The New York Public Library Podcast

One of contemporary art's most towering figures guides us through his astonishing new exhibition at MASS MoCA.

In the 1920s, the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma become oil millionaires after black gold was discovered under their land. Discover the stories of the mysterious that followed and one of the FBI's earliest investigations.

Tracy K. Smith was named 22nd U.S. Poet Laureate last week. In 2016 she came by the Library to discuss her memoir, Ordinary Light.

This week, the second part of Jelani Cobb's lecture on politics, journalism, and history entitled "The Half-Life of Freedom: The Demagogues of American History."

New Yorker staff writer and Columbia Journalism School professor Jelani Cobb delivers a lecture on politics, journalism, and history entitled "The Half-Life of Freedom." This episode is part 1: "The Media and Alternative Facts."

Alec Baldwin spoke with NY Times critic-at-large Wesley Morris about his recent memoir, "Nevertheless," at LIVE from the NYPL.

Katherine Boo, Anand Giridharadas, and Philip Gourevitch are all past winners of the Library's Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism, which celebrates its 30 anniversary this year. They came to the Library to speak on the shifting responsibilities, purposes, and even definitions of journalism.

Is the Trump Administration a dream or a nightmare for the Koch brothers? This week's episode asks and answers many questions about the intricate relationship between money and politics in American life with Jane Mayer, a New Yorker staff writer and winner of NYPL's 2017 Bernstein Award for her book "Dark Money."

Explore both the seeds and the fruits of our present American political condition with New Yorker writer George Packer, National Review editor Reihan Salam, and New York Public Library President Tony Marx.

Bernstein Award finalist Janine di Giovanni talks about her book, "The Morning They Came For Us: Dispatches from Syria," the story of Syria's civil war as told through the people who have lived through it.

Bernstein Award finalist Charlotte McDonald-Gibson talks about her book, 'Cast Away: True Stories of Survival from Europe's Refugee Crisis,' which follows individuals fleeing violence and persecution in Syria, Libya, Nigeria, and Eritrea.

BONUS: We're giving you a taste of the Library's other podcast, The Librarian Is In. Each week hosts Gwen and Frank discuss books, culture, what you should read next , and interview interesting figures from the world of books and libraries. Give it a listen, and subscribe if you like what you hear! Back to regularly scheduled programing on Tuesday.

A hilarious, confounding, perplexing, and thoroughly engrossing conversation between theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss and actor Alan Alda. They came to the LIVE from the NYPL stage to discuss Krauss’s new book, The Greatest Story Ever Told…So Far: Why Are We Here?

An interview with Bernstein finalist and Guardian editor-at-large Gary Younge. His book is called Another Day in the Death of America: a Chronicle of Ten Short Lives. On an average day in the U.S., seven children and teens will die from gun violence. Younge picked one such day in November 2013 and told the stories of the ten young people whose lives were lost in that 24-hour span.

If you’ve ever made it through a full Seder, you know that celebrating Passover can last as long as the Exodus itself. Today, on day two of the annual holiday, the NYPL podcast has a measure of comic relief for you in the form of an all-new Haggadah called For This We Left Egypt? It's written by Dave Barry, Alan Zweibel, and Adam Mansbach.

Sonia Shah's new book 'Pandemic' uses the history of cholera as a template toward understanding the life cycles of disease outbreaks and how our how our next global pandemic might arise.

An extraordinary group of women who are on the front lines of the fight for bettering the lives for young black women and girls across the country gathered at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture this International Women's Day to highlight the roles, needs, and contributions of black women and girls in the context of the Black Lives Matter.

Modern medicine is infatuated with high-tech gadgetry, yet the single most powerful diagnostic tool remains the doctor-patient conversation, which can uncover the lion’s share of illnesses. Dr. Danielle Ofri speaks with WNYC host Mary Harris about her new book, What Patients Say, What Doctors Hear, which proves that medicine doesn’t have to work that way, and how better communication can lead to better health for all of us.

Whether evoking the tragicomic and surreal for which his short stories first gained acclaim, or awakening the keen love of family in 2015’s The Seven Good Years, Etgar Keret mines the human experience for all of its farce and dignity. The Israeli author recently came by the Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building to speak with Paul Holdengräber, the director of LIVE from the NYPL. The conversation began on Keret’s lost luggage and the two unexpected donations, of a coat and boxer shorts, that followed. From there it turned one strange corner after the next, from Kafka to drug dealers, technophobia, bedtime stories with drunks and prostitutes, and Keret’s anxieties about the ethics of writing fiction.

This year, the New York Public Library will, for the thirtieth year, dispense the Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism. In the first in a series of events to celebrate the award, we welcomed Dean Baquet, Executive Editor of The New York Times; Shawna Thomas, DC Bureau Chief of VICE News; Jose Antonio Vargas, Founder of Define American; Jacob Weisberg, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Slate Group; and Bill Moyers, Managing Editor of BillMoyers.com to discuss the shifting responsibilities, obligations, purposes, and even definitions of American journalism today. For this week's episode of the New York Public Library Podcast, we're proud to present this conversation on the press during the administration of the forty-fifth president.