When Book Bans Came to Small Town New Jersey
7 December 2022 - 44 mins explicitThis episode contains strong language.
In the contentious debate over who controls what happens in America’s schools, a new battleground has emerged: library books.
This is the story of what happened when parents in one town in New Jersey tried to remove a handful of books that they said were explicit and sexually inappropriate — and the battle that ensued.
Guest: Alexandra Alter, a reporter covering publishing and the literary world for The New York Times.
Background reading:
As highly visible and politicized book bans have exploded across the United States, librarians — accustomed to being seen as dedicated public servants in their communities — have found themselves on the front l...
Series Episodes
Is This Economy as Awful as Voters Think? We Ask Our Expert.
As the midterms approach, our chief economics correspondent breaks down the data.
32 mins
21 October Finished
James Talarico on the Rage Economy, Billionaires and Flipping Texas
Our interview with James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas.
35 mins
20 October Finished
Inside Putin’s Plan to Cripple Ukraine This Winter
Moscow seems to be seizing an opening to plunge Ukrainian cities into cold and darkness to try to inflict immense human suffering.
29 mins
19 October Finished
Elizabeth Holmes and Nathan Fielder Keep Us Guessing
The comedian Nathan Fielder came to fame as the creator and host of the Comedy Central series “Nathan for You.” The show followed Fielder as he devised outrageous schemes, ostensibly with the aim of helping various small businesses. What became clear, though, was that Fielder was less interested in helping business owners generate profits than he was in understanding the people ensnared in his plots. His next project, the HBO series “The Rehearsal,” was a similar offbeat portrait of offbeat people. At the center of both projects is Fielder himself, a documentarian whose motives can sometimes be hard to parse. This week, Fielder’s first feature-length documentary, “You Can See Everything,” hits theaters. Co-directed by Lance Oppenheim, the movie shows Fielder embedding himself into the life of the disgraced Theranos founder and felon Elizabeth Holmes in the days leading up to her imprisonment for fraud. The film caused a big splash when it debuted at the Telluride Film Festival, in part because it presents Holmes, a mysterious and compelling cultural figure, through the eyes of Fielder, a mysterious and compelling filmmaker. This week, the Times movie critic Alissa Wilkinson and critic at large Jason Zinoman, who covers comedy, join Michael Barbaro for a spoiler-free discussion of Nathan Fielder, his career, and why he might be the perfect person to tell the story of Elizabeth Holmes.
43 mins
18 October Finished
50 Years In, What's the Point of U2? Bono and the Edge Have Answers.
The longtime friends and creative partners on what U2 still means — and what would make them call it quits.
1 hour 4 mins
17 October Finished
MAGA's Midterm Defectors
Iowa is seemingly at the center of the pushback against President Trump as the state grapples with the impact of both tariffs and higher fuel costs.
27 mins
16 October Finished
