HOUR ONE:
Scholar, literary critic and best-selling writer Stephen Greenblatt is the author of The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. It examines the ancient Roman document that inspired the Renaissance. As one of the founders of New Historicism and one of the most important scholars of our age, Greenblatt is also the author of, among other works, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare.
Then, the 1980s conjure happy nostalgia for some, while others remember it as a low point in American history. For the good and the bad, author David Sirota claims that the decade of Ronald Reagan and Bill Cosby has an outsized influence on our national perspective today. His book is titled Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now – Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Everything.
HOUR TWO:
Bob talks with David Anderegg about his book titled Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them. Anderegg is a clinical child psychologist and explores the stereotyping of nerds and how it affects everyone at an early age.
Then, Science magazine writer Sam Kean turned his life-long fascination with the periodic table into a best-selling book titled The Disappearing Spoon and Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements. Kean’s book recounts tales about the list of elements that range from the educational to the down-right weird.