logo
episode-header-image
Aug 2022
57m 56s

Summer Getaway #2: An American Odyssey (...

Next Big Idea Club
About this episode
The Ohio, Hudson, Mississippi, and Yellowstone — Dick Conant canoed them all. And then he disappeared. In his riveting new book, “Riverman,” journalist Ben McGrath tries to track down the man who may be the greatest American folk hero you’ve never heard of. --- Download the Next Big Idea app today at www.nextbigideaclub.com/app Learn more about your ad cho ... Show More
Up next
Nov 20
Brené Brown on courageous leadership (from ReThinking with Adam Grant)
Brené Brown is a researcher, storyteller, and author who hosts the podcast Dare to Lead and has given some of the most popular TED Talks of all time. In this episode, recorded live at an Authors@Wharton event, Brené and our curator Adam Grant talk about her new book, Strong Grou ... Show More
46m 14s
Nov 18
Walter Isaacson on The Greatest Sentence Ever Written
What is the greatest sentence ever written? According to Walter Isaacson — former editor of Time, ex-CEO of CNN, and the acclaimed biographer of Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, and Jennifer Doudna — it’s this: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are c ... Show More
1h 11m
Nov 13
Best Of: Decoding Elon Musk
When Walter Isaacson, the legendary biographer of Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, and Leonardo da Vinci, started shadowing Elon Musk, he found himself following "a guy who was one of the most popular people on the planet, and ended up with a guy who's the most con ... Show More
1h 6m
Recommended Episodes
Feb 2024
The Silver Rush Kings and the "Big Bonanza"
<p>On this episode of <em>Our American Stories</em>, straight out of a Horatio Alger novel, the Silver Kings (John Mackay, James Fair, William O'Brien, and James Flood) epitomized the rags-to-riches American dream story. Roger McGrath tells the story of the richest mineral discov ... Show More
17m 58s
Feb 2021
Bill Bryson: Notes from a Small Island
This month World Book Club discusses Bill Bryson’s hugely acclaimed travelogue Notes from a Small Island with the author and his readers around the world. After two decades as a resident of the United Kingdom, Bryson took what he thought might be a last affectionate trip around h ... Show More
49m 24s
Dec 2023
407. Discussing Communism in All its Glory | Michael Malice
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down in-person with author and podcaster, Michael Malice. They discuss his latest book, “The White Pill.” From this they explore the philosophy of Ayn Rand, anarchism, the history and rebranded atrocities of Czarist Russia, and why utopian visions cycl ... Show More
2h 10m
Nov 2015
Steve Almond
This week we talk to Steve Almond about the good and bad in all of usSteve Almond spent seven years as a newspaper reporter in Texas and Florida before writing his first book, the story collection My Life in Heavy Metal. His books, Candyfreak, and Rock and Roll Will Save Your Lif ... Show More
56m 37s
Apr 2022
Fiction About Lives in Ukraine
<p>While a steady stream of disturbing news continues to come from Ukraine, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/29/books/review/belorusets-kurkov-lucky-breaks-grey-bees.html">new works of fiction</a> highlight the ways in which lives there have been transformed by conflict. ... Show More
48m 48s
May 2019
J. Edgar Hoover's FBI - Humanizing History with David McCullough | 7
<p>Pulitzer Prize winner. National Book Award winner. Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient. Today David McCullough, one of America’s greatest living historians, joins us to discuss his new book, <em>The Pioneers</em>, about the heroic men and women who shaped the Northwest Ter ... Show More
35m 16s
Feb 2023
Robert Ray: "The Good Governor"
<p>On this episode of <em>Our American Stories</em>, after the United States pulled out of Vietnam, their allies in Indochina were all alone. Faced with the prospect of slavery, torture, and death at the hands of the Communists they fought against, many asked to be resettled in t ... Show More
17m 58s
Apr 2023
Hudson River: America's First Art Movement
<p>English-born artist Thomas Cole emigrated to the United States in 1818. Six years later he began what is now known as the Hudson River School, which became the first art movement of the United States.. Betsy Jacks, director of the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, tells Don ... Show More
27m 50s
Nov 2021
Bryan Stevenson – Finding the Courage for What's Redemptive
How to embrace what’s right and corrective, redemptive and restorative — and an insistence that each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve done — these are gifts Bryan Stevenson offers with his life. He’s brought the language of mercy and redemption into American culture in re ... Show More
50m 46s