American Scandal

If you'd like to learn more about the Pentagon Papers, we recommend the book, Secrets, a memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg.

If you'd like to learn more about The Pentagon Papers, we recommend the book Secrets, a memoir of Vietnam and The Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg.

The sort of the original threat and structural threat is that when the river was divided up by the states that depend on it, the scientists thought that there was more water in it than there actually is.

And so there was an overestimate of how much water is in it. And since then, the more direct threat right now is climate change.

People focus on Las Vegas because of all the cities that depend on the Colorado River. It's the closest. It's right there. Right. You know, it's very close to Lake Mead and the Colorado River.

But it's not. It's like, you know, you could get rid of those fountains in that lake and put it back in Lake Mead and the water level would rise by an amount you couldn't measure. It would be a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of an inch.

Whereas the states that draw water from it take huge amounts and measured in feet, tens of feet every year.

In the next episode, I speak with David Owen, the author of Where the Water Goes, Life and Death Along the Colorado River.

If you'd like to learn more about Theranos, we recommend the book Bad Blood, Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Kerryrew.

If you'd like to learn more about Theranos, we recommend the book, Bad Blood, Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Kerry.

If you'd like to learn more about Joseph McCarthy and the era of McCarthyism, we recommend the books Demagogue by Larry Tye and The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy by Thomas C Reeves.

I wrote a book, Malcolm X, the FBI file. And looking through the FBI files, the FBI was not really that interested in the nation of Islam. They saw it as a kind of a religious cult.

There really isn't very much in the FBI files about Malcolm until about 62, 63, as he begins to see that he wants to play a leadership role in the expanding civil rights struggle. That gains him a lot more attention.

If you'd like to learn more about payola, we recommend the book Stiffed, A True Story of MCA, The Music Business, and the Mafia by William Nodal-Sare.

She was already on book number two in the Wrong Never Felt So Right series, and she was determined to get through all five books by the end of her trip.

Every book was more or less the same. Burley, former Navy SEAL, comes to the rescue of beautiful young woman on the run from her dangerous husband.

It was an odd choice of reading for a honeymoon. But away from the beaches of Croatia, back home in Portland, Oregon, Nicole was a deputy district attorney.

It was a little bit meta in terms of what we were dealing with. Her books were packed with details borrowed from their own lives as a local Portland chef and a romance novelist, details that the DAs had no other way to get their hands on.

I wasn't so sure there would truly be anything, but it was sort of in the back of my mind, what if something similar to this has played out in one of her novels and it's all written right there for us to find.

Dark Side of Fortune by Margaret Leslie Davis and Teapot Dome by Burl Noggle.

Dark Side of Fortune by Margaret Leslie Davis and Teapot Dome by Burl Noggle.

Another of the titles that made the list was The Wager by David Graham, a remarkable piece of historical nonfiction that reads just like a thriller.

It was one of the favorites this year from my history-themed book club The Age of Exploration, Please Stop.

And when people I talk to were very close to particular leaders, they'll talk to me about the books that were on their shelf, like books about Hitler, books about Mao Tse Tung, books about social psychology, wanting to learn how to control people en masse.

Other great titles on the list include Michelle Obama's The Light podcast featuring the former first lady in must-listen conversations with iconic guests like Oprah Winfrey, Tyler Perry and Conan O'Brien.