Dr. Jen Gunter is an ob-gyn and a pain medicine physician who writes on topics of sex, science, and social media. A fierce advocate for women’s health, Gunter is devoted to correcting the misinformation perpetuated by the internet around women’s well-being and reproductive health. She is the author of The Preemie Primer and The Vagina Bible. Her new book, The Menopause Manifesto: Own Your Health with Facts and Feminism, counters stubborn myths about menopause with hard facts, real science, fascinating historical perspective, and expert advice. On June 7, 2021, Gunter talked with Isabel Duffy about the book and the history of medical understanding – and misunderstanding – about this stage of women’s lives.

Twenty years ago, Jhumpa Lahiri received the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for Interpreter of Maladies, her debut story collection that explores issues of love and identity among immigrants and cultural transplants.  She went on to write more short stories, poems, essays, and novels, such as The Namesake.  Since moving to Italy in 2011, Lahiri has worked as a translator of Italian literature, and produced her own work in Italian.  For her latest book, Whereabouts, she first wrote the story in Italian before translating it into English. On May 18, 2021, Jhumpa Lahiri spoke with Monica Seger, Program Director for Italian Studies at William & Mary University.

Researchers Elissa Epel and Dacher Keltner discuss stress, resilience, and the communal response needed for emotional challenges during the pandemic. They explore the impact of chronic stress on aging, power dynamics on health outcomes, positive emotions on stress resilience, transformative power of awe, human relationships, mind-body connection, and the importance of community and human emotions.

Dr. Jessica B. Harris is the preeminent authority on the culinary culture of the African Diaspora.  Harris has spent over three decades studying African food and its migration.  To understand the rich and complex flavors of African American cuisine requires looking at the culinary cultures of the African continent and the slave trade that brought Africans to America. Harris is the author of twelve critically acclaimed cookbooks documenting the foods and foodways of the African Diaspora including Iron Pots and Wooden Spoons: Africa’s Gifts to New World Cooking and The Welcome Table: African-American Heritage Cooking. Her most recent book is My Soul Looks Back: A Memoir. Netflix has just made a series based on Harris’s seminal book “High on the Hog”. On May 13, 2021, Harris spoke with chef and author Samin Nosrat, whose book “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” was also made into a Netflix series.

In 2018, Stacey Abrams lost her bid to be governor of Georgia.  It was a huge disappointment – she was the first Black woman to become the gubernatorial nominee of a major party in the US.  It was also unexpected – Abrams won more votes than any Democrat in Georgia’s history.  The surprise outcome had much to do with the state’s mismanagement of the election.  After she lost, Abrams created the voting rights organization Fair Fight.  Since 2018, she’s been instrumental in driving an enormous number of voter registrations in Georgia – those voters were critical in turning Georgia blue in the 2020 presidential election and in electing two Democratic Senators.  On May 13, 2021, Stacey Abrams talked to journalist Rebecca Traister about protecting our democracy, and some of her many other pursuits – including writing legal thrillers, including her newest “While Justice Sleeps”.

Bryan Stevenson is a lawyer who’s brought national attention to the failures of America’s criminal justice system. He’s the founding director of the Equal Justice Institute in Montgomery, Alabama.  Under his leadership, EJI has won major legal challenges, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and of the mentally ill, and exonerating innocent Death Row inmates.  We’ll hear Stevenson talk to Chesa Boudin, San Francisco’s District Attorney, and Rachel Marshall.  This conversation was recorded on December 14, 2020, for “Chasing Justice”, a podcast hosted by Boudin and Marshall.

  As an activist fighting for racial and social equality, Tamika Mallory has inspired countless others to get involved with these issues – and never more so than when the speech she made during the protests following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis went viral.  Mallory grew up in an activist family; her parents were founding members of the civil rights organization National Action Network.  She would go on to become its youngest ever executive director.  On May 14, 2021, Tamika Mallory talked with Courtney Martin, about her book “State of Emergency” and her life as an activist.

This week, we’ll listen to a conversation with David Mitchell and Pico Iyer, recorded on May 8, 2021. David Mitchell’s many novels include Cloud Atlas, The Bone Clocks, and Ghostwritten. . His most recent novel, Utopia Avenue, follows the strangest British band you’ve never heard of. Mitchell’s stories often weave together the supernatural and the philosophical.  He’s also one of the most structurally inventive writers of our time, featuring nonlinear storylines and multiple genres within a single book. Pico Iyer is a travel writer, essayist, and novelist, whose many books include Video Night in Kathmandu and The Lady and the Monk.  

Rachel Kushner is the author of several novels including The Mars Room and The Flamethrowers.  Her work has been compared to Joan Didion’s, and that of Don DeLillo, a literary mentor to Kushner. Kushner’s newest book, The Hard Crowd, is a collection of essays from the past 20 years that showcase her intellect and diverse interests, from muscle cars to postmodern art and politics.  She has received grants and prizes from the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and her fiction and essays have appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. On April 29, 2021, Rachel Kushner talked with Heidi Julavits about the art of writing and the places and people that inspire her.

This week, our guests are Astra Taylor and Robert Reich.  Taylor is an activist, author, and documentary filmmaker whose films include What is Democracy? (2018) and An Examined Life (2008). Last year, at the onset of the pandemic, Taylor joined economist Robert Reich to discuss his just-published book, The System.  It was the very beginning of COVID-19’s complete upheaval of normal life, and Reich made a plea for government to understand the moment as a health crisis, not an economic one. On April 19, 2021, Taylor and Reich returned to reflect on the past year, from racial reckoning to widening income inequality – and to discuss Taylor’s new book, Remake the World: Essays, Reflections, Rebellions.  In it, Taylor invites us to imagine how things could be different while never losing sight of the strategic question of how change actually happens.