Midday on WNYC

Nathaniel Philbrick tells the story of the Boston battle that ignited the American Revolution, the Battle of Bunker Hill, the bloodiest battle of the Revolution to come, and the point of no return for the rebellious colonists. In his book Bunker Hill: A City, a Seige, a Revolution, Philbrick brings a fresh perspective to every aspect of the story of the battle that led to the Revolution.

Lawrence J. Friedman talks about Erich Fromm, a political activist, psychologist, psychoanalyst, philosopher, and one of the most important intellectuals of the 20th century. The Lives of Erich Fromm: Love’s Prophet, is the first study of Fromm's influences and achievements, and revisits his most important works.

Frances Beinecke, President of the Natural Resources Defense Council, and National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen discuss the changing climate of the arctic, which Nicklen has been photographing for years. The NRDC is awarding Nicklen with a first-ever BioGems Visionary Award for his Arctic photography. Nicklen, born and raised on Baffin Island, Nunavut, grew up in one of the only non-Inuit families in a tiny native settlement amid the ice fields of Northern Canada. His photography book Polar Obsession captures up-close documentation of the lives of leopard seals, whales, walruses, polar bears, bearded seals, and narwhals, and gives a vivid portrait of two extraordinary, endangered ecosystems. 

Benjamin Lorr explores the world of competitive yoga and how he got sucked into an obsessive subculture. Hell-Bent: Obsession, Pain, and the Search for Something Like Transcendence in Competitive Yoga is about the athletic prodigies, wide-eyed celebrities, legitimate medical miracles, and predatory hucksters involved in competitive yoga.

Detroit-area native Mark Binelli talks about Detroit—it’s long downward spiral and its new role as a laboratory for the future of cities. In Detroit City Is the Place to Be, he goes beyond the usual portrait of crime, poverty, and ruin to show how Detroit is being re-invented as a post-industrial city becoming smaller, less segregated, greener, economically diverse, and better functioning.

Today, fewer than 7 percent of American private-sector workers belong to a union, the lowest percentage since the beginning of the 20th century. Union organizer Jane McAlevey looks at the state of the American labor movement and describes her experiences fighting the bosses and national labor leaders. In Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell): My Decade Fighting for the Labor Movement, she tells the story of a number of dramatic organizing and contract victories, and the unconventional strategies that helped achieve them, and looks at ways to revive the labor movement.

Legendary basketball coach Bobby Knight talks about his rebuttal to Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking. In The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventioal Approach to Achieving Positive Results, he explains why negative thinking will actually produce more positive results, in sports and in daily life.

Ruth Ozeki talks about her novel, A Tale for the Time Being. It connects a 16-year-old in Tokyo with a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. 

John Glassie tells the unconventional story of Athanasius Kircher, the legendary 17th-century priest-scientist whose interests ranged from optics to music to magnetism to medicine. His inventions and theories for everything made him famous across Europe. Glassie’s book A Man of Misconceptions: The Life of an Eccentric in an Age of Change traces Kircher's rise, success, and eventual fall as he attempted to come to terms with a changing world.

National Book Award–winning author Andrew Solomon tells the stories of families coping with deafness, dwarfism, Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, multiple severe disabilities, with children who are prodigies, who are conceived in rape, who become criminals, who are transgender. In Far from the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity, he looks at how these parents not only learn to deal with their exceptional children but also find profound meaning in doing so.

Florence Almozini, Program Director for BAMcinématek, and Rodney Sauer of the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, talk about Alfred Hitchcock’s nine earliest surviving works, all newly restored by theBritish Film Institute. These silent films are screened with live scores performed by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. The Hitchcock 9 is playing at BAMcinématek June 28-July 3.

Lidia Bastianich discusses her one-hour special, “Lidia Celebrates America: Freedom and Independence.” She and a few celebrity guests travel the country exploring how various cultural groups observe different symbolic events marking independence. She also shares her own personal tale of escaping from behind the Iron Curtain at age 12, outrunning bullets and dogs to cross the border. “Lidia Celebrates America: Freedom and Independence” airs June 28 at 10 pm on PBS.

Justin Davidson, New York magazine’s architecture and classical music critic, discusses the New York City waterfront and Mayor Bloomberg’s resiliency plan. He The looks at the history of the city’s relationship to the waterfront, and argues that we should double down on developing it rather than retreat. Davidson's article "Liquid City" is in the July 1 issue of New York.

After a Florida man disappeared into a sinkhole that swallowed his bedroom, many people began wondering how stable the ground beneath our feet really is. On this week's Please Explain, Randall Orndorff, Director of the USGS Eastern Geology and Paleoclimate Science Center, explains what sinkholes are, why they form, where and when they are most likely to occur and how best to prevent them or predict and prepare for them.

Director Lian Lunson talks about her documentary “Sing Me the Songs that Say I Love You: A Concert for Kate McGarrigle.” She’s joined by singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright. Rufus and Martha Wainwright honored their mother, who died in 2010, with a May 2011 concert in that included her sisters Anna and Jane McGarrigle, Jimmy Fallon, Emmylou Harris, Norah Jones, Antony Hegarty, and others. The film comebines home movie footage of the Wainwrights, archival footage, and family interviews to tell the story of Kate’s life and the songs she wrote. “Sing Me the Songs that Say I Love You” is playing at Film Forum though July 9.