Dave Davies

Senior reporter for WHYY, contributor to NPR

Dave Davies appears in the following:

Alexander Vindman, Key Witness To Trump Impeachment, Shares His 'American Story'

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

The retired Army officer who testified about President Trump's call to the president of Ukraine, talks about the experience and the price he paid. Vindman's new memoir is Here, Right Matters.

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'Fallout' Tells The Story Of The Journalist Who Exposed The 'Hiroshima Cover-Up'

Friday, August 06, 2021

Lesley M.M. Blume's book tells the story of John Hersey, whose on-the-ground reporting in Hiroshima, Japan, exposed the world to the devastation of nuclear weapons. Originally broadcast Aug. 19, 2020.

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Osama Bin Laden Biography Goes Inside Al-Qaida Leader's Final Hideout

Wednesday, August 04, 2021

Journalist Peter Bergen visited bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, before it was demolished. His new book, The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden, draws on materials seized in the raid.

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Everyone Heard About Jeffrey Epstein's Enablers. Few Listened To His Victims

Tuesday, July 20, 2021

After Palm Beach sex offender Jeffrey Epstein received a lenient sentence for his crimes, journalist Julie K. Brown identified 80 women who had survived his abuse. Her book is Perversion of Justice.

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Anthony Bourdain: The 'Fresh Air' Interview

Friday, July 16, 2021

We listen back to our 2016 interview with the late food writer and TV host, who killed himself in 2018 while in France to film Parts Unknown. Bourdain is the subject of a new documentary, Roadrunner.

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US Faces Crossroads On Renewable Energy Future — Go Big or Go Local

Thursday, July 15, 2021

NY Times reporter Ivan Penn unpacks the debate over infrastructure: Do we fund huge wind and solar farms with new transmission lines, or go local, with rooftop solar panels, batteries and micro-grids?

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MLB Pitcher C.C. Sabathia Shares Stories From The Mound — And Of Sobriety

Wednesday, July 14, 2021

The six-time All Star pitched for the Yankees and the Indians during his 19-year career. He also struggled with alcoholism. Sabathia reflects on baseball and sobriety in the memoir, Till the End.

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Fasten Your Seat Belts: Flight Attendant-Turned-Novelist Shares Stories From The Sky

Tuesday, July 06, 2021

During her 10 years as a flight attendant, T.J. Newman became an expert in guessing drink orders and calming unruly passengers. She drew on those experiences to write the hijack thriller Falling.

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How A Former Spy Trained Conservatives To Infiltrate Progressive Groups

Thursday, July 01, 2021

NY Times reporter Adam Goldman describes an undercover effort, headed up by an avid Trump supporter, that trained conservatives in espionage techniques and sent them to dig up dirt on progressives.

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Half The World Lacks Proper Sanitation. Is It Possible To 'Transform The Toilet'?

Wednesday, June 30, 2021

In Pipe Dreams, Chelsea Wald examines the health issues related to sanitation and looks at global efforts to manage human waste, including turning it into fuel and fertilizer.

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Newly Released Tapes Go Inside Nixon's White House During The Watergate Scandal

Tuesday, June 29, 2021

King Richard author Michael Dobbs reconstructs how the scandal gradually engulfed more administration officials, with operatives turning on each other — and eventually the president.

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'The Quiet Americans' Examines Tragic Miscalculations In The CIA's Formative Years

Friday, June 25, 2021

Author Scott Anderson chronicles the formative years of America's spy agency by focusing on four soldiers who became intelligence agents after World War II. Originally broadcast Sept. 1, 2020.

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'Forget The Alamo' Author Says We Have The Texas Origin Story All Wrong

Wednesday, June 16, 2021

In a new book, Bryan Burrough and co-writers Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford challenge the historical lore of the Alamo — including the story that Davy Crockett refused to surrender.

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'Mercury Rising' Explores The U.S.'s Treacherous Attempts to Control Space

Wednesday, June 09, 2021

In Mercury Rising, historian Jeff Shesol recalls the early days of the U.S. space program, when Cold War fears ruled, and no one was sure Glenn would survive America's first orbital flight.

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Historian Uncovers The Racist Roots Of The 2nd Amendment

Wednesday, June 02, 2021

Carol Anderson says the Second Amendment was designed to ensure slave owners could quickly crush any rebellion or resistance from those they'd enslaved. Her new book is The Second.

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Some Agents Fear Underfunded And Overworked Secret Service 'Relying On Luck'

Monday, May 17, 2021

Carol Leonnig spoke to a number of Secret Service agents for her new book, Zero Fail. "They strongly believed that it was a matter of time before a president was shot on their watch," she says.

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Novelist Francisco Goldman Revisits His Difficult Childhood In 'Monkey Boy'

Tuesday, May 11, 2021

The son of a Jewish father and a Guatemalan mother, Goldman grew up mostly in working class suburbs of Boston. His new novel draws on his own experiences, including being physically abused by his dad.

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Trees Talk To Each Other. 'Mother Tree' Ecologist Hears Lessons For People, Too

Tuesday, May 04, 2021

Ecologist Suzanne Simard says trees are "social creatures" that communicate with each other in remarkable ways — including warning each other of danger and sharing nutrients at critical times.

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Cheap, Legal And Everywhere: How Food Companies Get Us 'Hooked' On Junk

Monday, April 26, 2021

Reporter Michael Moss says processed foods can be as alluring in some ways as cocaine or cigarettes. His new book explains how companies keep us snacking by appealing to nostalgia and brain chemistry.

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Psychologist Examines What A 'Rapid Evolution' In Policing Might Look Like

Thursday, April 22, 2021

Yale professor Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff co-founded the Center for Policing Equity, which collects data on police behavior from 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the country.

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