Audiobooks narrated by Kim Niemi

The Painful Truth about Hunger in America: Why We Must Unlearn Everything We Think We Know--and Star

Most people think hunger has to do with food: researchers, policymakers, and advocates focus on promoting government-funded nutrition assistance; well-meaning organizations try to get expired or wasted food to marginalized communities; and philanthropists donate their money to the cause and congratulate themselves for doing so. But few people ask about the structural issues undergirding hunger, such as, Who benefits from keeping people in such a state of precarity? In The Painful Truth about Hunger in America, Mariana Chilton shows that the solution to food insecurity lies far beyond food and must incorporate personal, political, and spiritual approaches if we are serious about fixing the crisis. Drawing on twenty-five years of research, programming, and advocacy efforts, Chilton compellingly demonstrates that food insecurity is created and maintained by people in power. Taking the listener back to the original wounds in the United States caused by its history of colonization, genocide, and enslavement, she forces us to reckon with hard questions about why people in the US allow hunger to persist. The Painful Truth about Hunger in America reinvigorates our commitment to uprooting the causes of poverty and discrimination, and points to a more generative and humane world where everyone can be nourished.

Mariana Chilton (Author), Kim Niemi (Narrator)

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Fatal Solution: How a Healthcare System Used Tragedy to Transform Itself and Redefine Just Culture

One box of chemicals mistaken for another. Ingredients intended to be life-sustaining are instead life-taking. Families in shock, healthcare providers reeling, and fingers starting to point. A large healthcare system's reputation hangs in the balance while decisions need to be made, quickly. More questions than answers. People have to be held accountable—does this mean they get fired? Should the media and therefore the public be informed? What are family members and the providers involved feeling? When the dust settles, will remaining patients be more safe or less safe? In this provocative true story of tragedy, the authors recount the journey traveled and what was learned by, at the time, Canada's largest fully integrated health region. They weave this story together with the theory about why things fall apart and how to put them back together again. Building on the writings and wisdom of James Reason and other experts, the book explores new ways of thinking about Just Culture, and what this would mean for patients and family members, in addition to healthcare providers. With afterwords by two of the major players in this story, the authors make a compelling case that Just Culture is as much about fairness and healing as it is about supporting a safety culture.

Carmella Steinke, Jan M. Davies, W. Ward Flemons (Author), Kim Niemi (Narrator)

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Earthquake and the Invention of America: The Making of Elsewhere Catastrophe

Earthquake and the Invention of America: The Making of Elsewhere Catastrophe explores the role of earthquakes in shaping the deep timeframes and multi-hemispheric geographies of American literary history. Spanning the ancient world to the futuristic continents of speculative fiction, the earthquake stories assembled here together reveal the emergence of a broadly Western cultural syndrome that became an acute national fantasy: elsewhere catastrophe, an unspoken but widely prevalent sense that catastrophe is somehow 'un-American.' Catastrophe must be elsewhere because it affirms the rightness of 'here' where conquest, according to the syndrome's logic, did not happen and is not occurring. The psychic investment in elsewhere catastrophe coalesced slowly, across centuries; varieties of it can be found in various European traditions of the modern. Yet in its most striking modes and resonances, elsewhere catastrophe proves fundamental to the invention of US-America—which is why the earthquake, as the exemplary elsewhere catastrophe, is the disaster that must always happen far away or be forgotten. At the core of the book's inquiries are the earthquakes, historical and imagined, that act as both a recurrent eruptive force and a provocation for disparate modes of critical engagement with the long and catastrophic history of the Americas.

Anna Brickhouse (Author), Kim Niemi (Narrator)

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Good Business: An Entrepreneur's Guide to Creating a Better World

Good Business: An Entrepreneur's Guide to Creating a Better World takes listeners through the complicated but exhilarating landscape of social enterprise businesses that are changing the world. A social enterprise is a different kind of business, one that uses a market-driven approach to address a social or environmental problem such as poverty, environmental damage, or resource scarcity, with the dual goals of helping humanity and building a profitable business. With a climate crisis, a growing population, and diminishing natural resources, the need for socially-minded innovators is greater than ever. Good Business is designed to be a practical guide and tool for innovators, entrepreneurs, and dreamers who are attempting to navigate the complicated business models required for social enterprises.

Lilly Tench (Author), Kim Niemi (Narrator)

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Civil Wars: A Very Short Introduction

Civil wars are the most common form of large-scale political violence. In the past thirty years, the study of civil wars has been one of the largest growing segments of the international relations field. Their causes are complex, ranging from fights over access to housing, jobs, and land or other resources, to political contests over offices, rights, and representation. Groups form, collapse, coalesce, align and realign, and then fight amongst themselves. Governments themselves change through elections, coups, military defeats, or revolutions. Understanding the origins of civil wars and their trajectories therefore demands some appreciation of the economic, political, social, cultural, and geographic order of societies. If there is one factor that best predicts why a civil war erupts, it is a prior civil war. That is why knowledge of a country's history of political violence, and associated narratives about who is to blame and why, are critical to understanding where a civil war might next occur. We now have a better understanding of the conditions under which civil wars generally emerge, how the fighting evolves, and how civil wars end. However, historical understanding—the human dimensions—remain every bit as critical. This book explores current debates on civil wars and how the reasons for fighting (and the nature of belligerents themselves) are changing.

Monica Duffy Toft (Author), Kim Niemi (Narrator)

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The Ancient Art of Thinking For Yourself: The Power of Rhetoric in Polarized Times

The discipline of rhetoric was the keystone of Western education for over two thousand years. Only recently has its perceived importance faded. In this book, renowned rhetorical scholar Robin Reames argues that, in today's polarized political climate, we should all care deeply about learning rhetoric. Drawing on examples ranging from the destructive ancient Greek demagogue Alcibiades to modern-day conspiracists like Alex Jones, Reames breaks down the major techniques of rhetoric, pulling back the curtain on how politicians, journalists, and 'journalists' convince us to believe what we believe—and to talk, vote, and act accordingly. Understanding these techniques helps us avoid being manipulated by authority figures who don't have our best interests at heart. It also grants us rare insight into the values that shape our own beliefs. Learning rhetoric, Reames argues, doesn't teach us what to think but how to think—allowing us to understand our own and others' ideological commitments in a completely new way. Thoughtful, nuanced, and leavened with dry humor, The Ancient Art of Thinking for Yourself offers an antidote to our polarized, post-truth world.

Robin Reames (Author), Kim Niemi (Narrator)

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One Last Lunch: A Final Meal with Those Who Meant So Much to Us

In this heartwarming essay collection, dozens of authors, actors, artists, and others imagine one last lunch with someone they cherished. A few years ago, Erica Heller realized how universal the longing is for one more moment with a lost loved one. It could be a parent, a sibling, a mentor, or a friend, but who wouldn't love the opportunity to sit down, break bread, and just talk? Who wouldn't jump at the chance to ask those unasked questions, or share those unvoiced feelings? In One Last Lunch, Heller has asked friends and family of authors, artists, musicians, comedians, actors, and others, to recount one such fantastic repast. Muffie Meyer and her documentary subject Little Edie Beale go to a deli in Montreal. Kirk Douglas asks his father what he thought of him becoming an actor. Sara Moulton dines with her friend Julia Child. The Anglican priest George Pitcher has lunch with Jesus. And Heller herself connects with her father, the renowned author Joseph Heller. These richly imagined stories are endlessly revealing, about the subject, the writer, the passage of time, regret, gratitude, and the power of enduring love.

Erica Heller (Author), Kim Niemi, Paul Woodson (Narrator)

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The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking

For many, technology offers hope for the future-that promise of shared human flourishing and liberation that always seems to elude our species. Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies spark this hope in a particular way. They promise a future in which human limits and frailties are finally overcome-not by us, but by our machines. Yet rather than open new futures, today's powerful AI technologies reproduce the past. Forged from oceans of our data into immensely powerful but flawed mirrors, they reflect the same errors, biases, and failures of wisdom that we strive to escape. Our new digital mirrors point backward. They show only where the data say that we have already been, never where we might venture together for the first time. To meet today's grave challenges to our species and our planet, we will need something new from AI, and from ourselves. Shannon Vallor makes a wide-ranging, prophetic, and philosophical case for what AI could be: a way to reclaim our human potential for moral and intellectual growth, rather than lose ourselves in mirrors of the past. Rejecting prophecies of doom, she encourages us to pursue technology that helps us recover our sense of the possible, and with it the confidence and courage to repair a broken world. Vallor calls us to rethink what AI is and can be, and what we want to be with it.

Shannon Vallor (Author), Kim Niemi (Narrator)

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With Love, Mommie Dearest: The Making of an Unintentional Camp Classic

When she died in 1977, Joan Crawford was remembered as an icon of Hollywood's Golden Age-until publication the following year of her daughter's memoir, Mommie Dearest. Christina Crawford's book was an immediate bestseller, addressing the infrequently discussed topic of child abuse. When Paramount Pictures released the film, starring Faye Dunaway as Crawford, it was critically panned, and remains one of the most legendary critical bombs in film history. The lavish, big-screen adaptation drew unexpected laughter in the scenes depicting life in the Crawford household. Rarely have such good intentions been met with such ridicule. Despite this, the movie was a commercial success and remains, four decades later, immensely popular. With Love, Mommie Dearest details the writing and selling of Christina's book and the aftermath of its publication, as well as the filming of the motion picture, whose backstage drama almost surpassed what was viewed onscreen in the film. Based on new interviews with people connected to the book and the film, Hollywood historian A. Ashley Hoff explores the phenomenon, the camp, and the very real social issues addressed by the book and film.

A. Ashley Hoff (Author), Kim Niemi (Narrator)

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Apocalypse Television: How The Day After Helped End the Cold War

On November 20, 1983, a three-hour made-for-TV movie, The Day After, premiered on ABC. Set in the heartland of Lawrence, Kansas, the film depicted the events before, during, and after a Soviet nuclear attack with vivid scenes of the post-apocalyptic hellscape that would follow. The film was viewed by over 100 million Americans and remains the highest rated TV movie in history. The path to primetime for The Day After proved nearly as treacherous as the film's narrative. Battles ensued behind the scenes at the network, between the network and the filmmakers. But these skirmishes pale in comparison to the culture wars triggered by the film in the press, alongside a growing Nuclear Freeze movement, and from a united, pro-nuclear Right. Once efforts to alter the script failed, the White House conducted a full-throttled propaganda campaign to hijack the film's message. Apocalypse Television features a dramatic insider's account of the making of and backlash against The Day After. No other book has told this story in similar fashion, venturing behind-the-scenes of the programming and news divisions at ABC, the backlash from the conservative movement and Religious Right, the challenges encountered by the film's production team, and the experiences of the citizens of Lawrence, Kansas, where the film was set and shot.

David Craig (Author), Kim Niemi (Narrator)

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Rebel Health: A Field Guide to the Patient-Led Revolution in Medical Care

Anyone who has fallen off the conveyer belt of mainstream health care and into the shadowy corners of illness knows what a dark place it is to land. Where is the infrastructure, the information, the guidance? What should you do next? In Rebel Health, Susannah Fox draws on twenty years of tracking the expert networks of patients, survivors, and caregivers who have come of age between the cracks of the health care system to offer a way forward. Covering everything from diabetes to ALS to Moebius Syndrome to chronic disease management, Fox taps into the wisdom of these individuals, learns their ways, and fuels the rebel alliance that is building up our collective capacity for better health. Rebel Health shows how the next wave of health innovation will come from the front lines of this patient-led revolution. Fox identifies and describes four archetypes of this revolution: seekers, networkers, solvers, and champions. Each chapter includes tips, such as picking a proxy to help you navigate the relevant online communities, or learning how to pitch new ideas to investors and partners or new treatments to the FDA. Proactive, optimistic, and innovative, Rebel Health is a guiding light for anyone who wishes to join the health rebel alliance and become the hero of their own story.

Susannah Fox (Author), Kim Niemi (Narrator)

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Polyvagal Prompts: Finding Connection and Joy through Guided Exploration

Discover the remarkable ways your nervous system works in service of your safety and well-being. Polyvagal Theory, developed by researcher and scientist Dr. Stephen Porges and popularized by therapist Deb Dana, has impacted countless lives. It has changed the way therapists work with their clients and provided a pathway toward healing for those who have experienced hardship or trauma. In Polyvagal Prompts, Deb Dana and Courtney Rolfe invite listeners to explore their nervous systems through Polyvagal Theory with engaging questions and exercises. Listeners are guided in noticing their systems, listening with curiosity, and reflecting on what they learn. The prompts can be used as a daily practice or to explore specific topics at the listener's own pace and are also ideal for helping clients track and reflect upon their polyvagal-informed therapies. No matter how listeners decide to explore, Polyvagal Prompts offers an invaluable opportunity to begin the life-changing journey of befriending one's nervous system.

Courtney Rolfe Lcpc, Courtney Rolfe, Lcpc, Deb Dana LCSW, Deb Dana, LCSW (Author), Kim Niemi (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Kim Niemi