblatt's latest book, The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve, "a life history of one of the most extraordinary stories ever told." Exploring the power of narrative to travel from myth into reality, Greenblatt and Kushner traced the tale from its biblical origins through its imaginings in the minds of writers and artists from St. Augustine to Albrecht Dürer to John Milton. 

Direct download: Stephen_Greenblatt__Tony_Kushner__Adam_and_Eve_in_the_Teeth_of_Time.mp3
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The Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Poetry Editor of The New Yorker speaks with Garnette Cadogan about his most recent work of nonfiction, Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News. Young traces the particularly American tradition of cons, hoaxes, and fakes, from P. T. Barnum to today.

Direct download: Kevin_Young__BunkHoaxes_Hooey_Hocum_Cons_Plagiarists_and_Forgers.mp3
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The Soviet famine of the early 1930s killed around 5 million people; almost 4 million of them were Ukrainians. As Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum demonstrates in her latest book, Red Famine, it wasn't fate or chance that skewed those numbers so heavily—it was something much more deliberate, and much more sinister. And the story behind it was, until recently, in danger of disappearing. Applebaum spoke about recovering it at the New York Public Library with John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary magazine.

Direct download: Anne_Applebaum__Fighting_Against_the_Great_Forgetting.mp3
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Envisioning the archives of the future with the Chicago-based artist, who was joined by Nettrice Gaskins, director of the STEAM Lab at the Boston Arts Academy, and Greg Carr, a professor at Howard University.


Jones may be known as a liberal activist, but his new book, "Beyond the Messy Truth," is a call to action for all Americans seeking a way out of our ideological and cultural divisions. He spoke about it at the Library with CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin.

Direct download: Van_Jones___You_have_to_keep_open_the_possibility_for_redemption._.mp3
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Ulysses S. Grant has for decades routinely listed as one of our worst presidents. Ron Chernow says the legacy of the Civil War hero and 18th president is deeply misunderstood, making the case in both his latest book and in this conversation with Richard Stengel, former managing editor of TIME magazine.<\P>

Direct download: Ron_Chernow__Grant.mp3
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The co-editors of the essay collection Nasty Women along with select contributors to it explore the complications of being an American woman in 2017. Featuring Kate Harding and Samhita Mukhopadhyay, with Kera Bolonik, Zerlina Maxwell, and Meredith Talusan. Moderated by Jezebel founder Anna Holmes.

Direct download: Nasty_Women.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

Twenty years in the making, Greater Gotham is Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Mike Wallace's follow-up to his 1999 Gotham. He spoke about the New York City history, which covers 1898 to 1918, with the New Yorker's Jelani Cobb.

Direct download: Mike_Wallace_Greater_Gotham.mp3
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The Booker Prize–winning novelist discusses his twelfth, and most recent, novel, The Golden House.

Direct download: Salman_Rushdie_The_Golden_House.mp3
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The National Book Award–winning author spoke at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture about her most recent novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing. She was joined by Lisa Lucas, Executive Director of the National Book Foundation.

Direct download: Jesmyn_Ward__Sing_Unburied_Sing.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

Two writers, two beautiful books, both on the subject of death. Atul Gawande's Being Mortal examines the lengths modern medicine must go to better humanize the final stages of our lives. Elizabeth Alexander's The Light of the World is the memoir of her husband Ficre's sudden and unexpected death, and Alexander's process of grieving and rebuilding that followed it. <\p>

Direct download: Atul_Gawande___Elizabeth_Alexander.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

The host and co-creator of Studio 360 discusses his new book, Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, a 500-Year History. He spoke with NYU professor Kwame Anthony Appiah. Andersen argues that the roots of our post-truth, alternative facts present can be discovered in America's "promiscuous devotion to the untrue" and its instinct to believe in make believe, evident across four centuries of magical thinkers and true believers, hucksters and suckers, who have embedded an appetite for believe-whatever-you-want fantasy into our national DNA.

Direct download: Kurt_Andersen_Fantasyland.mp3
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The filmmaker speaks about his groundbreaking documentary I Am Not Your Negro at the Schomburg Center with the Schomburg's Director, Kevin Young and LIVE from the NYPl's Paul Holdengräber.

 

Direct download: Raoul_Peck.mp3
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The Nigerian writer discusses her debut novel, Stay With Me, the haunting tale of a young couple whose childless marriage threatens to tear them apart. It was shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and hailed by Michiko Kakutani as "powerfully magnetic and heartbreaking."

 

Direct download: Ayobami_Adebayo.mp3
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Kendi discussed his National Book Award–winning work on the history of racist ideas in America with Khalil Gibran Muhammad, the Director Emeritus of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

 

Direct download: Ibram_Kendi_Stamped_from_the_Beginning.mp3
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MIT linguist, philosopher, and political theorist Noam Chomsky, in conversation with actor Wallace Shawn.

Direct download: Noam_Chomsky_and_Wallace_Shawn.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:30am EDT

Grammy-winning singer, songwriter, and best-selling author Judy Collins came to the Library  back in February, to celebrate the publication of her most recent book, Cravings. “As an active, working alcoholic with an eating disorder,” she writes, “I yearned for serenity and was tormented for much of my life by longings, addictions, and painful crises over food: bingeing, bulimia, weight loss and gain.” Collins spoke with William Kelly, who is NYPL’s Andrew W. Mellon Director of the Research Libraries.

Learn more at nypl.org/podcasts

Direct download: Judy_Collins.mp3
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The Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright was joined in May by members of the Broadway cast of Sweat to talk about the play and the issues behind it at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Direct download: Lynn_Nottage__Sweat.mp3
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Best-selling novelist Min Jin Lee on her latest book, the ups and downs of her career, the history of Koreans in Japan, and the treatment of Asians in America.

Direct download: Immigrant_Stories__Min_Jin_Lee_and_Simon_Winchester.mp3
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Philip Glass is a giant of twentieth-century American music, arguably of the most influential composers of his time. He spoke with LIVE from the NYPL’s Paul Holdengräber last June about his memoir "Words Without Music." It is a riveting record of a life very well lived, and a fascinating conversation with a legendary artist.

Direct download: Phillip_Glass_nypl_podcast_mixdown_mixdown.mp3
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Writer, activist, and podcast host Janet Mock joins for a discussion of her second memoir, Surpassing Certainty. She's interviewed by Lisa Lucas, the Executive Director of the National Book Foundation. The two talked about everything from Mock’s time in the publishing industry to her work in a Honolulu strip club, from spam recipes and Zara dresses to the influence of writers like Maya Angelou and Zora Neale Hurston.

Direct download: Janet_Mock_nypl_podcast_mixdown.mp3
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One of contemporary art's most towering figures guides us through his astonishing new exhibition at MASS MoCA.

Direct download: Nick_cave_nypl_podcast_mixdown_mixdown.mp3
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In the 1920s, the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma become oil millionaires after black gold was discovered under their land. Discover the stories of the mysterious that followed and one of the FBI's earliest investigations.

Direct download: Grann_Aidan_nypl_podcast_mixdown_mixdown.mp3
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Tracy K. Smith was named 22nd U.S. Poet Laureate last week. In 2016 she came by the Library to discuss her memoir, Ordinary Light.

Direct download: tracy_smith_nypl_podcast_c.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

This week, the second part of Jelani Cobb's lecture on politics, journalism, and history entitled "The Half-Life of Freedom: The Demagogues of American History."

Direct download: Jelani_Cobb_nypl_podcast_mixdown_part2.mp3
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New Yorker staff writer and Columbia Journalism School professor Jelani Cobb delivers a lecture on politics, journalism, and history entitled "The Half-Life of Freedom." This episode is part 1: "The Media and Alternative Facts."

Direct download: Jelani_Cobb_nypl_podcast_mixdown_part1.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

Alec Baldwin spoke with NY Times critic-at-large Wesley Morris about his recent memoir, "Nevertheless," at LIVE from the NYPL.

Direct download: alec_baldwin_nypl_podcast_mixdown_r.mp3
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Katherine Boo, Anand Giridharadas, and Philip Gourevitch are all past winners of the Library's Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism, which celebrates its 30 anniversary this year. They came to the Library to speak on the shifting responsibilities, purposes, and even definitions of journalism.

Direct download: journalism_trump2_nypl_podcast_mixdown_LL.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:07pm EDT

Is the Trump Administration a dream or a nightmare for the Koch brothers? This week's episode asks and answers many questions about the intricate relationship between money and politics in American life with Jane Mayer, a New Yorker staff writer and winner of NYPL's 2017 Bernstein Award for her book "Dark Money."

Direct download: Jane_Mayer_nypl_podcast_mixdown.mp3
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Explore both the seeds and the fruits of our present American political condition with New Yorker writer George Packer, National Review editor Reihan Salam, and New York Public Library President Tony Marx.

Direct download: age_anxiety_nypl_podcast_mixdown_final.mp3
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Bernstein Award finalist Janine di Giovanni talks about her book, "The Morning They Came For Us: Dispatches from Syria," the story of Syria's civil war as told through the people who have lived through it.

Direct download: 2017.05.08_DiGiovanni_mixdown.mp3
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Bernstein Award finalist Charlotte McDonald-Gibson talks about her book, 'Cast Away: True Stories of Survival from Europe's Refugee Crisis,' which follows individuals fleeing violence and persecution in Syria, Libya, Nigeria, and Eritrea.

Direct download: Charlotte_Gibson_nypl_podcast_mixdown.mp3
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BONUS: We're giving you a taste of the Library's other podcast, The Librarian Is In. Each week hosts Gwen and Frank discuss books, culture, what you should read next , and interview interesting figures from the world of books and libraries. Give it a listen, and subscribe if you like what you hear! Back to regularly scheduled programing on Tuesday.

Direct download: Ep_37_mixdown.mp3
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A hilarious, confounding, perplexing, and thoroughly engrossing conversation between theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss and actor Alan Alda. They came to the LIVE from the NYPL stage to discuss Krauss’s new book, The Greatest Story Ever Told…So Far: Why Are We Here?

Direct download: Alan_Alda_nypl_podcast_mixdown2_mixdown.mp3
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An interview with Bernstein finalist and Guardian editor-at-large Gary Younge. His book is called Another Day in the Death of America: a Chronicle of Ten Short Lives. On an average day in the U.S., seven children and teens will die from gun violence. Younge picked one such day in November 2013 and told the stories of the ten young people whose lives were lost in that 24-hour span.

Direct download: Gary_Younge_nypl_podcast_mixdown.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

If you’ve ever made it through a full Seder, you know that celebrating Passover can last as long as the Exodus itself. Today, on day two of the annual holiday, the NYPL podcast has a measure of comic relief for you in the form of an all-new Haggadah called For This We Left Egypt? It's written by Dave Barry, Alan Zweibel, and Adam Mansbach.

Direct download: Passover_Reconsidered_nypl_podcast_mixdown.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:46am EDT

Sonia Shah's new book 'Pandemic' uses the history of cholera as a template toward understanding the life cycles of disease outbreaks and how our how our next global pandemic might arise.

Direct download: sonia_Shah_nypl_podcast_fixed_mixdown2_mixdown.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:32am EDT

An extraordinary group of women who are on the front lines of the fight for bettering the lives for young black women and girls across the country gathered at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture this International Women's Day to highlight the roles, needs, and contributions of black women and girls in the context of the Black Lives Matter.

Direct download: woman_girls_nypl_podcast_mixdown3_mixdown.mp3
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Modern medicine is infatuated with high-tech gadgetry, yet the single most powerful diagnostic tool remains the doctor-patient conversation, which can uncover the lion’s share of illnesses. Dr. Danielle Ofri speaks with WNYC host Mary Harris about her new book, What Patients Say, What Doctors Hear, which proves that medicine doesn’t have to work that way, and how better communication can lead to better health for all of us.

Direct download: ofri_harris_nypl_podcast_fixed_mixdown2.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:37pm EDT

Whether evoking the tragicomic and surreal for which his short stories first gained acclaim, or awakening the keen love of family in 2015’s The Seven Good Years, Etgar Keret mines the human experience for all of its farce and dignity. The Israeli author recently came by the Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building to speak with Paul Holdengräber, the director of LIVE from the NYPL. The conversation began on Keret’s lost luggage and the two unexpected donations, of a coat and boxer shorts, that followed. From there it turned one strange corner after the next, from Kafka to drug dealers, technophobia, bedtime stories with drunks and prostitutes, and Keret’s anxieties about the ethics of writing fiction.

Direct download: Etgar_Keret_nypl_podcast_mixdown3.mp3
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This year, the New York Public Library will, for the thirtieth year, dispense the Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism. In the first in a series of events to celebrate the award, we welcomed Dean Baquet, Executive Editor of The New York Times; Shawna Thomas, DC Bureau Chief of VICE News; Jose Antonio Vargas, Founder of Define American; Jacob Weisberg, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Slate Group; and Bill Moyers, Managing Editor of BillMoyers.com to discuss the shifting responsibilities, obligations, purposes, and even definitions of American journalism today. For this week's episode of the New York Public Library Podcast, we're proud to present this conversation on the press during the administration of the forty-fifth president.

Direct download: journalism_trump_nypl_podcast_fixed_mixdown.mp3
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For this week's episode of the New York Public Library Podcast, we present discussions presented by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture on two documentaries about icons Maya Angelou and John Lewis. To talk about American Masters - And Still I Rise, a film about the Pulitzer-nominated Dr. Angelou, Elizabeth Alexander, Director of Creativity and Free Expression at the Ford Foundation; Rita Coburn Whack, co-director and co-producer of Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise; Louis Gossett, Jr., Academy Award-winning actor; and Colin Johnson, Co-Founder and Principal of Caged Bird Legacy joined Director of the Schomburg Center, Kevin Young. Get in the Way: The Journey of John Lewis is a documentary film about Congressman John Lewis, a civil rights icon and the winner of the National Book Award for Young People's Literature for March: Book Three. It is discussed by Arva Rice, President and CEO of the New York Urban League; activist and advocate Phil Pierre; and Ahmad Greene, a core member of the Black Lives Matter Movement. In this week's episode, we're proud to present conversation around generations of activism with some of our nation's most inspiring freedom fighters.

Direct download: angelou_lewis_nypl_podcast_mixdown.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:22am EDT

Today the name Giacomo Casanova has become synonymous with the skilled lover. The Venetian claimed to have seduced countless women over his lifetime. Laurence Bergreen's new biography Casanova: the World of a Seductive Genius recounts the life of Casanova from an impoverished youth to infamous writer to librarian. For this week's episode of the New York Public Library Podcast, we're proud to present Laurence Bergreen in conversation with psychosexual therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer on the life of the notorious Casanova.

Direct download: cassenova_nypl_podcast_mixdown.mp3
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Hugh Ryan is a curator and journalist based in Brooklyn, whose work primarily explores queer culture and history. He is the Founder of the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History, and sits on the Board of QED: A Journal in LGBTQ Worldmaking. As the Library’s Martin Duberman Visiting Scholar for 2017, he has been researching the queer history of Brooklyn's working waterfront, in preparation for an upcoming exhibition at the Brooklyn Historical Society. For this week's episode of the New York Public Library Podcast, we're proud to present Ryan discussing the complicated queer refuges offered by the borough's waterfront spaces.

Direct download: queer_nypl_podcast2_mixdown.mp3
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The year was 1955, and the place was America. The murderers were white men, and the fourteen-year-old boy who was kidnapped, beaten, murdered, and dumped in a river was Emmett Till.

Direct download: 2017.03.02_Emmit_Till_Intro_mixdown.mp3
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New York Times political correspondent Maggie Haberman joins Daily Beast editor-in-chief John Avlon to discuss his new book, Washington’s Farewell: the Founding Father’s Warning to Future Generations.

Direct download: washington_nypl_podcast2_mixdown.mp3
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It's hard to imagine a New York different from the one we know, but what would the city have been like if the ideas of some of the greatest architectural dreamers had made it beyond the drawing boards and into built form? The new book Never Built New York paints the picture of an alternative New York, with renderings, sketches, models, and stories of proposals for the city that never came to be. Internationally acclaimed architects Daniel Libeskind. Steven Holl, and Elizabeth Diller come together with author Sam Lubell to envision this alternate city. If you’re curious about some of the images discussed in this episode, visit nypl.org/podcast where you can find a link to a video of the discussion.

Direct download: never_built_nypl_podcast2_mixdown.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:41am EDT

Art Spiegelman moved readers with Maus, the renowned graphic novel recounting his father’s experience of the Holocaust. Now, Spiegelman has brought to our attention the forgotten Si Lewen masterpiece, The Parade, a wordless meditation on the cycle of war. He joins NYPL’s Paul Holdengraber for a discussion on his work past and present. If you’re curious about some of the images discussed in this episode, visit nypl.org/podcast where you can find a link to a video of the discussion.

Direct download: art_spiegelman_nypl_podcast3_mixdown.mp3
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This week we’re proud to present a compelling panel discussion on diversity and democracy. The discussion features participants from education, government, journalism, and non-profit sectors, with moderator Brian Lehrer of WNYC. At a time when American society is swiftly transforming, discussion sheds light on how our differences will only become more critical to our shared success.

Direct download: compelling_nypl_podcast2_mixdown.mp3
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This week we’re bringing you a conversation with the minds behind Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas. Writer and activist Rebecca Solnit, geographer Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, essayist Garnette Cadogan, and authors Suketu Mehta and Luc Sante participate in a discussion about the layers of vitality and diversity, but also inequity and erasure that make up this thriving metropolis

Direct download: metropolis_nypl_podcast2_mixdown.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:17am EDT

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