Latest Smerconish book club Podcast Episodes
Charles Murray: "The Curmudgeon's Guide to Getting Ahead"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - April 17, 2024 16:20 - 12 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsFor those starting out in their careers—and those who wish to advance more quickly—this is a delightfully fussy guide to the hidden rules of the road in the workplace and in life. As bestselling author and social historian Charles Murray explains, at senior levels of an organization there are cur...
Brad Wilcox: "Get Married"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - April 15, 2024 18:18 - 20 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsWhat's the recipe for happiness? If you listen to liberal elites or red pill influencers, you'd say it's making money, living for yourself, and staying single without kids—and you'd be wrong. Nothing predicts happiness better than a good marriage. University of Virginia Professor Brad Wilcox join...
Jeffrey Zaslow: "The Last Lecture"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - April 10, 2024 15:37 - 43 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsThis is a special extended edition of Book Club. In 2008, Michael had the opportunity to speak with Wall Street Journal reporter Jeffrey Zaslow, co-author of "The Last Lecture" which he wrote with Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch. It focuses on a final lecture that many college professors g...
Arianna Huffington: "Thrive"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - April 08, 2024 17:06 - 11 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsMichael talks to "Huffington Post" co-founder Arianna Huffington about her book "Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder." The best-selling author makes an impassioned and compelling case for the need to redefine what it means to be suc...
Julian Zelizer: "The Presidency of Barack Obama"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - April 06, 2024 14:04 - 11 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsAn original and engaging account of the Obama years from a group of leading political historians: Barack Obama's election as the first African American president seemed to usher in a new era, and he took office in 2009 with great expectations. But by his second term, Republicans controlled Congre...
Pete Dexter: "Paper Trails"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - April 03, 2024 17:04 - 20 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsFormer Philadelphia Daily News columnist and National Book Award Winner Pete Dexter ("Paris Trout") speaks with Michael about his book "Paper Trails: True Stories of Confusion, Mindless Violence, and Forbidden Desires, a Surprising Number of Which Are Not About Marriage." Original air date Februa...
Cass Sunstein: "Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - April 01, 2024 17:19 - 16 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsThe most controversial essays from the bestselling author once called the most dangerous man in America—collected for the first time. The nation’s most-cited legal scholar who for decades has been at the forefront of applied behavioral economics, and the bestselling author of Nudge and Simpler, C...
Jennifer Weiner: "In Her Shoes"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - March 27, 2024 16:50 - 14 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsLooking back at Jennifer Weiner who joined Michael to discuss her book "In Her Shoes." The book tells the story of two women with nothing in common but a childhood tragedy, shared DNA, and the same size feet. The two are about to learn that their family is more different than they ever imagined, ...
Jonathan Haidt: "The Anxious Generation"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - March 25, 2024 14:57 - 23 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsAfter more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why? Phone-based childhoods. Michael talks to social psychologist and bestsell...
Al Gore: "Inconvenient Truth"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - March 22, 2024 14:38 - 13 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsMichael had the opportunity to speak with Former Vice President Al Gore on his WPHT radio program in 2006. The interview did not quite go as planned - he reminisces in this episode, on the book "Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It." Original a...
Gabriel Sherman: "The Loudest Voice In The Room"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - March 20, 2024 17:25 - 13 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsSo much has happened in the world surrounding FOX News, Donald Trump, and Roger Ailes since the paperback version of this book by Gabriel Sherman came out in early 2017, including Ailes passing away just a few months later in May 2017. Listen to Michael's and Sherman's conversation about "The Lou...
Nathan Raab: "The Hunt For History"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - March 18, 2024 17:00 - 15 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsNathan Raab, America’s preeminent rare documents dealer, describes his years as the Sherlock Holmes of historical artifacts—questing after precious finds and determining their authenticity—and he shows us what the past can tell us about the present, in "The Hunt for History: On the Trail of the W...
Nicholas F. Jacobs & Dan Shea: "The Rural Voter"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - March 15, 2024 18:19 - 21 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsThe widening gulf between rural and urban America is becoming the most serious political divide of our day. Support for Democrats, up and down the ballot, has plummeted throughout the countryside, and the entire governing system is threatened by one-party dominance. Is the country splintering bet...
Admiral James Stavridis: "2054"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - March 13, 2024 13:56 - 17 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsFrom the acclaimed authors of the runaway New York Times bestseller "2034" comes another explosive work of speculative fiction set twenty years further in the future, at a moment when a radical leap forward in artificial intelligence combines with America’s violent partisan divide to create an ex...
David Charter: "Royal Audience"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - March 11, 2024 17:36 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsFrom the moment she first appeared as a young princess, Queen Elizabeth II fascinated the world. And, the late Queen had a special relationship with the United States. Times of London U.S. Editor David Charter joins Michael with his new book, "Royal Audience: 70 Years, 13 Presidents--One Queen's ...
Richard Clarke: "Warnings"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - March 06, 2024 21:05 - 9 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratings"Warnings: Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes" is the story of the future of national security, threatening technologies, the U.S. economy, and possibly the fate of civilization. In Greek mythology Cassandra foresaw calamities, but was cursed by the gods to be ignored. Modern-day Cassandras ...
Joe Nocera: "Indentured"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - March 04, 2024 14:52 - 19 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratings“How can the NCAA blithely wreck careers without regard to due process or common fairness? How can it act so ruthlessly to enforce rules that are so petty? Why won’t anybody stand up to these outrageous violations of American values and American justice?” In 2012, Joe Nocera asked those question...
Nick Troiano: "The Primary Solution"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - February 28, 2024 19:30 - 14 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsIn a divided America, the biggest solvable problem fueling political extremism and dysfunction is hiding in plain sight: party primaries. The Primary Solution shows how to fix them. Michael talks to Nick Troiano, Executive Director of Unite America, on his book "The Primary Solution: Rescuing Our...
Peter Singer: "Ethics In The Real World"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - February 26, 2024 15:46 - 20 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsPeter Singer is often described as the world's most influential philosopher. He is also one of its most controversial. Listen to Michael's conversation with the Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, on the book, "Ethics In The Real World: 82 Brief Essays On Things That Matter." Original...
Patti Davis: "Dear Mom and Dad"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - February 23, 2024 08:00 - 20 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsA remarkably poignant writer for our troubled times, Patti Davis writes about love, loss, and the power of redemption in this poetic letter to her long-gone parents. The daughter of Ronald and Nancy Reagan talks to Michael about her book "Dear Mom and Dad: A Letter About Family, Memory, and the A...
Jeffrey Rosen: "The Pursuit of Happiness"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - February 21, 2024 18:37 - 15 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsA fascinating examination of what “the pursuit of happiness” meant to our nation’s Founders and how that famous phrase defined their lives and became the foundation of our democracy. Listen to Michael's conversation with National Constitution Center President Jeffrey Rosen about "The Pursuit of H...
Rachel Dolezal: "In Full Color"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - February 16, 2024 18:06 - 16 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsWhat determines your race? Is it your DNA? The community in which you were raised? The way others see you or the way you see yourself? With "In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World", Rachel Doležal describes the path that led her from being a child of white evangelical parents ...
Peter Wehner: "The Death of Politics"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - February 14, 2024 17:10 - 18 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsMichael speaks with Peter Wehner about his book "The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump." The New York Times opinion writer, media commentator, outspoken Republican and Christian critic of the Trump presidency offers a spirited defense of politics and its virtuous and ...
Lisa Scottoline: "Lady Killer"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - February 13, 2024 18:38 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsNew York Times Bestselling author Lisa Scottoline joins Michael with her 2008 hit novel "Lady Killer." Mary DiNunzio is a trademark Lisa Scottoline heroine—she's strong, she's smart, and she's got plenty of attitude. She's become a big-time business-getter, and the last person she expects to walk...
Lenore Skenazy: "Free-Range Kids"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - February 09, 2024 17:48 - 16 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsFree Range Kids has become a national movement, sparked by the incredible response to Lenore Skenazy's piece about allowing her 9-year-old ride the subway alone in NYC. Parent groups argued about it, bloggers, blogged, spouses became uncivil with each other, and the media jumped all over it. Mich...
Jeffrey Toobin: "American Heiress"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - February 07, 2024 14:17 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsOn February 4, 1974, Patty Hearst, a sophomore in college and heiress to the Hearst Family fortune, was kidnapped by a ragtag group of self-styled revolutionaries calling itself the Symbonese Liberation Army. The weird turns that followed in this already sensational take are truly astonishing--li...
Dr. Carl Hart: "Drug Use For Grown-Ups"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - February 05, 2024 14:42 - 20 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsFrom one of the world's foremost experts on the subject, a powerful argument that the greatest damage from drugs flows from their being illegal, and a hopeful reckoning with the possibility of their use as part of a responsible and happy life. Michael talks with Dr. Carl Hart, Professor at Columb...
Richard Louv: "Last Child in the Woods"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - February 02, 2024 17:22 - 21 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsOur kids are being raised disconnected from natural outdoor environments, for a variety of reasons like technology addictions, fears and dangers of being alone outside and many more. Michael welcomes Richard Louv, author of "Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorde...
Kate Andersen Brower: "First Women"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - January 31, 2024 20:25 - 17 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsKate Andersen Brower, New York Times bestselling author, gives us an an intimate, news-making look at the true modern power brokers at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: the First Ladies, from Jackie Kennedy to Michelle Obama and Melania Trump. Listen to Michael's conversation with her on "First Women: Th...
Bob Woodward: "State of Denial"
Book Club with Michael Smerconish - January 29, 2024 21:53 - 12 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsFrom the archives, Michael's conversation with journalist Bob Woodward on his #1 New York Times Bestselling book "State of Denial: Bush At War", which examines how the George W. Bush administration avoided telling the truth about Iraq to the public, to Congress, and often to themselves. This conv...
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