Ideas Festival Emory Podcast

Today's episode is a live recording from Emory University's Performing Arts Studio, captured on June 3, 2026. We're honored to share a conversation between scholar, author, and public intellectual Eddie Glaude Jr. and historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar.
Their discussion centers on Glaude's new book, America, USA, a searching examination of the stories Americans tell about themselves—and the realities those stories often obscure. Drawing on history, politics, culture, and personal reflection, Glaude invites readers to confront the tensions between the nation's democratic ideals and its lived experience.
In conversation with Erica Armstrong Dunbar, one of the country's leading historians of race, gender, and American life, Glaude explores questions of identity, belonging, memory, and citizenship. Together, they consider what it means to love a country honestly, how history shapes the present, and why confronting difficult truths remains essential to the work of democracy.

In this episode Steve Carse, founder of King of Pops and author of Work Is Fun—talks about entrepreneurship, creativity, and building a business culture rooted in joy and purpose. Reflecting on the unlikely rise of King of Pops from a single pushcart to a beloved community brand, Carse explores the role of optimism, experimentation, and human connection in meaningful work. Rather than treating art as a luxury or add-on, Chris’s work positions creativity as a vital public health resource, demonstrating how cultural participation can foster connection, resilience, and a deeper sense of belonging.

Today’s episode is a live recording featuring bestselling author Patrick Radden Keefe in conversation with journalist and host Virginia Prescott from Glenn Memorial Auditorium on Emory’s campus.
Keefe’s latest book, London Falling, is a gripping work of narrative nonfiction that begins with a devastating loss—the death of a nineteen-year-old—and unfolds into a complex investigation of identity, deception, and the hidden networks operating beneath London’s polished exterior. As a family searches for answers, the story raises urgent questions about truth and the ways we construct—and conceal—our lives.
Known for his meticulous reporting and propulsive storytelling, Keefe brings us into a world where grief collides with global crime, and where the search for understanding becomes a powerful act of love.

Recorded live at the Rialto Center for the Arts in Atlanta on February 22, 2026, this episode features novelist Tayari Jones in conversation with playwright and essayist Pearl Cleage about Jones’s new novel, Kin.
What began as a different contracted project became a deeply personal story about friendship, motherlessness, ambition, and the emotional inheritance passed between generations of Black women. Set in mid-century Atlanta, Kin follows two girls whose lives take very different paths—one toward respectability and upward mobility, the other toward a search for her absent mother—while their bond endures.
Jones and Cleage discuss creative risk, the pull between writing for a contract and writing from the heart, the specificity of Atlanta as both setting and character, and the ongoing questions of literary recognition and legacy. Thoughtful and candid, this live conversation explores what it means to tell the stories that insist on being told.

In this episode of the Ideas Festival Emory podcast, Maya Kroth interviews Chris Appleton, founder of Art Pharmacy. discusses the growing mental health and loneliness crises and explains how social prescribing—connecting people to arts and cultural experiences as part of healthcare—can serve as a powerful, evidence-based intervention. Drawing on personal experience, emerging clinical data, and real-world success stories, Appleton makes the case for creativity as a vital public health resource, one that fosters connection, resilience, and whole-person health while addressing gaps in the U.S. healthcare system.

In this episode of the Ideas Festival Emory podcast, host Maya Kroth speaks with Anne Basting, founder of TimeSlips, about creativity, aging, and the power of storytelling to foster connection and dignity. Drawing on Bastings’ pioneering work using imaginative engagement with people living with dementia, the conversation explores how creative expression can transform care, challenge assumptions about aging, and strengthen our capacity for empathy. Produced by the Center for Public Scholarship and Engagement and rooted in Emory University’s Ideas Festival, this episode invites listeners to consider how imagination can be a practical, humane tool for building more inclusive and compassionate communities.