Today, Explained

Amanda Ripley says to survive a disaster, that's not all you need. She wrote about it in her book, The Unthinkable, Who Survives When a Disaster Strikes and Why?

I learned from covering disasters as a reporter that survivors have these incredible insights into what it actually feels like physically, socially, mentally to go through a disaster.

A young hobbit embarks on a journey through a magical but dangerous world in The Lord of the Rings, one of six holiday movies we'll review this week.

Tolkien's tale of good people who band together against the Dark Lord and his minions has never been more timely than in our troubled age.

They're about these peaceful towns that are being menaced by this faceless, almost animalistic other.

Earlier interpretations of The Lord of the Rings had really been focused on the idea that these are books about the cost of war. They're focused so heavily on the trauma of war.

But then when you read deeper and deeper and you really begin to understand the underlying ethos of the work, you see that, yes, it is a tale of good versus evil, but it's also a tale of how corruptible good can be. Good gets corrupted when it adopts evil's tools to defeat evil.

Rick Perlstein, author of Nixon Land and Reagan Land.

Madeline Orr, Sport Ecology, University of Toronto. She's also just published a book. It's titled Warming Up, How Climate Change is Changing Sports. Find it wherever you find your books.

to write All-Star Superman kind of defy the forces of entropy, because I feel that if anything survives in my career, it will be that one book.

All-Star Superman is widely regarded by the Superman heads out there as the GOAT, the greatest Superman comic series ever written, ever, in like almost 90 years of Superman.

Basically, it's a part of Lex Luthor's scheme. He sends Superman to the sun, and the solar radiation overcharges Superman's cells, so they begin to decay and die. So it's basically Superman's dying of cancer.

And the idea of what would this man do in the last 12 months of his life to leave the Earth a better place than he found it.

And by the way, I'd include Donald Trump's prior AGs, Bill Barr, who, by the way, my first book is a criticism of Bill Barr's tenure as Trump's AG called Hatchet Man.

Do you remember that book? It was like a bestselling book. I don't know when I was growing up. So 80s, 90s. And it basically is the same thing with a different, you know, more dire message.

Have you seen The Martian?

I'm Anna Fifield. I am a journalist and I wrote a book called The Great Successor. The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong-un.

Anna Fifield. Her book is called The Great Successor, The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong-un.

Those specific ideas in the episode on how to do degrowth came from Jason Hickel's provocative book, Less is More, How Degrowth Will Save the World.

I actually stopped eating meat after reading a couple of these compelling degrowth books.

The second book and the second film are both called The Two Towers, which had some pretty unfortunate echoes.

Jordan Peele with Get Out, Ari Aster with Hereditary, Midsommar, of course, Robert Eggers, you know, and Zach Craig figure.

Jordan Peele with Get Out, Ari Aster with Hereditary, Midsommar, of course, Robert Eggers, you know, and Zach Craig figure.

He became a philosopher, wrote a book called The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759, moved to France, became a tutor.

It happened in the late 90s after Wexner read this book by the director Sidney Lumet called Making Movies.

Mr. Roth is the author of 24 novels, including Fort Noy's Complaint and American Pastoral.

Philosopher Alexandra Plakias wants you to know you're not awkward. I don't think people are awkward. I think situations are awkward. So in that sense, awkwardness is not a personal problem. It's an us problem.

Join me for a conversation with someone who literally wrote the book on awkwardness.