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The Seams Podcast was one of the first to bring fashion as making, history, culture, and politics to the podcast space.  Many of the episodes were simultaneously broadcast on NPR.  From Ebony Fashion magazine to the Seminole patchwork of Florida to indigenous weavers in Mexico, the motto was “Clothing is our common thread, in every stitch a story.”

Reading Lolita in Theran.  NPR.  In 1995, I became the first broadcast reporter to profile writer Azar Nafisi, at her home in Tehran and at Tabatab’i University. This was important because she was using Western Literature to challenge autocracy .. now it is western literature threatened with book bans, right at home.  Her style of teaching in her black chador was lively, and her students secretly read great books in her home. 

Geraldine Brooks  and I have friends since the days when we were both young(er) Middle East correspondents for our respective news orgs, The Wall Street Journal and NPR.  It has been fascinating to see her step away from straight reportage into the spellbinding worlds she creates, though always with a strong historical scaffold.  Her memoirs, too, are riveting. Here, we discuss her novel “Horse” for the Kentucky Authors Forum in 2023—a novel of race, class and the start of the American horse racing industry. 

Alice McDermott is the author of ten novels and a National Book Award winner for her book, Charming Billy.  This interview from 2023 features her latest novel, “Absolution”  which features the women married to American CIA operatives just prior to the Vietnam War and their suppressed, complicated lives.

The New Republic editor Michael Tomasky is well-known to liberal audiences as the editor of that magazine.  He has been a political gadfly and pundit for decades.  Here, we discuss, with poet and activist JoAnn Mort, his book,  "The Middle Out" -- a book about how Democrats and Republicans need to reach to the center of America on economic issues .. an  interview from earlier in 2024. This interview is in conjunction with  Writers for Democratic Action , where I sit on the national steering committee, and am Wisconsin state co-chair.