NPR's Book of the Day

PBS Newshour co-anchor Geoff Bennett is out with a new book that presents portraits of Black artists who shaped comedy. Black Out Loud is a history that starts with vaudeville and runs through the ‘90s, when sitcoms like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, In Living Color and Family Matters carried the responsibility of representing a varied Black experience. In today’s episode, Bennett speaks with NPR’s Scott Simon about vaudeville and minstrelsy as the DNA of Black comedic performance, the impact of Amos ‘n’ Andy, and comedians like Bert Williams, Richard Pryor and Dave Chappelle.

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In Project Hail Mary, amateur astronaut Ryland Grace must travel light years from Earth to save humanity from a dying Sun. The stakes are high, to say the least. But author Andy Weir was intentional about centering hope in his bestselling novel, which inspired the recent blockbuster film starring Ryan Gosling. In today’s episode, Andy Weir joins Here and Now’s Indira Lakshmanan to discuss his creative world-building process, and why he remains optimistic about our ability to collaborate in the face of existential threats.

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Singer-songwriter David Archuleta and writer Lindy West are both out with memoirs that deal with letting go of the past. First, Archuleta was the runner-up on the seventh season of American Idol. Underneath that success, he struggled privately with his queer identity and his relationship to the Mormon church. In today’s episode, he talks with Here & Now’s Indira Lakshmanan about his new memoir Devout. Then, Lindy West tells NPR’s Leila Fadel about Adult Braces, the cross-country road trip that reset the Shrill writer’s life, and how she opened herself to the idea of a non-monogamous marriage.

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Next month, tech giant Apple will turn 50, marking five decades since Steve Jobs and his co-founders set out to put powerful technology in the hands of everyday people. David Pogue joined NPR’s Michel Martin for a conversation about his new book Apple: The First 50 Years – and said he sees the company’s story as one of “focus.” In today’s episode, Martin and the CBS News correspondent discuss Steve Jobs as a Rorschach test, Jobs’ relationship with Steve Wozniak and Apple’s lesser-known third founder, Ronald Wayne, and a time when the company faced bankruptcy.

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The narrator in Black Bag is an unnamed and mostly unemployed actor until a professor offers him the starring role in an experiment. The narrator is asked to zip himself in a black bag and sit in the back of a lecture theater. Luke Kennard’s new novel is based on an experiment from 1967, in which a professor set out to explore “the mere-exposure effect.” In today’s episode, Kennard talks with NPR’s Scott Simon about why the protagonist takes up this non-role – and what the experiment reveals about masculinity.

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