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Big Books & Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller

Kerri Miller Podcast Tile
Big Books & Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller
MPR News

Where readers meet writers, Fridays at 11 a.m. Listen live or stream later on your favorite podcast app.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or RSS

Books Coverage: The Thread | About: Kerri Miller

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Anatoly Liberman on the origins of English idioms

Anatoly Liberman on the origins of English idioms

Some idioms need no explanation. Sayings like “put it on the back burner” or “don’t rain on my parade” follow common sense. But what about phrases like “drink like a fish” or “by hook or by crook”?
by Kerri Miller and Kelly Gordon

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From the archives: Anatoly Liberman on familial language

From the archives: Anatoly Liberman on familial language

Every family has words that are unique to their closed circle. We discuss their roots in a new book, “Take My Word for It: A Dictionary of English Idioms.”
by Kerri Miller and Kelly Gordon

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Clint Smith on how to reckon with slavery as America's original sin

Clint Smith on how to reckon with slavery as America's original sin

Clint Smith’s acclaimed book, “How the Word Is Passed,” is now out in paperback. In it, he examines how slavery has been central in shaping our country’s collective history, and ourselves.
by Kelly Gordon

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From the archives: Naima Coster on her novel 'What's Mine and Yours'

From the archives: Naima Coster on her novel 'What's Mine and Yours'

This Friday, Big Books and Bold Ideas will feature Clint Smith, celebrated author of “How the Word is Passed,” which powerfully examines the legacy of slavery in America. Kerri Miller’s conversation with Naima Coster in 2021 trod a similar path, only Coster used a fiction lens to look at effects of segregation in her novel, “What’s Mine and Yours.”
by Kerri Miller and Kelly Gordon

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Author Katie Hickman on the women of the American West

Author Katie Hickman on the women of the American West

Old West mythology is full of dust-covered cowboys, lonesome gun slingers and gold-seeking prospectors. But if you only know the men’s side of the story, you only know part of it.
by Kerri Miller and Kelly Gordon

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From the archives: Mary Doria Russell on what really happened at the O.K. Corral

From the archives: Mary Doria Russell on what really happened at the O.K. Corral

This week, Big Books and Bold Ideas heads West. Friday, host Kerri Miller talks with Katie Hickman about her new book, which tells the tales of the women of the American West. To get you in the mood, this week’s archive is a conversation between Miller and Mary Doria Russell about her book, “Epitaph,” which investigates what really happened at the O.K. Corral.
by Kerri Miller and Kelly Gordon

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Joanna Quinn on her best-selling novel 'The Whalebone Theatre'

Joanna Quinn on her best-selling novel 'The Whalebone Theatre'

This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, host Kerri Miller talks with the British author whose debut novel took England by storm. “The Whalebone Theatre” tells the story of three children who grow up on a posh seaside estate in the 1920s, and how their imaginations and familial bonds both anchor and inspire their lives.
by Kerri Miller and Kelly Gordon

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Online disinformation expert Joan Donovan on the power of memes

Online disinformation expert Joan Donovan on the power of memes

Memes have been used since America’s founding to motivate political action. But Harvard researcher and online disinformation expert Joan Donovan says they’ve never been so powerful. Her new book says they even incited the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
by Kerri Miller and Kelly Gordon

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Formative characters: Three Minnesota authors share their favorites

Formative characters: Three Minnesota authors share their favorites

For the last Big Books and Bold Ideas of 2022, MPR News host Kerri Miller asked three Minnesota writers — Peter Geye, Shannon Gibney and Benjamin Percy — to talk about their favorite literary characters. Their choices were unexpected and delightful.
by Kerri Miller and Kelly Gordon

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Jane Smiley on her new novel, 'A Dangerous Business'

Jane Smiley on her new novel, 'A Dangerous Business'

Two young prostitutes become uneasy when several women in their dangerous line of work disappear. Jane Smiley’s new novel follows them as they try to solve the murders in 1850s California.
by Kerri Miller and Kelly Gordon

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