Big Books & Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller
Where Readers Meet Writers. Conversations on books and ideas, Fridays at 11 a.m.
Episodes
When Patricia Lockwood contracted COVID-19 in the spring of 2020, she lost touch with reality. For months, she floated through her days, dealing with constant migraines and visions of gorillas lurking in the trees.
Ironically, she was mostly aware that she was cut loose from humanity. She kept notebooks filled with her wonderings and ramblings.
And when she got better, she gathered her shattered experiences into ...
The fictional Bonhomie, Ohio, where Patrick Ryan’s new novel, “Buckeye,” is set, will be familiar to anyone who grew up in a small town.
Children ride their bikes freely. Mom-and-pop stores thrive. And sooner or later, everyone crosses paths with each other.
That sense of closeness is charming — until you have a secret to hide. Such is the case with the two couples at the center of Ryan’s sweeping saga. Cal Jenkin...
The final ballots were still being counted in the presidential election last fall when David French recorded a podcast with fellow opinion writer Patrick Healy. The theme? “It’s time to admit America has changed.”
Kerri Miller welcomed the chance to ask French to expound on what he meant then and what he’s learned since when he came to Red Wing last Thursday night as part of the Philip S. Duff Jr. Civic Lecture Series...
When the Wilder Foundation set out on a cool night in October of 2023 to count how many people in Minnesota were without shelter, the number came in at more than 10,000.
Even more sobering, if national statistics apply: Many of those unhoused people have jobs. Some even work 40 or more hours a week. But they still can’t afford to rent an apartment, buy a house or even pay the fees for a long-term motel room.
In h...
The Fitzgerald Theater was filled to the rafters Wednesday night for the season launch of Talking Volumes. Activist and novelist Stacey Abrams joined Kerri Miller on stage and began the evening with a moment of silence to mark the political assassination of Charlie Kirk, who had been shot and killed only hours earlier.
Abrams, herself a national political figure, said dark moments such as these need to be met with det...
When the next pandemic hits, will we be ready?
That’s the question at the center of University of Minnesota epidemiologist Mike Osterholm’s new book, “The Big One.” And his answer is sobering.
Osterholm joined Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas for a blunt and personal assessment of what went right and what went wrong during the COVID-19 pandemic. He’s insistent that if we don’t learn the lessons ...
Stephen Grant was laid off from his job at a boutique marketing agency in March 2020, right when COVID took the world hostage.
Newly diagnosed with cancer, he needed health insurance, fast — plus, he was the primary financial supporter of his wife and daughters. Which is how he found himself becoming a mail carrier, back in his hometown in rural Appalachia.
In the seas off Madagascar, Nova Scotia and even Connecticut, the siren call of buried riches has lured treasure hunters and adventurers over many a century.
Many seek the wealth Capt. Kidd accrued during years of pirating and then had to hide when his arrest was imminent.
In popular lore, Capt. Kidd’s name is synonymous with the fearsome, ruthless privateers of the pirate age. But the truth about William Kidd is...
Maralyn and Maurice Bailey were always a little unconventional. Maurice was a loner, precise. Maralyn was extroverted and energetic. But when they married in the 1960s, they both felt they had found their person.
Together, they dreamed of running away from their ordinary lives — of selling everything and sailing the world. And in 1972, they made it happen. They set course for a fresh start in New Zealand and left Engl...
If you’re a romance reader, you won’t be surprised to hear that romance is the biggest genre in publishing. Nearly 40 million romance novels were sold in 2024. Books range from flirty (fade to black) to downright steamy (open door), with myriads of subgenres and tropes to choose from. (Rom-com! Paranormal romance! Historical fiction!)
So this week, Big Books and Bold Ideas host Kerri Miller sits down with three Minneso...
Is loneliness something that happens when you’re not looking?
And if so, could meaningful connection be found in a simple but purposeful café, where the lonesome are paired with the perfect partners for deep conversation?
That’s the fantasy at the heart of Kathy Wang’s new novel, “The Satisfaction Café.” It follows Joan who starts the book as a Chinese graduate students in California in the 1970s. But her life q...
The setting for Dwyer Murphy’s new book, “The House on Buzzards Bay,” is classic New England noir: A large and ancient house along the coast is inherited by protagonist Jim, who decides to use it to host his college friends for a summer reunion, hoping to reignite their bonds.
But nothing is quite as it seems.
Both the house and the group are out of sorts. One friend mysteriously disappears. The town deals with a ...
Honoring the dead by washing the body is a ritual nearly as old as humankind. Jews observe taharah, rooting the practice in Ecclesiastes: “As we come forth, so we shall return.” In Islamic tradition, washing the deceased as an act of devotion and love.
Joy Harjo, former poet laureate and citizen of the Muscogee Nation, expected to honor her mother’s death and life by washing her body, but as she reveals in the introduc...
When Sarah Kendzior packs up her family for a road trip across America, she makes sure her kids keep their eyes wide open. She wants them to see this country’s wonders and its flaws.
Her new memoir, “The Last American Road Trip,” recounts the dozens of drives they’ve taken since 2016. They leave their home in Missouri and crisscross the country, even as earth-shaking events remake it.
Along the way, she disentang...
To mark Independence Day, Big Books and Bold Ideas is airing an encore presentation of Kerri Miller’s conversation with historian Patrick O’Donnell about his 2024 book, “The Unvanquished.”
The Civil War is remembered for its sweeping battles: Gettysburg, Atlanta, Antietam. Less known are the small troops of men, enlisted by both sides, to fight far from the battlefields.
These ruthless soldiers relied on stealth to...
Joy Womack made history when she became the first American to join Russia’s famed Bolshoi Ballet Theater. But getting there was a journey that took a grueling physical and emotional toll.
Her new memoir, “Behind the Velvet Red Curtain,” written with MPR News journalist Elizabeth Shockman, is an intimate retelling of what happened when Womack moved to Moscow at age 15 to train under Russian greats and immersed herself ...
Honor Jones’ debut novel, “Sleep,” begins in the damp undergrowth of a blackberry bush, where main character Margaret is playing a game. It’s a quintessential childhood moment that ends with trauma that marks her forever.
But like many kids, Margaret doesn’t quite know how to hold this painful thing, and the adults in her life are no help. So she stuffs it and believes it will stay buried, where it can harm no one.
If you’ve spent time this week doomscrolling on your phone — even though you know it’s not good for you, that it ramps up anxiety and you’d be better off taking a walk or just going to bed — Emily Falk’s new book is for you.
“What We Value” is a peek behind the mental curtain. Why do our brains intend one thing and do another? Why is lasting change, even desired change, so hard? Neuroscientist Falk says it’s because o...
Amanda Nguyen was aiming for the stars when she was accepted as a student at Harvard. She dreamed of becoming an astronaut.
But in her senior year of college, she was raped. That propelled her into a public role as activist to change an infuriating gap in the law when it comes to rape survivors.
“When I found out that my rape kit could be destroyed, untested, in six months — even if the statue of limitations was ...
A neighborhood bar is a peculiar thing. The people who frequent it develop a rapport, a kind of familiarity that makes them feel ownership.
But time rolls on, and no place is untouched by the changes it brings — not the bar nor the people in it.
Texas native Callie Collins knows a thing or two about bars. That’s why she set her newest novel, “Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine,” in an Austin saloon, circa 1970s Te...
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