Podcasts
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Anne-Marie Slaughter | The Chessboard and the Web: Strategies of Connection in a Networked World
• Recorded Mar 30, 2017Watch the video here . In conversation with Dick Polman, "Writer in Residence" at the University of Pennsylvania, and national political columnist at WHYY's Newsworks.org The President and CEO of the non-partisan public policy think tank New… more
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Erica Armstrong Dunbar | Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge
• Recorded Feb 23, 2017Watch the video here . Named the first director of the Program in African American History at the Library Company of Philadelphia, Erica Armstrong Dunbar is a professor of Black American Studies and History at the University of Delaware. She has… more
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Watch the video here . Having garnered wide readership and critical praise for his surreal, darkly funny fiction, “it’s no exaggeration to say that short story master George Saunders helped change the trajectory of American fiction” ( The Wall… more
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Watch the video here . In conversation with Dr. James Peterson, Director of Africana Studies and Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University. MSNBC Contributor Possessed of “intellectual heft, critical thinking depth and finesse with… more
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Watch the video here . Exploring the intersection of science, technology, and experience, Steven Johnson is the author of the bestselling Where Good Ideas Come From, Everything Bad Is Good for You , and How We Got to Now , which he adapted into a… more
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The Meaning of Michelle: 16 Writers on the Iconic First Lady and How Her Journey Inspires Our Own with Veronica Chambers with Benilde Little, Alicia Moran and Damon Young
• Recorded Jan 17, 2017 Explicit ContentIconic First Lady Michelle Obama has redefined American ideas about beauty, strength, and poise under often-harsh public scrutiny. In the “powerful” ( Vogue ) essay collection The Meaning of Michelle , some of the country’s most thoughtful minds… more
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In conversation with Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! Perhaps America’s greatest standard-bearer for progressivism, Bernie Sanders inspired hope and a fervent following with his 2016 Democratic Presidential campaign. Currently serving his… more
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“One of America’s premier writers of fiction ( New York Times ), John Edgar Wideman was the first two-time winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award, for his novels Sent for You Yesterday and Philadelphia Fire . His more than 20 other works of fiction… more
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The American Presidency | Foreign Press Panel | The Whole World Was Watching: Foreign Perspectives on the 2016 Election
• Recorded Nov 16, 2016A panel discussion on how the US election is portrayed to the world will reveal the views of foreign journalists and their post-election analyses. Chris Satullo, noted media figure, will moderate the conversation between Paul Koring of Toronto's … more
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Candice Millard | Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchillwith Blanche Wiesen Cook | Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3: The War Years and After, 1939–1962
• Recorded Nov 7, 2016Candice Millard’s bestselling The River of Doubt , the story of Theodore Roosevelt’s near-fatal exploration of the Amazon, was named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times , the Washington Post , and the San Francisco Chronicle ,… more
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Margot Lee Shetterly | Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race
• Recorded Nov 2, 2016In her New York Times bestselling debut book, Margot Shetterly tells the story of four African American women whose mathematical calculations at NASA fueled America’s greatest achievements in space at the leading edge of the civil rights… more
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Robert Kanigel was a National Book Critics Circle finalist for The Man Who Knew Infinity , “an exquisite portrait” (Los Angeles Times ) of the rich collaboration between an unschooled but brilliant Indian clerk and a pre-eminent English… more
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Gino Segré and Bettina Hoerlin | The Pope of Physics: Enrico Fermi and the Birth of the Atomic Age
• Recorded Oct 26, 2016The most revered Italian scientist since Galileo, Nobel Prize winner Enrico Fermi was one of the most prolific and consequential figures of the 20th century. Though a modest and unassuming man, he became one of the fathers of the nuclear age… more
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It’s 1947, and twelve-year-old Clyde Thomason is proud to have an older brother who guards the Freedom Train—a train that is traveling to all forty-eight states carrying the country’s most important documents, including the Declaration of… more
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“Commanding a lush, poetic, mellifluous prose instrument” ( The Nation ) to turn a fantastical, satirical mirror on race and culture, Colson Whitehead is the author of the acclaimed novels The Intuitionist , John Henry Days , and Zone One ,… more
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Esteemed Cambridge literary critic and historian Ruth Scurr is the author of 2006’s Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution , named by The Times of London as one of the 100 Best Books of the Decade. Her reviews regularly appear in a… more
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Roger Penrose | Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe
• Recorded Sep 20, 2016One of the world’s esteemed theoretical physicists for his contributions to the theory of general relativity and cosmology, Roger Penrose has won the Albert Einstein Medal, shared the Wolf Prize for physics with Stephen Hawking, and is the… more
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Jeffrey Toobin | American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst
• Recorded Aug 9, 2016“A reliable and astute guide” ( The Miami Herald ) through America’s most compelling court cases, Jeffrey Toobin is CNN’s senior legal analyst and a longtime New Yorker staff writer. His bestselling books include The Run of His Life: The People… more
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Natashia Deón's debut novel Grace depicts the violent, terrifying world of the antebellum South, where the emancipation of slaves can bring anything but freedom. She is "not merely another new author to watch. She has delivered something whole,… more
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The American Presidency | Richard Levinson | The Hidden History of Presidential Health
• Recorded Jul 20, 2016Parkway Central librarian and presidential history buff Dick Levinson sheds light on desperately ill and dying presidents who deceived the public to remain in power. Join us to hear tales so wild they could only be true. Introduced by Janet… more
Top 10 Podcast Episodes August 2019
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Richard Russo
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George Packer
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Terry McAuliffe
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Julie Salamon
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Nicole Dennis-Benn
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Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook
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Mary Pope Osborne
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Tyler Kepner
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Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake
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Trevor Noah
Bottom 10 YouTube Videos August 2019
- Robert Gates
- David Axelrod
- Zinzi Clemmons
- Peter Carey
- Amy Goodman
- Sayed Kashua
- Amy Tan
- Darryl Pinckney
- Max Boot
- David Hare
