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Library Talks

Latest episodes

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Jan 7, 2025 • 55min

Caoilinn Hughes with Brandon Taylor: The Alternatives

Caoilinn Hughes joins fellow author Brandon Taylor to discuss her latest book, The Alternatives, a story of four brilliant Irish sisters, orphaned in childhood, who scramble to reconnect when the oldest disappears into the Irish countryside.
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Dec 31, 2024 • 60min

Josephine Quinn with Ken Chen: How the World Made the West

Josephine Quinn sits down with award-winning poet Ken Chen to discuss her book How the World Made the West. Quinn's book poses a bold challenge to “civilizational thinking” on the origins of Western culture—that is, the idea that civilizations arose separately and distinctly from one another. Rather, she locates the roots of the modern West in everything from the law codes of Babylon, Assyrian irrigation, and the Phoenician art of sail to Indian literature, Arabic scholarship, and the metalworking riders of the Steppe.
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Dec 24, 2024 • 58min

Jean Strouse with Hernan Diaz: Family Romance

Jean Strouse sits down with Pulitzer Prize–winner Hernan Diaz to discuss her latest book Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers. Strouse's account illuminates a period of tumultuous social change that saw the declining fortunes of the British aristocracy, the dramatic rise of new wealth on both sides of the Atlantic, and the birth of the modern art market.
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Dec 17, 2024 • 58min

Dava Sobel with Angela Saini: The Elements of Marie Curie

Dava Sobel, a renowned science writer known for works like Longitude, discusses her latest book on Marie Curie with Angela Saini, an insightful science journalist. They delve into Curie's inspiring life, her Polish roots, and the 45 women who contributed to her groundbreaking research. Sobel highlights the challenges these women faced in a male-dominated field, illuminating Curie's resilience amid personal and professional tribulations. The conversation underscores the importance of recognizing female contributions in science and the art of effective science communication.
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Dec 10, 2024 • 55min

Daniel Saldaña París with Chloé Cooper Jones: Planes Flying over a Monster

Daniel Saldaña París speaks with Chloé Cooper Jones about his latest book Planes Flying over a Monster, which explores the cities where París has lived, each one home to a new iteration of himself. These now diverging, now coalescing selves raise questions: Where can we find authenticity? How do we construct the stories that define us? What if our formative memories are closer to fiction than truth?
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Dec 3, 2024 • 1h 12min

New York Crime Stories: Reading from the Archives

Dive into the Library’s collections for true tales of crime and chicanery from some of the city’s most outstanding lawbreakers. Beloved actors and performers read stories mined from the Library’s collections about the words and deeds of New Yorkers who lived on either side of the letter of the law. 
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Nov 26, 2024 • 52min

Maira Kalman with Rumaan Alam: Still Life with Remorse

Beloved artist and author Maira Kalman sits down with author Rumaan Alam to discuss her new collection of illustrations, Still Life with Remorse, her most autobiographical and intimate work to date.
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Nov 19, 2024 • 53min

Celebrating Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer’s 'The Joy of Connections'

Celebrating The Joy of Connections, the last book of beloved icon (and long-time New Yorker) Dr. Ruth Westheimer. Co-authors Allison Gilbert and Pierre Lehu are joined by Dr. Ruth's children, Dr. Miriam Westheimer and Dr. Joel Westheimer, in a conversation moderated by WABC-TV's Bill Ritter.
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Nov 12, 2024 • 55min

Glory Edim with Aminatou Sow: Gather Me

Glory Edim, the founder of Well-Read Black Girl, discusses her new memoir, Gather Me, an ode to the power reading has had on her life and to books’ ability to help us understand ourselves.
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Nov 5, 2024 • 58min

Clara Bingham with Farai Chideya: Revolutionary Foremothers

Clara Bingham discusses her new book, The Movement, the first oral history of the decade that built the modern feminist movement.

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