I'd Rather Be Reading

When it comes to books that have impacted my life for the better, Kara Loewentheil’s Take Back Your Brain: How a Sexist Society Gets in Your Head—and How to Get It Out tops the list. It came out May 21, and in it she writes that our thoughts “are like GPS—they tell your brain what to focus on, how to feel, and what to do. You have to set that GPS on purpose to create the life you want.” To do so, Kara walks us through three steps: 1. How to identify what thoughts are really driving you. 2. How to evaluate whether a thought is serving you or not. 3. How to change your thoughts. Today on the show we’re talking about the Voice as a proper noun, neuroplasticity, the brain gap, the thought-emotion-behavior-return loop, and how to create a new neural pathway through the brilliant thought ladder concept. If it all sounds overwhelming, I promise you, both Kara’s book and this conversation breaks it all down into easily digestible and understandable bits that will improve your life. If my ringing endorsement isn’t enough, Take Back Your Brain is a New York Times bestseller, a No. 1 nonfiction bestseller for USA Today, and a Publishers Weekly bestseller. If you are looking to stop endless negative self-talk and step into power and confidence and joy—and especially if you’re a woman—you have arrived at the right conversation as we aim to take back our thoughts, getting rid of the ones that no longer serve us. Kara is the host of the extremely popular “UnF*ck Your Brain” podcast; she’s also a Harvard Law School graduate, Master Life Coach, and the founder of The New School of Feminist Thought. Take Back Your Brain is her first book, but my goodness, I hope it’s not her last. Take a listen to this powerful conversation.   Take Back Your Brain: How a Sexist Society Gets in Your Head—and How to Get It Out by Kara Loewentheil

Today on the show we are talking about American fashion, specifically Empresses of Seventh Avenue: World War II, New York City, and the Birth of American Fashion, the brand-new book from Nancy MacDonell, out August 27. Prior to World War II, American designers were nothing short of second-class citizens to the French. But, after the Nazis invaded Paris during the war, everything changed for French fashion, and by the time the war ended in 1945, the American look was in fashion. What is the American look, you ask? Nancy answers that for us today, as well as introduces us to a fascinating cast of characters who helped birth American fashion: Elizabeth Hawes, Eleanor Lambert, and Claire McCardell, for starters. Soon, American fashion began to beat the French at their own game, and this is all a leadup to the Battle of Versailles, which we interviewed Robin Givhan about on the show last year. American fashion is thriving now—at $500 billion, it’s the largest fashion industry in the world—but there would likely be no Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Marc Jacobs, Tom Ford, Tory Burch, Halston, or Michael Kors without the Empresses of Seventh Avenue. These women have largely been forgotten to history—that is, until Nancy MacDonnell came along. Nancy is a fashion journalist and fashion historian that writes The Wall Street Journal column “Fashion with a Past,” which explores the historic roots of current fashion trends. Nancy has written everywhere from The New York Times to Elle, Vogue, and many other publications, and she’s written five books, including The Classic Ten: The True Story of the Little Black Dress and Nine Other Fashion Favorites. In addition to her work as a writer, Nancy is also an adjunct lecturer in fashion history at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Let’s take a listen to what she has to say.   Empresses of Seventh Avenue: World War II, New York City, and the Birth of American Fashion by Nancy MacDonell

Today I am talking to author Heath Hardage Lee about one of America’s First Ladies, and perhaps one of our most private ones—Pat Nixon, wife of President Richard Nixon. The timing is interesting: earlier this month marked 50 years since President Nixon’s resignation from the presidency following Watergate, and earlier this month Heath released her really, really fantastic new book The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon: The Life and Times of Washington’s Most Private First Lady, which I absolutely tore through. There is so much we have gotten wrong about Mrs. Nixon over the years. First of all, she was a private woman, which led her to come across as, as the book’s title suggests, mysterious. Misunderstood, even. Heath and I speak about this in today’s episode, but her public persona was “Plastic Pat,” while the real Mrs. Nixon was anything but. Heath and I talk today about her love story with Richard Nixon; how Mrs. Nixon was First Lady and running the East Wing of the White House at a very interesting time, constantly toeing the line between the traditional wife and modern woman; what doors she opened for women; an example of Pat at her best and at her wobbliest; and so much more. Pat Nixon died in 1993, and, perhaps indicative of his love for her and how much he needed her, President Nixon died just 10 months later. To teach us more about Mrs. Nixon is Heath Hardage Lee, an award-winning historian, biographer, and curator. Heath’s book The League of Wives is currently being developed into a television series, and Heath and her work have been featured on The Today Show, C-SPAN, and on the Smithsonian Channel’s America’s Hidden Stories. She also writes about history and politics for outlets like Time, The Atlantic, The Hill, and White House History Quarterly. Take a listen to our conversation.   The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon: The Life and Times of Washington’s Most Private First Lady by Heath Hardage Lee

Today on the show we’re returning to the Alex Murdaugh saga, as I call it—this is actually not the first time on the show we’ve spoken about it and not even the first time in season 13 we’ve spoken about it. It is compelling to me for its savagery—I can’t understand it, a man who could do this evil to his family and to so many others, as well. Today on the show we have Valerie Bauerlein, here to talk about her brilliant new book The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty, which comes out today, August 20. Alex was the Prince of Hampton County, South Carolina, as Valerie puts it, and he came from a long line of Murdaughs who believed “To live above the law, you must become the law.” So they did that. They all became lawyers—or solicitors, as they’re known in Hampton County—and ran the town and the county. Not only do we learn more about Alex and his immediate family of Maggie, Buster, and Paul Murdaugh in this book, but also the deeper Murdaugh family history, filled with corruption and crime and callousness, quite frankly. Valerie is such a talented writer—she writes that, for Alex, “duplicity was his birthright,” and in this book we learn information I’d never heard or read before about his murder case for the deaths of Maggie and Paul and other crimes he committed, as well. As Valerie writes, “Three generations of Murdaughs had devoted a century to building a legal dynasty. Now, in a little more than ten years, Alex had burned the whole thing down.” This book details how he did just that. Valerie Bauerlein is on the show today, and she is fantastic. She is a national reporter for The Wall Street Journal who writes about small-town America and Southern politics, economics, and culture. She has covered the South her entire career, including 19 years at The Wall Street Journal and four years at The State in Columbia, South Carolina. I’m excited for you to meet her and learn more about this saga from her.   The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty by Valerie Bauerlein

I’m really excited to bring you this conversation today about a book that came out in 2017 called Beauty Sick: How the Cultural Obsession with Appearance Hurts Girls and Women by Dr. Renee Engeln. In the book, Dr. Engeln introduces us to beauty sick culture and what it feels like and looks like for women and girls. She writes in the book “How might women’s lives be different if they book the energy and concern aimed at their own appearance and aimed it out at the world instead?” If women didn’t have to worry about this, think of all we could get done. The desire to be thin and pretty, to be the beauty ideal, seems to affect girls younger and younger, and in Beauty Sick Dr. Engeln introduces us to what she calls the “tyranny of the mirror,” and writes that looks shouldn’t matter—but they do. Beauty is used as a source of power for women, and girls learn that the most important asset they possess is their physical beauty. We don’t teach boys and men this same lesson. Beauty, Dr. Engeln writes, is a weak and temporary power, and beauty sickness is a barrier to gender equality, where we see women as objects instead of human beings. Today we talk about how social media has played into this, how beauty sickness revolves around shame, how it attacks women’s mental and emotional well-being and their financial well-being, as well, and how we should, in her words, “turn away from the mirror to face the world.” Dr. Engeln writes that she’s looking for “a culture that sees women not as objects to be looked at, but as human beings who are ready and able to change the world in remarkable ways,” and so am I. Dr. Engeln’s TEDx talk on beauty sickness received more than 700,000 views and reveals the shocking consequences of our obsession with girls’ appearance, including depression, eating disorders, disruptions in cognitive processing, and lost money and time. This book combines scientific studies and the voices of real women of all ages, and I’m really excited to introduce you to Dr. Engeln, who has been a professor for 15 years at Northwestern, where she teaches about psychopathology, the psychology of women and gender, social psychology, and the psychology of human beauty. In addition to publishing numerous empirical journal articles and presenting at academic conferences on body image, media, and the objectification of women, Dr. Engeln presents talks on these topics to groups around the country and is regularly interviewed by media outlets, including The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Today.com, The Huffington Post, and more. At Northwestern, her lab, The Body and Media Lab, conducts research exploring issues surrounding women’s body images, with a particular emphasis on cultural practices that create or enforce the frequently contentious relationship women have with their bodies. Take a listen to this compelling conversation.   Beauty Sick: How the Cultural Obsession with Appearance Hurts Girls and Women by Dr. Renee Engeln

We’ve actually already talked about today’s book and author before on the show—back in January, when the book came out, we mentioned it on the show as it was my first #ReadwithMC book club pick. And now, how lucky are we today to have Kate Kennedy on I’d Rather Be Reading discussing her book One in a Millennial: On Friendships, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting In, which came out January 23. This book put into words everything I wish I could have said about being a millennial and perfectly nails down the millennial experience into 336 pages. Some of it is nostalgic and fun—stick around for our lightning round at the end of the episode—but some of it, quite frankly, isn’t pretty. In this book and in this conversation Kate introduces us to the millennial paradox, what a lost millennial is, and so much more. In this book and in her work, Kate Kennedy has become the voice of a generation. She is a podcast host of the wildly popular show “Be There In Five,” a New York Times bestselling author—in addition to One in a Millennial, she also wrote a book about her love/hate relationship with social media called Twinkle, Twinkle, Social Media Star, and is a pop culture commentator. She also invented the “remindoormat” in 2014, which she created as a hobby after she decided to paint “turn off your curling iron” on her doormat in an attempt to not burn down her apartment. She then took it to a wider scale to much success, and called it Be There in Five (which later became the name of her podcast), which launched a line of reminder, affirmation, and custom doormats for people on the go. The doormats took off, and Kate left her corporate marketing job to run the business full-time. Kate is still writing her story—as are all millennials—and she’s here to talk about her book with us today. I want to make a special dedication to my dear friend Mary, who loves Kate as much as I do and is a fellow millennial and just about the best friend, cheerleader, and hype woman a girl can have. I love you Mary, and I hope all of you love this episode.   One in a Millennial: On Friendships, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting In by Kate Kennedy

Twenty-five years ago, on September 22, 1999, one of the most beloved television shows of all time premiered on NBC: The West Wing, starring Martin Sheen, Rob Lowe, Allison Janney, Bradley Whitford, John Spencer, and a whole host of other talented actors, including our two guests today—but more on them in a moment. The political drama was created and largely written by Aaron Sorkin, one of my personal favorite writers, and aired from that day in 1999 until May 14, 2006, totaling seven seasons. Across its 154 episodes, we become immersed, as the title suggests, in the West Wing of the White House, where the Oval Office and the offices of those that work closely with the president are located, during the fictional Democratic administration of President Josiah Bartlet, played by Martin Sheen. The West Wing is regularly and often ranked among the best television shows of all time, and during its run won three Golden Globe Awards and a whopping 26 Primetime Emmy Awards, including the award for Outstanding Drama Series, which it won four consecutive times from 2000 to 2003. Beloved cast member John Spencer, who played chief of staff Leo McGarry, died unexpectedly of a heart attack on December 16, 2005, about a year after his character experienced a nearly fatal heart attack on the show. This, naturally, rocked the cast, and the show ended five months after his death. Today on the show we have two cast members, Melissa Fitzgerald and Mary McCormack, here to discuss their new book What’s Next?: A Backstage Pass to the West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service, which is out August 13. This book is so great, and it’s long—825 pages’ worth of interviews and oral history about a show that changed culture. Today, Melissa, Mary, and I talk about what made The West Wing such a cultural touchstone, the show’s enduring commitment to public service, the group chat that continues still today, what the book’s title means, the show’s legacy, and so much more. Melissa played Carol Fitzpatrick on the show, an assistant to press secretary C.J. Cregg (played by Allison Janney). In addition to her career as an actress—she has also appeared on Grey’s Anatomy and in The Truman Show—she is also the founder of Voices in Harmony, a nonprofit community theater in L.A., and back in November 2013 joined Justice for Vets as its Senior Director. Mary played Deputy National Security Adviser Kate Harper on The West Wing and has appeared in films like Private Parts, Deep Impact, True Crime, and Mystery, Alaska, and on shows like Murder One, ER, In Plain Sight, Scandal, The Newsroom, Will & Grace, and The Kids Are Alright. I can’t wait for you to hear this conversation!   What’s Next?: A Backstage Pass to the West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service by Melissa Fitzgerald and Mary McCormack

On May 4, 1970, during a rally on the campus of Kent State University opposing expanding the Vietnam War into Cambodia by United States military forces, as well as protesting the draft and the Ohio National Guard’s presence on campus, all it took was 13 seconds for 28 National Guard soldiers to fire 67 rounds, killing four and wounding nine unarmed college students. One of the nine injured suffered permanent paralysis, and students Allison Krause, 19, Jeffrey Miller, 20, Sandra Scheuer, 20, and William Schroeder, 19, were killed. Students had been protesting on campus since May 1, and after the Kent State shootings, immediate and massive outrage sparked at college campuses across the country. More than four million students participated in organized walkouts at hundreds of colleges, universities, and even high schools, and the shootings made the United States’ role in the Vietnam War even more contentious. It was a loss of innocence, and a Pulitzer Prize winning photo of a young woman wailing over the body of Jeffrey Miller summed up the feelings of a generation. In the photo, she seems to silently scream “Why? Why? Why?” After the incident, eight of the shooters were charged and ultimately acquitted in a bench trial. The Kent State massacre was a cultural moment that shook the nation, and, as Brian VanDeMark writes in his brilliant new book Kent State: An American Tragedy, out tomorrow, “If you want to know when the Sixties died, they died on May 4, 1970, right there and then, at 12:24 in the afternoon.” Today on the show, Brian and I discuss so much, including what Kent State represented on the whole for America, its legacy, and what we learned from it. Brian teaches history at the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis and is the author of several books on American history, including co-authoring Robert McNamara’s bestselling Vietnam memoir, In Retrospect, which became the basis of the Academy Award-winning documentary The Fog of War. Take a listen to this fascinating conversation with him about a moment that changed history forever.   Kent State: An American Tragedy by Brian VanDeMark

If you’ve been a longtime listener to the show, you know I love to have conversations about faith, and I’ve got two back-to-back ones for you listeners this weekend. Today on the show we have the absolutely lovely Demi-Leigh Tebow, who you might know as Miss Universe 2017. Back then, she was Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters, before she married famous quarterback Tim Tebow in 2020. Demi-Leigh is the founder of The Tebow Group, an entrepreneur, a keynote speaker, and an influencer who was crowned both Miss South Africa and Miss Universe. Demi-Leigh is also a voice for the voiceless for victims of human trafficking, and is now an author, with the release on Tuesday of A Crown That Lasts: You Are Not Your Label. The book’s title pays tribute to her Miss Universe crown, and Demi-Leigh writes candidly and vulnerably in the book about how she lost her identity—lost herself, really—in being Miss Universe. Now, as I tell Demi-Leigh in this episode, not every one of us is going to be Miss Universe, but so many of us lose ourselves in our own titles—wife. Mother. Daughter. Insert your career here. But what matters is not only who are, but whose we are. This book showcases Demi-Leigh’s journey to, as she put it, untangle her identity from her label, and to find confidence in a crown that lasts, not one that is temporary. The book tells her story and also helps us continue to craft our own story; it’s filled with such rich advice and such heartfelt reflection. As obviously beautiful as Demi-Leigh is on the outside, it compares not to the inner beauty she possesses in spades. Take a listen to our powerful conversation.   A Crown That Lasts: You Are Not Your Label by Demi-Leigh Tebow

One of my favorite faith leaders, Max Lucado, is on the show today chatting with me about his latest book, What Happens Next: A Traveler’s Guide Through the End of This Age, which comes out on August 13. Today’s show is a conversation about faith, and about the end times—but it’s anything but doom and gloom and frightening and scary. It’s quite the opposite, actually—I’ve never felt more peace about what will happen to me when it’s my time, and I’ve also never felt more peace about those I love that have already gone home. Max writes in What Happens Next that “God tells us what to expect not to scare us, but to prepare us” and reassures us that it’s all happening right on schedule, writing “Be assured, God is at work. His plans are proceeding at the right pace, in the right places, and according to His will.” In this conversation and in this book, I learned more about paradise, and left feeling so filled with hope of what is to come. I have listened to Max’s voice for so long, as I am a listener of his “Encouraging Word” podcast, and it was such a thrill to have Max speaking directly to me. Max is a bestselling author and minister at Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, and Max has written almost 100 books—100 books!—and regularly appears on the New York Times bestseller list. He was named “America’s Pastor” by Christianity Today and “The Best Preacher in America” by Reader’s Digest; he has appeared on programs like NBC Nightly News and Larry King Live, in the pages of USA Today, and has even been a featured speaker at the National Prayer Breakfast. His voice is so, so comforting to me, and, as the Olympics wrap up this weekend, don’t miss what Max says about our loved ones that have gone before us cheering us on as we run our race, like spectators in an Olympic stadium. I hope you will get as much richness and goodness out of this conversation as I most certainly did.   What Happens Next: A Traveler’s Guide Through the End of This Age by Max Lucado