Midday on WNYC

David Bromberg performs live in our studio. He’s a master of American vernacular music as a guitarist and vocalist, fluid in country blues and Dixieland, bluegrass and fingerpicking folk. His new album, “Only Slightly Mad,” shows the full range of his Americana roots.

Jesmyn Ward talks about losing five young men in her life to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the problems poverty brings, particularly for black men. In Men We Reaped she writes of the agonizing losses of her only brother and her friends and of her exploration into the forces that shaped their lives and led to their deaths—the racism and economic struggles that fostered drug addiction and the dissolution of family and relationships.

Urbanist and technology expert Anthony Townsend takes a broad historical look at the forces that have shaped the planning and design of cities from the 19th century to today. Today, cellular networks and cloud computing tie together tens of millions of people. In Smart Cities, Townsend examines how cities are using technology to improve urban life.

It’s apple picking season, and if you’re searching for ways to use all the apples available this time of year, two experts are here to offer advice. Rozanne Gold, James Beard award-winning chef and author of 13 cookbooks, including her most recent, Radically Simple, and Elizabeth Ryan of Breezy Hill Orchards in the Hudson Valley, talk about the range of apple varieties and what to make with them.

Marjorie Shaffer, author of Pepper, and Andrew Smith, food historian, discuss pepper, the world’s most popular spice—from pepper’s role in bringing the Europeans, and later the Americans, to Asia to the many ways to use pepper to enhance your cooking!

Bun Lai, chef at Miya’s Sushi, in New Haven, Connecticut, talks about eating invasive species that are causing problems in ecosystems across the country, such as sea squirt, European green crabs, jellyfish, feral hogs, and Asian carp. He’ll talk about foraging for these invasive species and creating dishes in his restaurant. He wrote the article “How (and Why) to Eat Invasive Species” in the September issue of Scientific American.

Earlier this month the USDA lifted its ban on chicken meat that’s processed in Chinese plants. The Washington Post’s Kimberly Kindy talks about why the Dept. of Agriculture has cleared four Chinese poultry processors to export to the US, and why critics are worried about contamination in the meat, and whether you’ll be able to tell where the meat in your supermarket was processed.

Sculptor Ursula von Rydingsvard discusses her work and her sculpture “Ona,” a 19-and-a-half-foot tall, nearly 12-thousand-pound bronze art work that was commissioned as a permanent installation in the plaza in front of Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

Greg “Freddy” Camalier, director of “Muscle Shoals," and Rick Hall, founder of FAME Studios, at the center of the film, talk about  Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where, even before the Civil Rights Movement took shape, the color of your skin didn't matter inside the studio. Some of the greatest Rock and Roll and Soul legends of all time recorded some of the most uplifting, defiant, and important music there. “Muscle Shoals" opens September 27 at the IFC Center in NY and nationwide on VOD.

Pulitzer Prize winner Sheri Fink investigates patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital ravaged by Hurricane Katrina and tells the story of the quest for truth and justice following the storm. As floodwaters rose, the power failed, the heat climbed, and exhausted caregivers chose to designate certain patients last for rescue. Months later, several health professionals faced criminal allegations that they deliberately hastened the deaths of some patients. Fink’s book Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital, the culmination of six years of reporting. 

Lisa-ann Gershwin, jellyfish expert and author of Stung!, explains how warming and turbid water, lack of predators and competitors, low oxygen, and more acidic water are the conditions leading to an alarming and increasing rate of jellyfish in the oceans.

Lawrence Douglas tells us about his recent trip to Guantanamo to report on the preliminary hearings of Abd al-Nashiri, the senior Al Qaeda lieutenant who allegedly masterminded the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen in 2000. After the extensive efforts on the part of the Obama administration to establish the legal legitimacy of these commissions, Douglas questions the possibility that al-Nashiri will receive a fair trial. His article “A Kangaroo in Obama’s Court” appears in the October issue of Harper’s.

Mike Nichols talks about his award-winning career directing such films as “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” and “The Graduate,” and the stage revival of “Death of a Salesman.” He discusses his latest project, directing Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” on Broadway, which stars Rachel Weisz, Daniel Craig and Rafe Spall.  Mike Nichols talked about what intrigued him about Pinter's play: "I think the fractured nature of it is so brilliant that it, in some ways, is an imitation of what happens in your head – when you look back over parts of your life." He also described the idea of guilt in "Betrayal": "There are absolutely almost perfect people who experience no guilt, they don’t know what it is. They simply do what they need to do – or want to do – next. They see nothing wrong with it. They feel no guilt. They express no guilt. And it’s not even certain what harm they do. But the fact that they exist and that they can be very good people – sometimes the best – and simply not find guilt useful or interesting is one of the things that I think that play is about. And I think that it’s very interesting in life." He explained why plays can affect each audience member so differently: "A play, after all, is a mystery. There’s no narration. And as soon as there’s no narration, it’s open to interpretation. It must be interpreted. You don’t have a choice…Each play can become many things." And Mike Nichols had a very short-lived cameo on "The Sopranos": "I was Mrs. Soprano’s shrink for half a week when I fired myself. I said, 'You need another Jew. I’m the wrong Jew for this particular shrink.' And [creator] David Chase and I became friends through that self-firing." He added, "That should be the title of my biography -- The Wrong Jew."

Evolutionary biologist and famous atheist Richard Dawkins discusses his childhood, his intellectual development, and the story of how he came to write The Selfish Gene, considered by many to be one of the most important books of the 20th century. His first memoir, An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist is about his childhood in colonial Africa, the beginning of his career as a skeptic in boarding school by refusing to kneel for prayer in chapel, and his intellectual awakening at Oxford.

Carla Kaplan discusses the white women who became Harlem Renaissance insiders. Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance focuses on six of the unconventional, free-thinking women, some from Manhattan high society, many Jewish, who crossed race lines and defied social conventions to become a part of the culture and heartbeat of Harlem in the 1920s.