The B&n Podcast

When you read a Brad Meltzer novel, the author tells us, he's not looking to give readers a passive experience.  The author of twelve bestselling thrillers is playing a game with you, and he’s going to give you just enough clues to make sure you know he’s playing fair.  But make no mistake: he’s playing to win.  Brad Meltzer joins us on this episode to talk about Houdini, history, misdirection, the hero who inspired his latest, The Escape Artist — and, yes, his award-winning work in the world of comics, too.

In Kristin Hannah's 2015  bestseller The Nightingale — set in WWII France — her narrator tells us "In love we find out who we want to be: in war we find out who we are."  With her latest novel The Great Alone, Hannah's characters come to a similar awareness — not via the crucible of combat, but the challenge of making a life "off the grid" in a homesteading community in the Alaskan wilderness.  In this episode of the podcast, the author talks about her long family connection to Alaska, and why its grandeur  made the right backdrop for a story about survival of perils close to home.

In her riveting memoir Educated, Tara Westover describes her childhood on an Idaho mountainside, in a family in which “home-schooling” meant no lessons, but determined isolation from the modern world Tara’s parents turned away from.  The author — who left that insular life behind to earn her PhD in History at Cambridge — joins Miwa Messer on this episode of the podcast to talk about her improbably journey, and what she’s learned along the way.

Harvard psychology professor and award-winning author Steven Pinker has been named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine, and his specialty is books that challenge our preconceptions about human nature and human history.  On this episode, the author of The Language Instinct and The Blank Slate joins Jim Mustich to talk about his new book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, and how the advances of the 18th century are still powerfully at work in the 21st.

The novelist Robert Harris has made a specialty out of flash points in history: the explosion of Mt. Vesuvius in ancient Rome, the cracking of the WWII Enigma code, or intrigue surrounding the Dreyfus Affair in 19th-century France.  In his latest thriller, Munich, Harris turns to the infamous 1938 meeting between Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler.  Spinning a tale of brooding suspense around the true story of those four days in September, Harris offers a dramatic and thought-provoking new perspective on Chamberlain’s “appeasement” of the Nazi regime.  In this episode, Robert Harris talks about the strange alchemy required to turn a historical moment into page-turning thrills.

The seemingly endless war in Afghanistan is both a recurrent headline and a perpetual mystery: the longer America's shadowy conflict with the Taliban drags out, the less we understand about who and why we're fighting.  Fortunately for us, journalist and author Steve Coll's deep reporting – which earned him a Pulitzer Prize for his 2004 book Ghost Wars – brings readers vital understanding about this monumental but mysterious struggle.  He joined us in the studio to talk about his bestselling new book Directorate S: The CIA and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016, and what its revelations tell us about a war we usually glimpse only in fragments.

Laura Lippman's new novel Sunburn begins with the arrival in a Delaware town – the kind of town most people pass through on their way to the beach without even noticing – of a woman who's definitely going to be noticed. But for all it's film noir atmosphere and slow-kindling unease, in this story of ill-starred lovers, readers of the author's addictive and unique works of mystery and suspense will find all the hallmarks of a Lippman classic: a precise sense of place, a love for certain aspects of the past, and a wry, captivating voice. The author joins us on the podcast to talk about Sunburn, and how the work of James M. Cain inspired this intoxicating tale.

In 2005 writer, director and producer Reginald Hudlin added comic book author to his resume, picking up the mantle of the first black superhero, the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby creation Black Panther.  Hudlin's run writing one of Marvel’s most iconic characters deepened and expanded the world of T’Challa’s family and kingship, and the history of his nation, Wakanda.  This week, as moviegoers everywhere flock to see Black Panther make the leap from page to screen, B&N’s comics expert James Killen talks with Reginald Hudlin about his part in the history of the hottest character in comics.

With her bracing, witty, and incisive reflections on her experience as a young black woman in 21st-century America, Morgan Jerkins has arrived as one of the essential voices of our moment, discussing racism, sexism, and the paradoxes that she encounters in her career as a writer and editor.  She joins Miwa Messer in the studio for an animated chat about her bestselling new collection This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America.

It's been more than 200 years since the Grimm Brothers first defined the "fairy tale" as we now know it, but its atmosphere of enchantment, peril, hunger, desire and transformation still fascinates.  In her bestselling debut novel The Hazel Wood, YA author Melissa Albert deploys humor, thriller-level excitement, and a head full of bewitching tales to fashion a coming-of-age story for the haunted teenager inside us all.  She joins Bill Tipper on this episode to talk about her love of the uncanny and the strange adventure of 17-year-old Alice Proserpine. More details at BN.com.

An American Marriage is Tayari Jones's extraordinary fourth novel, a page-turning love story with a powerful political undercurrent. It's as much a novel about family and race, expectation and desire, loneliness and loyalty as it is a story about how readily the American Dream can be derailed on the basis of skin color.  The writer of one of the season's most talked-about new books joins Miwa Messer in the studio to talk about writing a story that's page-turning and thought-provoking in equal measure.

As readers we love to get lost in stories -- but as fans, we've become addicted to "world building" -- the excitement of exploring the terrain of a magical continent or alternate future.  In this episode of the podcast, James Dashner, author of the Maze Runner series, joins us as The Death Cure, the third of his books to be adapted for the screen, arrives in theaters.  He talks with us about his lifelong love of movies, and using fiction to wrestle with the questions that perennially trouble us.

Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House is the book of the week, the month, and most likely the year.  Its intimate look at the personalities of the administration makes for riveting reading -- and has fueled its own conflagration of debate and speculation across the political spectrum.  In this episode of the podcast, Michael Wolff sits down to talk with Jim Mustich about how he got his story -- and what he believes it tells us.

Perhaps no social movement of the 21st century has had the impact of Black Lives Matter.  Born as an online outcry in 2013, it became a fully-fledged vehicle for nationwide protests that have called for for criminal justice reform and a reckoning with racism's continuing force.  In this episode, Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele join Miwa Messer in the studio to talk about their stirring new book When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir.

Ask almost anyone you know about how their mood changes during the course of the day, and you’ll get evidence that the way our minds and emotions respond to the clock is no small matter.  But to according bestselling author Daniel Pink, the power of "chronobiology" is like an iceberg — we see only the small piece of its monumental role in shaping our days, our careers and our lives.  He joins us in the studio to talk about his new book When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing.

The bestselling memoirist Kelly Corrigan joins us in this episode to talk about Tell Me More, her thought-provoking new book, built around twelve brief phrases – like "I Was Wrong" or "It's Like This" – that provide the essential lexicon for meaningful communication in our lives.  It's a meditation on life and meaning told through stories – funny, revealing, and in places raw with emotion – unfolded in a voice like that of a friend, sitting across from you at a table, telling you about her day in a way that invites you to talk about your own.

James Lee Burke’s literary triumph was long in coming — but once he introduced New Orleans detective Dave Robicheaux in the 1987 novel The Neon Rain, he quickly became both one of the most acclaimed American crime writers, and an irreplaceable chronicler of the Crescent City’s unique culture and history. His latest novel, titled simply Robicheaux, returns his beloved but battled-scarred hero to a murky world where business, politics and crime intersect. In this episode, James Lee Burke talks with Bill Tipper about his love of New Orleans and the long strange road to becoming an American classic.

Calendars change every twelve months, but resolutions  — and how to keep them —  are a perpetually urgent question.  And as we're just about to step into a brand new year, it’s the perfect time to share a conversation we recorded earlier this year with The Happiness Project author Gretchen Rubin, about the hidden factors that influence how we keep (or break) promises to ourselves.  In this episode she talks with Bill Tipper about her new book The Four Tendencies, and how understanding your personality can be key to making resolutions that stick.

In this episode, NBC news correspondent Katy Tur joins Jim Mustich to talk about her experience on the Trump campaign trail in 2016 — including her frequent role as a target of the future President’s taunts —   as chronicled in her recent book Unbelievable: My Front Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History.   She tells us about how as a foreign correspondent she “fell face first” into an unlikely job covering what would become one of the most astonishing, exhausting, and consequential events in American political history.

Authors are, without exception, readers, and behind every book there is... another book, and another. In this episode of the podcast, we're joined by two writers for conversations about the vital books and ideas that influence inform their own work. First, Cory Doctorow talks with B&N's Josh Perilo about his recent novel of an imagined near future, Walkaway, and the difference between a dystopia and a disaster. Then we hear from Will Schwalbe, talking with Miwa Messer, about the lifetime of reading behind his book Books for Living: Some Thoughts on Reading, Reflecting, and Embracing Life.