MPR News with Kerri Miller

According to professor and researcher Dacher Keltner, awe is the universal emotion we feel when we encounter vast mysteries we can’t explain. And he believes we should find more of it, in order to live happy and health lives, both individually and collectively. This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, host Kerri Miller talks with Keltner about research that resulted in his new book, “Awe: The New Science of Every Day Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.”

This Friday, on Big Books and Bold Idea, host Kerri Miller talks with psychologist and researcher Dacher Keltner about the science of awe, and how this universal emotion can transform our brains and bodies. So we felt it fitting to bring you a discussion of joy for this week’s archive. Enjoy poet Ross Gay at Talking Volumes last fall discussing his book, “Inciting Joy.”

Jamila Minnicks’ debut novel is a stunner. “Moonrise Over New Jessup” uses fiction to tell the stories of real all-Black towns that flourished in the American South a century ago, thanks to a policy of separate but equal.

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In her new book, “Fit Nation,” historian and part-time fitness instructor Natalia Mehlman Petrzela details how America’s view of exercise went from indifferent to obsessed.

How is it that Americans are more obsessed with exercise than ever, yet still unhealthy? This Friday, host Kerri Miller talks with the author of the new book “Fit Nation,” to examine the U.S. fitness industry today.

MPR News host Kerri Miller says Deepti Kapoor’s novel lives up to the hype. “Age of Vice” introduces us to the extreme wealth, corruption and cynicism of a changing India in a daring new crime thriller.

Deepti Kapoor’s new novel, “Age of Vice,” is one of the most anticipated releases of 2023. We’ll talk to her on this Friday’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. While you wait, enjoy this interview with Emily St. John Mandel, who wrote one of the most anticipated novels of 2022, “Sea of Tranquility.”

How do you tell the story of your life when straightforward memoir isn’t enough? Shannon Gibney chose to get creative. The result is her new book, “The Girl I Am, Was and Never Will Be,” which uses both traditional memoir and speculative fiction to examine her life as a transracial adoptee.

Minneapolis author Shannon Gibney just published her memoir. But it’s probably unlike any memoir you’ve read before. She’ll tell MPR News host Kerri Miller about it on Friday’s episode of Big Books and Bold Ideas. Until then, enjoy this 2018 conversation between Miller and Gibney when her second book, “Dream Country,” had just come out.