Places & Travel

Saidu Tejan-Thomas Jr.'s "Resistance" podcast explores different aspects of the Black Lives Matter movement. The podcast has been mostly devoted to the protests that started last summer after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, but it also chronicles Tejan-Thomas Jr.'s personal history.

Reem assis says that many foods that are considered Middle Eastern or Israeli actually originated as Palestinian dishes. Her first cookbook, The Palestinian Table, chronicled the history of Palestinian food — along with some of her personal history. In her new book, The Arabesque Table, Kassis expands the focus to the cross-cultural culinary history of the Arab world.

John Powers reviews 'The Man Who Sold His Skin,' a funny, touching and pointed film that's been nominated for the Oscar for Best International Feature.

For Helfer, vintage piano dialects are living traditions, not museum exhibits. The 85-year-old Chicago musician helps keep those traditions alive — and passes that knowledge on — with a new album.

What sets Ellen McGarrahan's just-published true crime book, Two Truths and a Lie, above so many others I've read is the moral gravity of her presence on the page and the hollow-voiced lyricism of her writing style.

New York Times cyber security reporter Nicole Perlroth calls the SolarWinds hack "one of the biggest intelligence failures of our time."

My Year Abroad is Chang-rae Lee's new exuberant novel that takes readers on an excursion out of the New Jersey suburbs and across the Pacific into some of the more luxurious reaches of Asian megacities.

The Lady and the Dale is a new HBO documentary miniseries co-directed by Nick Cammilleri and Zackary Drucker. It's about a female automobile executive who took on the Detroit automakers and tried to market a gas-efficient car in the 1970s, at the height of the oil crisis.

The documentarian, who died Jan. 7, spent decades following the lives of a group of British citizens, updating their stories with a new episode every seven years. Originally broadcast in 2013.

Iconoclastic humorist Fran Lebowitz used to be known as a writer. Back in the late 1970s and '80s, she released two popular collections of essays featuring her cutting observations and opinions about life. But that part of her career was cut short by a decades-long case of writer's block — now she's known for talking. The Netflix series Pretend It's a City features Lebowitz in conversation with Martin Scorsese — who directed both the new series and the 2010 HBO documentary about Lebowitz, Public Speaking.

Maria Ressa has faced criminal charges, death threats and internet trolls because of her coverage of the Philippine president. She's the subject of a new PBS FRONTLINE documentary, A Thousand Cuts.

Kai Strittmatter's new book, We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China's Surveillance State, examines the role of surveillance in China's authoritarian state. He warns that Chinese President Xi Jinping, who came to power in 2012, has embraced an ideological rigidity unknown since the days of Mao Zedong.

Bassett plays world-renowned jazz saxophonist Dorothea Williams in Disney/Pixar's latest animated film. She talks about that role, as well as the challenges she's faced as a Black woman in Hollywood.

David Chang has won James Beard awards as a chef and restaurateur. His first and best known restaurant Momofuku started as very modest noodle bar in Manhattan’s east village. The food was influenced by the food he grew up with--food that used to embarrass him when he was growing up. His parents are from North Korea. He now has restaurant in NY, LA, Vegas, Toronto and Australia. He’s had bipolar disorder for many years and credits cooking and his restaurants with saving his life. He has a new memoir.

Imagine a room in war-ravaged Syria lined with bookshelves and filled with patrons reading books in Arabic and English, everything from poetry to American pop psychology. Now picture that, outside that library, city streets are reduced to rubble and bombs are a constant threat. That's the real-life scene journalist Delphine Minoui chronicles in her new book called "The Book Collectors."

Guest interviewer Sam Sanders interviews Aaron Sorkin about his new film 'The Trial of the Chicago 7.'

Since the release of the Mueller report in April 2019, it's been analyzed, praised and criticized — and cited by President Trump as proof that there was no collusion with Russia in the 2016 presidential election.

Andrew Weissmann was one of the lead prosecutors on special counsel Robert Mueller's team. In his new book, Where Law Ends, Weissmann looks back on where the Mueller investigation succeeded — and where it fell short.

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar centers his new novel on a Muslim man who, like Akhtar, is the son of Pakistani immigrants living in Wisconsin.

Historian David Nasaw tells the story of more than a million people stranded in defeated Nazi Germany after World War II. Some felt they couldn't return to their home countries under Soviet control. Others were Jewish survivors who had no homes to return to. Nasaw's book is 'The Last Million.'

The former model/actress is nominated for an Emmy Award for hosting Top Chef. Her new show, Taste the Nation, explores immigrant cooking. Originally broadcast July 6, 2020.