The On The Bookshelf Podcast

interview (short) with Brendan Borrell on the COVID vaccine

How did we get three different ones inside of a year? a top researcher explains the unique process and the pre-work on coronaviruses.

interview--Jane Kirkpatrick brings a novelized bio of a culture pioneer

Natalie Curtis was a real professional musician who went West in 1903 for her mental and physical health after a breakdown. There she discovered the incredible musicality of Native American songs, which were forbidden to be sung by the US Code of the Indian Affairs Department. Ms. Curtis defied their disdain of Indian culture and recorded the songs on an Edison cylinder machine, and approached her uncle's good friend, President Theodore Roosevelt, who supported her interest as an anthropologist!

interview--Dr. Melanie Joy looks at why we eat some animals but not all

Her book is "Why we love dogs, eat pigs and wear cows", an introduction to what she calls "varnish", the culture of eating animals. She is particularly upset by the mass slaughterhouse methods of dispatching pigs, cows and chickens, as well as the ways some animals are maimed and stuffed with antibiotics for rapid growth.

interview--expert gardener tells of a famous author‘s gardens

In "Unearthing the Secret Garden", Marta McDowell shares the three gardens which inspired a popular author from a century ago, Frances Hodgson Burnett. Her two biggest hits were "Little Lord Fauntleroy" and "The Secret Garden".

interview-delightful and insightful novel about a women‘s knitting circle

When the pastor tells the Prayer Shawl kittens Club they must move out of the church chapel and find a place to meet while it's being renovated, the leader is furious. Off they go to a local coffee shop. And a wonderful thing happens: they begin to meet people they would never normally meet, pray for them and care for them. When they are forced to move by a weirdly-unpleasant manager, their new location makes them even more visible and in a better location to minister to the young people who normally would not feel welcome around "churchy people". To the delight of the pastor (who prayed this would happen) and the knitters (who didn't expect it but are pleased at the outreach), it results in new young visitors to their dying congregation. Set at Christmas time in a  busy mall, it's a powerful story of redemption and restoration.