Diane Rehm: On My Mind

Earlier this week Diane hosted a special edition of The Diane Rehm Book Club, her monthly series held on ZOOM in front of a live audience. This month she asked some of her favorite book lovers to join her to talk about their favorite reads of year. And they did not disappoint. Her guests were Ann Patchett, novelist and owner of Parnassus Books, Eddie Glaude Jr., professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and author of several books on race and politics, and Maureen Corrigan, book critic on NPR’s Fresh Air. She also teaches literary criticism at Georgetown University. See below for a list of each guest’s top books of the year, along with all of the titles discussed during this conversation. Maureen Corrigan’s top books of 2024: “James” by Percival Everett “Colored Television” by Danzy Senna “Long Island” by Colm Tóibín “Tell Me Everything” by Elizabeth Strout “Martyr!” by Kaveh Akbar “Creation Lake” by Rachel Kushner “Cahokia Jazz” by Francis Spufford “The God of the Woods” by Liz Moore “A Wilder Shore” by Camille Peri “The Letters of Emily Dickinson” edited by Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell Ann Patchett’s top books of 2024: “James” by Percival Everett “Martyr!” by Kaveh Akbar “Colored Television” by Danzy Senna “Sipsworth” by Simon Van Booy “Tell Me Everything” by Elizabeth Strout “Mighty Red” by Louise Erdrich “Time of the Child” by Niall Williams “An Unfinished Love Story” by Doris Kearns Goodwin “The Backyard Bird Chronicles” by Amy Tan “Hotel Balzaar” by Kate DiCamillo (middle grade book) “Water, Water: Poems” by Billy Collins Eddie Glaude Jr.’s top books of 2024: “Slaveroad” by John Edgar Wideman “Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative” by Isabella Hammad “We’re Alone” by Edwidge Danticat Other titles mentioned in the discussion: “Wide Sargasso Sea” with introduction by Edwidge Danticat “Demon Copperhead” by Barbara Kingsolver “The Dog Who Followed the Moon: An Inspirational Story with Meditations on Life, Experience the Power of Love and Sacrifice” by James Norbury “Afterlives” by Abdulrazak Gurnah “Someone Knows My Name” by Lawrence Hill “Moon Tiger” by Penelope Lively “Sandwich” by Catherine Newman “Windward Heights” by Maryse Condé “There's Always This Year” by Hanif Abdurraqib “Mothers and Sons” by Adam Haslett (publication date in January 2025) “Memorial Day” by Geraldine Brooks (publication date in February 2025) “33 Place Brugmann” by Alice Austen (publication date in March 2025) “Cloud Atlas” by David Mitchell “Independent People” by Halldor Laxness “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald “Beloved” by Toni Morrison “Sing, Unburied, Sing” by Jesmyn Ward To find out more about The Diane Rehm Book Club go to dianerehm.org/bookclub.

Donald Trump has tapped Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. They say they will cut one third of the federal budget, slash regulations, reduce the federal workforce ... and that it “will be easy!” David Fahrenthold is an investigative reporter at The New York Times and has covered government spending for years. He says there are certainly places where government can run more efficiently, and where waste and fraud can be eliminated. However, he adds, “It’s really hard to find places where you can cut a trillion or 2 trillion dollars and not drastically cut back the services people expect from the government. Fahrenthold joins Diane to talk about what the leaders of DOGE have in mind and what it will take to accomplish their goals.

For years experts have warned about a looming crisis facing the Social Security system. According to current estimates, the program will become insolvent by 2034, at which time benefits would be automatically cut. During the campaign, President-elect Trump positioned himself as an advocate of the program, which remains highly popular among voters. But economist Teresa Ghilarducci says that if you dig into his proposals, a different picture emerges. A recent analysis shows his policies would move up the date of insolvency from 11 years to 9 years. “It’s kind of a shocker,” she says. “He’s very bold in his policies.” Teresa Ghilarducci is a professor of economics at The New School and author of the new book "Work, Retire, Repeat: The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy.” She joins Diane to explain the urgency of addressing Social Security’s finances and why Trump’s proposals would make the situation worse.

For years, legendary folk singer Joan Baez wrote poems and tucked them away in notebooks and on scraps of paper. She started this decades ago, around the time memories surfaced of childhood abuse at the hands of her father. Baez says poetry was a way to explore the reasons behind her lifelong phobias, insomnia and panic attacks – and to come to terms with a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder, which for her meant she lived with several other voices in her head. Now 83, Baez has taken these musings about her life, her trauma, and her passions for nature and art, and is sharing them with the world. “When You See My Mother, Ask Her to Dance” reads like a diary in verse, and offers deep insight into the experiences and creativity of one of our nation’s most beloved folk musicians. Diane spoke to Joan Baez on Zoom in front of a live audience as part of The Diane Rehm `Book Club in August of this year. They talked about the book, as well as the recent documentary about Baez’s life, “Joan Baez: I Am a Noise.” Find out more about The Diane Rehm Book Club here: dianerehm.org/bookclub

Donald Trump has tapped Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services. It’s an appointment that has many public health experts more than a little concerned. For years Kennedy has spread misinformation about vaccines, calling into question their safety and efficacy. He has promoted controversial or debunked medical treatments. He has falsely linked antidepressants to school shootings. And he has accused the federal agencies he will oversee as having an interest in “mass poisoning the American public.” Dr. Céline Gounder is an infectious disease specialist, epidemiologist and currently the editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News. She joins Diane to separate the facts from falsehoods and outline just how much power Kennedy might have over our healthcare system.

Promises of mass deportations were a centerpiece of Donald Trump’s campaign. His fiery – and false -- rhetoric painted undocumented immigrants as murders, rapists and violent criminals. He vowed to throw them out of the country by the millions starting on day one. Last week’s appointment of Tom Homan as “border czar” and Stephen Miller as deputy chief of staff for policy send a clear signal that Trump hopes to follow through on those promises. “I think we can expect that something dramatic is likely coming,” says Nick Miroff. He covers immigration enforcement and the department of homeland security for The Washington Post. Miroff joins Diane to explain whether Trump can put his words into action and just how much his policies could transform the nation’s immigration system.

During the run up to the election, Donald Trump made big promises about immigration, about the economy, about remaking the bureaucracy of the United States government. And now it seems he will get a chance to follow through on those promises. “This is a much broader rejection than a rejection of Biden and by extension Harris,” says Norman Ornstein, emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “It is a rejection of a larger sense of who has been running the country, all the elites.” Few know the workings of the U.S. government as well as Ornstein and though he says “the elites” (himself included) have much to learn from the extent of Trump’s victory, he warns that people might not understand what they have gotten themselves into. “For a lot of Americans who think that you can get rid of the bureaucracy, get rid of government and all will be fine," he say Ornstein, "they’re going to discover what it does in terms of disruption to their daily lives.” Ornstein joins Diane to make sense of what we saw on Tuesday – and what a Trump second term will look like.

The term “fascist” has been lobbed at Donald Trump since he entered the race for president in 2015 with talk of Mexican rapists and drug dealers. Now the label has become central to the argument against Trump in the closing days of this year’s election. It’s been used to describe him by his former chief of staff John Kelly, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley and Vice President Kamala Harris. Jason Stanley is a philosophy professor at Yale University. He’s the author of the 2018 book How Fascism Works. His latest is Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. He joins Diane to talk about what fascism is and why voters should care.

Four years ago, Donald Trump spread the lie that Democrats stole the election. He filed lawsuits, led protests and spearheaded misinformation campaigns in an attempt to overturn the result. Since then, Trump and his allies have been laying the groundwork to question this year’s contest if the numbers don’t go his way. In other words, a Stop the Steal 2.0. “I’m nervous,” says Rick Hasen, a leading expert on election law and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA. “But I’m not as nervous as I was in 2020.” Hasen says the chaos created by Trump’s Big Lie taught the country’s lawmakers and election officials valuable lessons about how to secure the vote. He joins Diane to explain why he feels this year’s election will, indeed, be free and fair.

Does Kamala Harris have a Black voter problem? For nearly four decades Black voters have been among the most consistent voting bloc for Democrats. Yet recent polling suggests that support may not be quite as reliable as it was in the past, particularly among Black men. This week Harris made a push to stop the bleeding, talking to Black radio hosts and announcing policy proposals directly targeting the Black community. “The path to victory for the Harris campaign has always been boosting turnout among base voters,” says Maya King, politics reporter with the New York Times. And because the race for president is so close, she adds, “if she’s underperforming with any corner of that bloc it is sort of an emergency situation.” Maya King joins Diane to talk about Harris’s current focus on Black voters and whether it will work.

It’s been thirty years since Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act. This set of laws revolutionized the way we think about – and deal with – abuse between intimate partners. While advocates celebrate progress made, they worry we might be starting to head in the wrong direction. A recent study showed reduced access to reproductive care can increase risk for women in abusive relationships. Meanwhile, conservatives like vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance have spoken out against no-fault divorce, a proven tool for women to leave potentially dangerous marriages. Rachel Louise Snyder is a journalist who has covered the issue of domestic violence for years. Her 2019 book “No Visible Bruises” looked at the question of when abuse becomes not just dangerous, but deadly. Snyder joins Diane to take stock of progress made over the last three decades to address intimate partner violence, and the work left to do.

Dr. Francis Collins has dedicated his life to easing human suffering – and has often succeeded. He made his mark as the man who led the team that mapped the human genome, unlocking a new world of possibilities in medicine. He went on to head the National Institutes of Health under three different presidents. Collins says he was always guided by an optimism based in his belief in science and his evangelical Christian faith. But that optimistic view of society was shaken during the Covid-19 crisis as he saw people reject a lifesaving vaccine based on profound mistrust. Since then, Collins has embarked on a journey to understand how our divisions became so deep – and how we can bridge them. His new book is titled The Road To Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, And Trust.

The Louisiana gubernatorial election of 1872 might not take up prime real estate in most U.S. history books, but it holds the title as the deadliest the country has ever seen. In the late 1860s, a new South was emerging from the wreckage of the Civil War. The passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments promised an era of multiracial equality in the region. As the 1870s began, white Southern resistance was on the rise and the nation’s political parties became deeply divided. Then came the election of 1872. Though tensions flared throughout the South, in Louisiana chaos ensued – two governors claimed office, warfare broke out in the streets of New Orleans, and hundreds were killed in political violence. Dana Bash, CNN anchor and chief political commentator, says these events changed the course of politics in our country -- and provide a cautionary tale for today. She and her co-writer David Fisher tell the story in a new book titled “America’s Deadliest Election.”

In poll after poll voters say economic issues top their concerns when it comes to this year’s vote. They worry about inflation, the price of housing, whether their family can afford the bill at the grocery store. “Americans are going to want to know how each candidate will help them in their personal situations,” says Damian Paletta. He leads The Wall Street Journal’s coverage of Washington and says that the economy is strong, but on shaky ground, which has complicated Kamala Harris and Donald Trump's messaging around the economy and issues like inflation and taxes. Paletta joins Diane to look at the economic proposals of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, and break down what they would mean for our country – and your pocketbook.

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris met on stage for their first, and likely only, debate of the campaign Tuesday night, just a week before early voting kicks off in Pennsylvania, one of the most critical battleground states of the election. Over an hour and a half Harris needled Trump on everything from crowd sizes to getting “fired” by the American people. With each jab the former president seemed to become more enraged, his anger distracting him from his own talking points and allowing Harris to set the agenda. Headlines across the country declared a clear victory for Harris and Trump now says that he will not debate her again. But how much will all this matter at the polls? The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser joins Diane to help answer that question.

Donald Trump began his political career with demands to see Barack Obama’s birth certificate, based on the false claim that the he had been born outside of the United States. In other words, a lie. The former president concluded his term in office with an even bigger lie, namely that the 2020 election was rigged. In between, Trump fibbed thousands of times about things big and small. And keeping track of these mistruths and exaggerations were political fact-checkers, journalists whose job it is to call out not only Donald Trump’s lies – but the lies all politicians tell. Glenn Kessler has been the chief writer and editor of the Fact Checker column for The Washington Post since 2011. In it he examines the “truth behind the rhetoric.” Kessler joined Diane to talk about how his job has changed since Donald Trump entered politics and the challenges of covering the 2024 presidential election.

If you’re a reader of the New York Times – or a lover of books – you might know about the paper’s project this summer counting down the top hundred books of the century so far. Number one on the list? “My Brilliant Friend” by Elena Ferrante. It is the first of four novels that tell the story of the friendship between Lila and Elena, two working class girls growing up in post-World War II Naples. In 2018 HBO adapted the series for television. Diane hosted a discussion of “My Brilliant Friend” as part of her Readers Review series back in 2015 on The Diane Rehm Show. She and her guests dug into the characters, the setting, and the mystery surrounding the author’s identity. Diane's guests included Maureen Corrigan, book critic for NPR's Fresh Air, and The Nicky and Jamie Grant Distinguished Professor of the Practice in Literary Criticism at Georgetown University; Louis Bayard Author, "Roosevelt's Beast." His other books include "The Pale Blue Eye," "The School of Night" and "Mr. Timothy," a New York Times Notable Book. He teaches fiction writing at The George Washington University; and Professor of contemporary Italian culture, Georgetown University; author of "The Tigress in the Snow: Motherhood and Literature in Twentieth-Century Italy" and of the novel "Un Paese Di Carta."

Kamala Harris currently leads Donald Trump in national polls by more than 3 percentage points according to the website 538. But if there’s one thing that recent elections have taught us, it is that a victory in the popular vote does not guarantee a spot in the oval office. This is, of course, thanks to the Electoral College. In two of the last six elections, more Americans punched their ballots for the eventual losers than the men who went on to claim the presidency. And the same could happen again this year. “My opinion is that it is a fundamentally unfair system because of the way it erases so many millions of Americans’ votes,” says Jesse Wegman, a member of the editorial board of the New York Times. In 2020 Wegman joined Diane to talk about his book, “Let the People Pick the President,” and made his case for abolishing the Electoral College. With the 2024 election less than 75 days away, we revisit their conversation.

If you count yourself among the majority of Americans who own at least one pet, you might have noticed that your vet bill is quite a bit bigger than it once was. In fact, over the last decade the cost of pet care has risen by more than 60%. Helaine Olen is a journalist who has written about personal finance and the financial industry for years. In 2020, her aging dog fell ill, and she found herself shelling out big bucks to keep her beloved pup alive. She knew she wasn’t the only one who was willing to open her wallet in a big way for her furry friend and started looking into the big business of veterinary care. What she found was an industry going through a major shift, with a flood of private equity investment and corporate consolidation. Olen joins Diane to discuss what she says can be called the era of Big Vet.

Dr. Anthony Fauci became a household name during the Covid-19 pandemic. To many, he was a hero for his efforts to relay potentially lifesaving information. But he also found himself at the center of conspiracy theories -- and became the target of a vitriolic political backlash. He says of the experience that it was “very painful and tragic to see people make decisions that led to their detriment.” Dr. Fauci served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022. He has advised seven presidents, guiding the nation’s response to threats like Zika, Ebola, AIDS, and Anthrax. His work on a 2003 plan to address the global HIV/AIDS crisis helped save more than twenty-five million lives. Dr. Fauci’s new memoir is titled “On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service”. He joins Diane to talk about his career in public health and share his thoughts on the threats ahead.