The Roundtable

  From the domestication of the bird nearly ten thousand years ago to its current status as our go-to meat, the history of this seemingly commonplace bird is anything but ordinary.

How did chicken achieve the culinary ubiquity it enjoys today? It’s hard to imagine, but there was a point in history, not terribly long ago, that individual people each consumed less than ten pounds of chicken per year. Today, those numbers are strikingly different: we consumer nearly twenty-five times as much chicken as our great-grandparents did.

Collectively, Americans devour 73.1 million pounds of chicken in a day, close to 8.6 billion birds per year. How did chicken rise from near-invisibility to being in seemingly "every pot," as per Herbert Hoover's famous promise?

Emelyn Rude explores this phenomenon in Tastes Like Chicken.

John Nixon, the former CIA analyst who conducted the first prolonged interrogation of Saddam Hussein after his capture by U.S. forces, speaks publicly for the first time about this historic episode in his new book: Debriefing the President: The Interrogation Of Saddam Hussein.

Nixon offers not only an intimate and personal portrait of the Iraqi dictator, but new revelations about what he learned from Saddam and in his subsequent briefings of President George W. Bush and top administration officials—including Vice President Dick Cheney, CIA Director George Tenet, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. 

Nixon also provides fresh, deeply informed perspectives on why U.S. policies in Iraq and the broader Middle East have failed so badly, and why the CIA and other parts of our intelligence establishment urgently require major reform. 

    This week's Book Picks  come from Phil Lewis of The Bennington Bookshop.

List:
The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Bailey
Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen
Two Days Gone by Randall Silvis (paperback out 1/10)
Exit West by Moshin Hamid (avail in March)
The Fact of a Body by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich (avail in May)
A Divided Spy by Charles Cumming (avail in February)
The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen (avail in February)

The president-elect lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes.

In today’s Congressional Corner, Massachusetts Congressman Richard Neal concludes his conversation with WAMC’s Alan Chartock. 

Tens of thousands of men and women have left comfortable, privileged lives to join the Islamic State and kill for it. To them, its violence is beautiful and holy, and the caliphate a fulfillment of prophecy and the only place on earth where they can live and die as Muslims.

The new book - The Way of the Strangers - is an intimate journey into the minds of the Islamic State’s true believers. From the streets of Cairo to the mosques of London, Journalist Graeme Wood interviews supporters, recruiters, and sympathizers of the group.

Through character study and analysis, Wood provides a look at a movement that has inspired so many people to abandon or uproot their families. Many seek death—and they will be the terror threat of the next decade, as they strike back against the countries fighting their caliphate.

Graeme Wood is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and he teaches in the political science department at Yale University. His new book is: The Way of the Strangers. 

    The Roundtable Panel: a daily open discussion of issues in the news and beyond.

Today's panelists are WAMC's Alan Chartock, Associate Editor of the Times Union Mike Spain, and Director of the Journalism Program at the University at Albany Rosemary Armao.

When feminist writer Susan Faludi learned that her 76-year-old father ― long estranged and living in Hungary ― had undergone sex reassignment surgery, she was set on an investigation that would turn personal and urgent.

How was this new parent who identified as “a complete woman now” connected to the silent, explosive, and ultimately violent father she had known, the photographer who’d built his career on the alteration of images?

  From the beloved host and creator of NPR’s All Songs Considered and Tiny Desk Concerts comes an essential oral history of modern music, told in the voices of iconic and up-and-coming musicians, including Dave Grohl, Jimmy Page, Michael Stipe, Carrie Brownstein, Smokey Robinson, and Jeff Tweedy, among others—published in association with NPR Music.

Is there a unforgettable song that changed your life?

NPR’s renowned music authority Bob Boilen posed this question to some of today’s best-loved musical legends and rising stars.

A local member of Congress is taking a leadership position on the House Ways and Means Committee.

In today’s Congressional Corner, Massachusetts Congressman Richard Neal continues his conversation with WAMC’s Alan Chartock. 

In 1932, as her husband assumed the presidency, Eleanor Roosevelt entered the claustrophobic, duty-bound existence of the First Lady with dread. By that time, she had put her deep disappointment in her marriage behind her and developed an independent life—now threatened by the public role she would be forced to play. A lifeline came to her in the form of a feisty campaign reporter for the Associated Press: Lorena Hickok. Over the next thirty years, until Eleanor’s death, the two women carried on an extraordinary relationship: They were, at different points, lovers, confidantes, professional advisors, and caring friends.

Susan Quinn has written a book about their unique relationship entitled Eleanor and Hick: The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady. 

Susan Quinn is the author of Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art Out of Desperate Times and Marie Curie: A Life, among other books. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, and other publications. She is the former president of PEN New England.

The Roundtable Panel: a daily open discussion of issues in the news and beyond.

Today's panelists are WAMC’s Alan Chartock, Director of the Journalism Program at the University at Albany Rosemary Armao, Author and Activist Barbara Smith.

Will Hermes is a Contributing Editor and Senior Critic at Rolling Stone and the author of Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever.

He joins us with his selections for the best music of 2016.

David Bowie - “Blackstar” - Blackstar
Leonard Cohen - “You Want it Darker” - You Want It Darker
Solange - “Cranes in the Sky” - A Seat at the Table
Bon Iver - “33 “GOD”’ - 22, A Million
Nas, Dave East, Lin-Manuel Miranda & Aloe Blacc - “Wrote My Way Out” - The Hamilton MIxtape
Lori McKenna - “Giving up on Your Hometown” - The Bird & the Rifle
Miranda Lambert - “Ugly Lights” - The Weight of These Wings
Blood Orange - “Love Ya” - Blood Orange
ANOHNI - “Drone Bomb Me” - HOPELESSNESS
Angel Olsen - “Shut Up Kiss Me” - MY WOMAN
Wilco - “Normal American Kids” - Schmilco
The Roots (feat. Common & Ingrid Michaelson) - “Who Tells Your Story” - The Hamilton Mixtape

The hangover from the election hasn’t gone away for many Democrats.

In today’s Congressional Corner, Massachusetts Congressman Richard Neal tells WAMC’s Alan Chartock that 2016 was a wacky election year. 

      The Roundtable Panel: a daily open discussion of issues in the news and beyond.

Today's panelists are WAMC's Alan Chartock, Director of the Journalism Program at the University at Albany Rosemary Armao, and political consultant and lobbyist, Libby Post.

  On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Over the course of minutes, they would kill twelve students and a teacher and wound twenty-four others before taking their own lives.

For the last sixteen years, Sue Klebold, Dylan’s mother, has lived with the indescribable grief and shame of that day. How could her child, the promising young man she had loved and raised, be responsible for such horror? And how, as his mother, had she not known something was wrong? Were there subtle signs she had missed? What, if anything, could she have done differently?

These are questions that Klebold has grappled with every day since the Columbine tragedy. In A Mother’s Reckoning, she chronicles with unflinching honesty her journey as a mother trying to come to terms with the incomprehensible.

This is the swan song for a popular member of Congress from our region.

In today’s Congressional Corner, retiring New York Representative Chris Gibson bids WAMC’s Alan Chartock farewell. 

Saratoga Arts Presents First Night 2017: A Night of Magic! on  Saturday, December 31st 2016: 6pm to midnight.

As one of the oldest and largest First Night celebrations in the country, First Night presents over seventy regional and touring performing groups in thirty venues throughout Historic Downtown Saratoga Springs. 

Starting with the 5k roadrace at Skidmore College at 5:30pm, culminating with the fireworks in Congress Park at midnight and packed full of live music, dance, and comedy. 

Here to tell us more Alix Jones, Director of First Night Saratoga with Saratoga Arts and First Night headliners SIRSY, the rock and soul duo made up for Melanie Krahmer and Rich Libutti.

  The Roundtable Panel: a daily open discussion of issues in the news and beyond.

Today's panelists are WAMC’s Alan Chartock, Director of the Journalism Program at the University at Albany Rosemary Armao and Communications Specialist Theresa Bourgeois.

  Rob Burnett spent 30 years working for David Letterman, rising from intern to executive producer, before directing Paul Rudd and Selena Gomez in the new Netflix release The Fundamentals of Caring.

Rob Burnett joins us this morning to talk about the film, his life at Letterman’s side and other adventures in television.

Elizabeth Lesser, cofounder of Omega Institute and the Omega Women's Leadership Center, is author of The Seeker's Guide and Broken Open.

Her new memoir is Marrow, a visceral and profound memoir of two sisters who, in the face of a bone marrow transplant—one the donor and one the recipient—begin a quest for acceptance, authenticity, and most of all, love.

It can be tough to change the system from within.

In today’s Congressional Corner, retiring New York Representative Chris Gibson tells WAMC’s Alan Chartock what he thinks are Washington’s big problems. 

    James Conrad from The Golden Notebook in Woodstock, NY joins us with this week's Book Picks.

List:
How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS by David France
When We Rise: My Life in the Movement by Cleve Jones
Finishing School: The Happy Ending to That Writing Project You Can't Seem to Get Done by Cary Tennis and Danelle Morton
Rumi's Secret: The Life of the Sufi Poet of Love by Brad Gooch
Victoria the Queen by Julia Baird
Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thein

  The Roundtable Panel: a daily open discussion of issues in the news and beyond.

Today's panelists are WAMC's Alan Chartock, Associate Editor of the Times Union Mike Spain, and Director of the Journalism Program at the University at Albany Rosemary Armao.

  Jeanne Sauvage is a blogger, baker, and author who lives with her husband and daughter in Seattle, Washington.

She has two baking books to check out, Gluten-Free Baking for the Holidays: 60 Recipes for Traditional Festive Treatsand her new book Gluten-Free Wish List: Sweet and Savory Treats You've Missed the Most.

Matt Haig is a British author for children and adults. His memoir Reasons to Stay Alive was a number one bestseller, staying in the British top ten for 46 weeks. His children's book A Boy Called Christmas was a runaway hit in his own country and is translated in over 25 languages.

We also speak with him about Reasons to Stay Alive - his memoir about how he came through crisis, triumphed over an illness that almost destroyed him and learned to live again.