Doris Kearns Goodwin; Alexa; Jill Lepore; Tracy K Smith

It's a Brian Lehrer Show Black Friday Special!  Historical context to current events, plus poetry.

Coming up on today's (repeat) show:

• Doris Kearns Goodwin, historian, political commentator, and author of Leadership: In Turbulent Times (Simon & Schuster, 2018) draws on her deep knowledge of American presidents to offer advice for leaders at all levels in dealing with crises (empathy is key).

• As voice assistants like Alexa and Siri gain popularity, cultural critic and journalist Judith Shulevitz looks at the roles services like these may play for humans in the future.

• Jill Lepore, professor of American History at Harvard University, staff writer at The New Yorker, and the author of many books, including her latest, These Truths: A History of the United States (W. W. Norton & Company, 2018), talks about her new take on the full scope of U.S. history -- an exploration of how well American democracy has satisfied the three "self-evident" truths in the Declaration of Independence.

• Tracy K. Smith, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet serving as 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States and editor of American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time (Graywolf Press, 2018), talks about the 50 contemporary poems she selected that "bear witness to what it means to come from and belong to this remarkably vast and varied nation." She reads, "Downhearted" by poet Ada Limón, and "becoming a horse" by poet Ross Gay, from the collection.

These interviews originally aired earlier this year. Links to the unedited audio are here:

• Doris Kearns Goodwin: Learning Leadership 
• A Long-Term Relationship With Your Smart Speaker 
• 'Teetering on Revolution': The American Story 
• 50 Poems of America