On todays episode of Modern Notion Daily, our guest is J. Kenji López-Alt, the managing culinary director of Serious Eats and author of the new book, The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking through Science (W. W. Norton, September 2015). López-Alt takes a scientific approach to cooking—which doesnt mean hes necessarily looking for the perfect way to make a dish, but he wants to understand what it would take to do so. The result is this 1,000-page cookbook, which shifts the focus from recipes and...

Our guest on todays Modern Notion Daily is Andrew Moore, author of Pawpaw: In Search of Americas Forgotten Fruit (Chelsea Green, August 2015). Moore discovered the pawpaw, which is native to the United States, five years ago in a grove in Ohio. Despite its addictive taste and aroma (its been called a cross between a banana and a mango), the pawpaw never achieved mass appeal. Moore explores the reasons and talks about his adventures going pawpaw pickin. Also, at the top of the show, Pam...

On todays episode of Modern Notion Daily, our guest is David Starkey, author of Magna Carta: The Medieval Roots of Modern Politics (Quercus, September 2015). Starkey was less interested in exploring the principles of the Magna Carta, and more interested in the process it took to get the document just right. In the year 1215, when the Magna Carta was first signed (or sealed, depending on who you ask), the document was quite extreme. But over the course of a decade, the parties involved...

On todays show, our guest is Robert M. Thorson, author of Waldens Shore: Henry David Thoreau and Nineteenth-Century Science (Harvard University Press, paperback August 2015). Thorson is a geologist who decided to read Thoreaus classic literary work for its observations about nature. He argues that Thoreau was as skilled a naturalist as he was a writer. Later in the hour, contributing editor Erin Blakemore talks about whats happened to the remains of the Romanovs. Music this hour: “Forgiven...

On todays episode of Modern Notion Daily, our guest is Nicholas Carr, a science and technology writer whose most recent book is The Glass Cage: How Our Computers Are Changing Us (W. W. Norton, paperback September 2015). Carr thinks that automation has advanced society and the greater good in innumerable ways, but we may have passed the sweet spot—the point where automation helps us but doesnt displace people from their jobs or, essentially, make us dumber. Using case studies including plane...

On todays show, were talking with Linda Hirshman, a former attorney and author of the new dual biography, Sisters in Law: How Sandra Day OConnor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the World (Harper, September 2015). Hirshman argues that these first two women to sit on the Supreme Court could not have been more different, apart from their commitment to womens rights in cases of sexual harassment, abortion, and much more. Hirshman recounts their uncommon drive to...

On this episode of Modern Notion Daily, our guest is Christian Rudder, a co-founder of the online dating service OkCupid and author of Dataclysm: Love, Sex, Race, and Identity—What Our Online Lives Tell Us about Our Offline Selves (Broadway Books, paperback September 2015). Rudder gained some attention when he wrote the OkTrends blog for OkCupid, which analyzed user data in order to better understand human behavior. Hes compiled many of those observations into Dataclysm. Later in the hour,...

On this episode of Modern Notion Daily, our guest is John Safran, an Australian comedian, documentary maker, and author of the book Godll Cut You Down: The Tangled Tale of a White Supremacist, a Black Hustler, a Murder, and How I Lost a Year in Mississippi (Riverhead Books, paperback September 2015). As part of his Australian television series Race Relations, Safran visited with Richard Barrett, a white supremacist leader in Mississippi. When Safran found out Barrett had been murdered not...

Our guest today on Modern Notion Daily is Dick Lehr, coauthor with Gerard ONeill of the definitive book on Bostons most notorious gangster, Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI, and a Devils Deal (PublicAffairs, reissued August 2015). Lehr and ONeill were part of an investigative journalism team at The Boston Globe in the 1980s, covering Whitey and his brother Billy Bulger. As they got deeper into the story, though, they uncovered Whiteys unholy relationship with the FBI. Later in the hour,...

Our guest today is Elijah Wald, author of Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties (Dey Street Books, July 2015). Fifty years after the fact, we talk with Wald about the night Bob Dylan first performed with an electric band at the Newport Folk Festival, shocking his fans and ushering in the era of rock and roll. But to understand why the night was so momentous, you have to understand the folk musicians (including Pete Seeger) who influenced him. Later...

On todays show, our guest is Val McDermid, author of Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA, and More Tell Us about Crime (Grove Press, July 2015). McDermid is a crime novelist and tries to make her fiction as close to real life as possible. Writing Forensics, a nonfiction title that explores the science of crime scene investigation, allowed McDermid to learn even more about what she dramatizes—from stringing to understand more about blood spatter, to the stages of bug infestation in a...

Today on Modern Notion Daily: journalist Ari Berman takes us through the history of voting rights and restrictions in the last 50 years, as detailed in his book Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, August 2015). Berman explores why the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was so effective in registering previously disenfranchised voters. Berman argues that the Supreme Courts 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder weakened the VRA immeasurably...

David Neiwert, author of Of Orcas and Men: What Killer Whales Can Teach Us (The Overlook Press, June 2015), joins us to talk orcas on todays episode of Modern Notion Daily. Neiwert explores the killer whales unique intelligence and ability to echolocate, as well as the conditions these animals are subjected to in captivity. We should look to orcas as models for empathy and how to be at the top of the food chain, according to Neiwert. Music this hour: Friday Im in Love by The Cure “Forgiven...

Today, on Modern Notion Daily: we get a rare look at the manned space flights of Project Apollo. Our guests are John Bisney and J.L. Pickering, coauthors of Moonshots and Snapshots of Project Apollo: A Rare Photographic Look (September 2015, University of New Mexico Press). For more than four decades, Pickering has been collecting 8x10 images of manned space flights, and he now boasts more than 100,000 images in the collection. He and Bisney have combed through this archive and threaded a...

This hour, our theme is sea wars, and we bring you two very different stories. First, were talking with John Boyle, author of Blood Ransom: Stories from the Front Line in the War Against Somali Piracy (Bloomsbury, July 2015). Boyle interviewed prisoners in Somalia who were serving time for alleged pirate activity. Then were joined by Summer Brennan, author of The Oyster War: The True Story of a Small Farm, Big Politics, and the Future of Wilderness in America (Counterpoint, August 2015)....

On todays Modern Notion Daily podcast, were talking spies and subways cars in the ocean. First were in the studio with Alex Kershaw, author of Avenue of Spies: A True Story of Terror, Espionage, and One American Familys Heroic Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Paris (Crown, August 2015). Kershaw tells the story of an American doctor and Swiss nurse who became part of the French Resistance in Nazi-occupied Paris. Later in the show, we welcome Jeff Tinsman, the artificial reef project manager for the...

On todays episode of Modern Notion Daily, our guest is Siobhan Roberts, author of Genius at Play: The Curious Mind of John Horton Conway (Bloomsbury USA, July 2015). Roberts spent seven years writing this biography of one of the most famous contemporary mathematicians and creator of the Game of Life. The magnitude of Conways genius is matched only by his playfulness and charisma; Roberts even describes him as seductive. But that intensity has a dark side, too. Music this hour: “Soldiertype...

On todays Modern Notion Daily show, our guest is Matthew Cobb, a zoology professor and author of Lifes Greatest Secret: The Race to Crack the Genetic Code (Basic Books, July 2015). Cobb traces the history of genetic discoveries from Mendel and his predecessors (yes, he stood on the shoulders of other early geneticists) to CRISPR and other up-to-the-minute techniques that could change our lives moving forward. Music this hour: “Octopus” by Jahzzar, from the album Sunlight “Forgiven Not...

On todays Modern Notion Daily podcast, our guest is Arissa H. Oh, author of To Save the Children of Korea: The Cold War Origins of International Adoption (Stanford University Press, June 2015). During the Korean War and the rise of war orphans, Americans began adopting Korean children in large numbers; that trend spiked in the 1980s. Oh explores the reasons why Korea became such a hub of adoption and the struggles faced by adopters and adoptees. Music this hour: “Forgiven Not Forgotten” by...

This hour, our guest is Michael Knox Beran, author of Murder by Candlelight: The Gruesome Crimes Behind Our Romance with the Macabre (Pegasus, August 2015). Beran explores three murders from the 19th century that showcase peoples changing attitudes toward the macabre at that time. Music this hour: “Miri’s Magic Dance” by Kevin MacLeod, from the album Oddities “Soldiertype (militarised)” by Ketsa, from the album What’s Without’s Within “Forgiven Not Forgotten” by Jahzzar, from the album...

On todays episode of Modern Notion Daily, our guest is Deborah Davis, author of The Trip: Andy Warhols Plastic Fantastic Cross-Country Adventure (Atria Books, July 2015). Based on Warhols trove of receipts and other ephemera, Davis recreated his 1963 road trip from New York to Hollywood, where a friend was throwing him a party. That trip became a dividing line in Warhols life, and Davis explores its significance as she follows in Warhols footsteps. Later in the hour, contributing editor Mark...

On todays episode of Modern Notion Daily, our guest is Matthew Battles, author of Palimpsest: A History of the Written Word (W. W. Norton andamp; Co., July 2015). Battles explores the trajectory of writing, from the forms it takes (cuneiform, pictographs, letters, characters, emojis) to the way its been produced (on clay tablets, on parchment, on a digital device). Writing has surprising impacts on how we think, remember, and communicate, Battles argues, even if much of that impact lies under...

On todays episode of Modern Notion Daily, our guest is Rinker Buck, author of The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey (Simon andamp; Schuster, June 2015). After coming across an Oregon Trail marker in Kansas, and then reading that it had been decades since anyone traversed it, Buck decided it was his turn. It took him and his brother, Nick, four months to travel the length of the trail with their pack of mules and covered wagon, but Buck found it immensely rewarding. Later in the hour,...

On todays Modern Notion Daily podcast, author Guy Lawson joins us to talk about his new book, Arms and the Dudes: How Three Stoners from Miami Beach Became the Most Unlikely Gunrunners in History (Simon andamp; Schuster, June 2015). It could only have happened in the internet age, argues Lawson: three kids from Miami Beach won a 300 million dollar contract with the United State Department of Defense to supply the Afghan army with weapons. But when their illegal (but state-sponsored)...

On todays show our guest is James McGrath Morris, author of Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press (Amistad/HarperCollins, February 2015). Payne was one of the first African-American women journalists, and her heyday was in the 1950s and 1960s. Before she even got into journalism professionally, Payne was an activist in the civil rights movement, forcing her way into a leadership role even when the men tried to dismiss her. She took that gutsiness with her...