Caroline Tracey, "Salt Lakes: An Unnatural History" (W. W. Norton, 2026)
Salt lakes are some of the most beautiful and unusual landscapes that you can find on this planet, even as they can be quite alien to people used to fresh bodies of water. They're also uniquely threat...
3 Apr 46min
Melissa Auf der Maur, "Even the Good Girls Will Cry: A '90s Rock Memoir" (DaCapo, 2026)
Melissa Auf der Maur's new memoir, Even the Good Girls Will Cry: A '90s Rock Memoir(DaCapo, 2026) is a remarkably open-hearted, clear-eyed memoir of the '90s Alternative era by the bassist of Hole and...
2 Apr 45min
Peter Mauch, "Tojo: The Rise and Fall of Japan's Most Controversial World War II General" (Harvard UP, 2026)
The military general who became Emperor Hirohito’s prime minister, Tojo Hideki is most often remembered as an iron-fisted leader who dragged Japan into World War II and—after spectacular losses—was ev...
31 Mar 1h 4min
Cathryn J. Prince, "For the Love of Labor: The Life of Pauline Newman" (U Illinois Press, 2026)
My guest today is Cathryn J. Prince the author of For the Love of Labor: The Life of Pauline Newman (U Illinois Press, 2026). From her start as one of the youngest activists in US history, Pauline N...
26 Mar 52min
The Remarkable Life and Afterlife of Sholem Aleichem
Novelist, playwright, journalist, essayist, and editor, Sholem Aleichem was one of the founding giants of modern Yiddish literature. The creator of a pantheon of extraordinary characters, his literatu...
24 Mar 1h 3min
David Bather Woods, "Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy's Greatest Pessimist" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy’s Greatest Pessimist by David Bather Woods An engaging biography of one of the most influential Western philosophers and a thought-provoking ex...
23 Mar 1h 16min
Martha Feldman, "Castrato Phantoms: Moreschi, Fellini, and the Sacred Vernacular in Rome" (Zone Books, 2026)
Around 1830, opera houses stopped using castrati, and Rome and the Vatican became home to their glorious singing, engineered by surgery and intensive vocal training. Castrati were long mired in secrec...
22 Mar 42min
The Vilna Gaon and the Making of Modern Judaism
The beginnings of contemporary Jewry are often associated with Jewish figures in Western Europe such as Moses Mendelssohn. But in his book, The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism...
22 Mar 1h 2min
