Faith Middleton Show - RSS/Podcast

Why do the smartest students often do poorly on standardized tests? Why did you tank that interview or miss that golf swing when you should have had it in the bag? Why do you mess up when it matters the most—and how can you perform your best instead? It happens to all of us. You’ve prepared for days, weeks, even years for the big day when you will finally show your stuff—in academics, in your c...

As a follow up to our very popular 2010 show, Bishop John Shelby Spong returns for the full hour. For two hundred years, scholars have been analyzing one of the most important books ever written—the Bible—and overturning much of what we once thought we knew. Everyday Christians, however, are not privy to this deeper conversation. Bishop Spong's Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World ta...

The dog days of summer have arrived, kids are heading back to school, and have we got an hour of SIMPLE cooking planned for you: Food Schmooze all-star, and six-time James Beard Award-winner, James Peterson is back to talk about Kitchen Simple: Essential Recipes for Everyday Cooking. And Nina Simonds returns with her cookbook, Simple Asian Meals.

The linguist John McWhorter joins us to talk about his book What Language Is (And What It Isn't, and What It Could Be). From Standard English to Black English; obscure tongues only spoken by a few thousand people in the world to the big ones like Mandarin—What Language Is celebrates the history and curiosities of languages around the world and smashes our assumptions about "correct" grammar. Pl...

The Book Show gang joins Faith with recommendations in all categories.

Louise Fili has been an inspiration for designers around the world since the 1980s, when she raised the bar on book cover design, creating close to two thousand jackets as art director for Pantheon Books. In 1989 Fili founded her own graphic design studio, Louise Fili Ltd, and branched out into the fields of restaurant and food packaging design. Her lavish and elegant typography, often hand dra...

In his new book, James Gustave Speth looks unsparingly at the sea of troubles in which the United States now finds itself, charts a course through the discouragement and despair commonly felt today, and envisions what he calls America the Possible, an attractive and plausible future that we can still realize. The book identifies a dozen features of the American political economy—the country's b...

Recipes galore! Jennifer Armentrout, editor of Fine Cooking magazine, has some great ideas for using what's fresh in the markets now. And Katherine Alford tells you how to make some delicious meals from her new cookbook 1,000 Easy Recipes.

In a climate of culture wars and economic uncertainty, the media have often reduced America to a simplistic schism between red and blue states. In response to that oversimplification, journalist Dante Chinni teamed up with political geographer James Gimpel, using on-the-ground reporting and statistical analysis to get past generalizations and probe American communities in depth. Looking at the...

On this fresh edition of The Food Schmooze, we’ll look at Pam Powell’s Salad Days: Recipes for Delicious Organic Salads and Dressings for Every Season. And Food Schmooze all-star Jacques Pépin joins us to discuss Essential Pepin.

If you've ever read a book on an e-reader, unleashed your inner rock star playing Guitar Hero, built a robot with LEGO Mindstorms, or ridden in a vehicle with child-safe air bags, then you've experienced first hand just a few of the astounding innovations that have come out of the MIT Media Lab over the past 25 years. We'll look at the transformative innovations that these digital magicians hav...

One of the world's most beautiful endangered species, butterflies are as lucrative as gorillas, pandas, and rhinos on the black market. In this cutthroat $200 million business, no one was more successful—or posed a greater ecological danger—than Yoshi Kojima. Jessica Speart’s Winged Obsession covers the pursuit of the world’s most notorious butterfly smuggler. Speart is our guest. ...

The world’s most popular astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, joins us. Plus a look at Secret Sex Lives, Suzy Spencer’s year on the fringes of American sexuality.

At every restaurant, for every lunch and dinner service, there’s a staff meal. We’ll talk to Marissa Guggiana about Off the Menu, her cookbook of staff meals from small plates to multi-course extravaganzas. Plus, glorious recipes without gluten or lactose from The Intolerant Gourmet.

In a study by the UCLA Sloan Center on Everyday Lives and Families, researchers tracked the daily lives of 32 dualworker middle class Los Angeles families between 2001 and 2004. The results are startling, and enlightening. Called "the most unusually voyeuristic anthropology study ever conducted" by The New York Times, Fast-Forward Family shines light on a variety of issues that face American fa...