We started the New York Public Library podcast in 2014. Once again this year, guest after guest has kept us intrigued, delighted, and hungry for more. We've received advice from a Supreme Court Justice, gotten the inside scoop on Mad Men from its creator, and taken book recommendations from a rock star. Whether you're new to the NYPL podcast or already a subscriber, we hope you enjoy some of our favorite podcast episodes from 2015. Tell us the episodes you loved in the comment section below.

Podcast #83: Ta-Nehisi Coates on Theft, Atheism, and History

"I'm black. I'm African-American. there is so much about being African-American, African-American politics, that I don't understand, primarily because in my household Malcolm X was Jesus. And again, that's at the root of this book: the stress on the body. Malcolm's belief, his rage, his seeing black people beat in the street and dogs sicced on black people, said to me the black body, your body, is precious. Your life is as precious as anyone. And you should not give up your life. And you should not give up your body for rights that are already written in the Constitution. It's wrong. It may be that as a matter of actual politics that's what had to happen, but I have never parted with the sense that that is wrong. I can't watch the fiftieth anniversary of the Selma campaign in the same way as other people. I can't even watch the movie Selma in the same way as other people. I mean, I love King's speech — "How Long, Not Long" — I love that speech. I can't feel happy though, I can't share in the sense of triumph and hope that comes out of it because when I see those cops rush those folks for wanting to cross the bridge, I just think it never should have came to that. How did it even come to that? It was wrong. Bloody Sunday was wrong. I can't be redeemed by John Lewis Sterling's career afterward. Those four little girls were killed, and for me there's no afterlife; I'm not going to see them. In my belief system, I'm not going to see them somewhere else. Their bodies were destroyed. And no law that came afterwards, no march that came afterwards, can make me okay with that. I can't draw anything out of my friend Prince Jones' death except, frankly, a great deal of anger. Perhaps some understanding about the world I live in. But I can't be okay with that. This book does not redeem him. This is not redemption. Prince Jones did not die for this book. Prince Jones was killed... his young daughter was rendered fatherless, and I don't want people to forget that. I don't want this to be obscured — forgive me if I offend anybody here — by spirituals, by gospels, by some sense that the arc of history ultimately will reward us. If your life ends, that's where your arc ends. And that is a tremendous tragedy." Read: Between the World and Me

Podcast #89: Gloria Steinem on Sex, Justice, and Magazines

"Reproductive freedom, reproductive justice, is a fundamental human right like freedom of speech or anything else, so you wouldn’t vote for somebody who’s against freedom of speech, so you know just treat it like the fundamental human right that it truly is. And that means the freedom to have children, as well as not to have children, you know, it really—it’s both things... I dedicated my book to an abortionist, and I’m glad every day that I—maybe I should explain what I mean by that, what I meant, because it’s quite personal, because I think we have to tell the truth personally. Okay, 'This book is dedicated to Dr. John Sharpe of London, who in 1957, a decade before physicians in England could legally perform an abortion for any reason other than the health of a woman, took the considerable risk of referring for an abortion a twenty-two-year-old American on her way to India. Knowing only that she had broken an engagement at home to seek an unknown fate, he said, ‘You must promise me two things. First, you will not tell anyone my name. Second, you will do what you want to do with your life.’ Dear Dr. Sharpe, I believe you, who knew the law was unjust would not mind if I say this so long after your death. I’ve done the best I could with my life. This book is for you.'” Read: My Life on the Road 

Podcast #50: Jay-Z on Hustling and Forgiveness

"I think the hustler and the freedom fighter are similar in, you know, it’s this anti-countercultural movement. One is about freedom and about having things and about improving your position, and then at some point it gets lost in that translation, and it becomes about greed, and it becomes about adrenaline and it becomes about the excitement—the excitement of getting away with something that you’re not supposed to—I mean, if we’re being honest about it, you know, at some point the excitement of getting away with it, the excitement of driving fancy cars and things. And you know, that level, so the difference to me between a hustler and a freedom fighter is a level of maturity." Read: Decoded 

Podcast #46: Joan Didion on Writing and Revising

"Before I start to write, the night before—I mean, when I finish work at the end of the day, I go over the pages, the page that I’ve done that day, and I mark it up. And I mark it up and leave it until the morning, and then I make the corrections in the morning, which gives me a way to start the day... I can have a drink at night. And the drink loosens me up enough to actually mark it up, you know. While you’ll just kind of be tense and not sure. Marking up something is just another way of saying editing it. Because you don’t edit very dramatically when you’re—you’re not very hard on yourself, you’re not very loose with yourself most of the day. Really, I have found the drink actually helps." Read: Blue Nights

Podcast #62: Matthew Weiner on Don Draper's Inner Life

"I don't think I realized this until the end of the show: that Don likes strangers. Don likes winning strangers over. He likes seducing strangers, and that is what advertising is. You're gonna walk down the side of the road, and now we know each other, and once you get to know him, he doesn't like him. We all know people like this." Read: Mad Men

Podcast #75: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Zadie Smith on Race, Writing, and Relationships

"Clarity's important to me. I forget who said that 'Prose should be as clear as a window pane.' I'm very much in that school, and it's the kind of fiction I like to read. The kind of writing that I like to read is writing that is clear. I think it's very easy to confuse something that's badly written as something that's somehow deep. If something is incomprehensible and the sentences are bad, we're supposed to say, 'Oh that's really deep.' It's not the kind of fiction I like to read, so I guess maybe when I'm editing I'm thinking about that. I'm thinking that the sentences I really admire are sentences that are lucid." Read: Americanah 

Podcast #45: Cheryl Strayed on Wild Success

"Being a motherfucker is a way of life really. And it really is encompassed in that column. I'm going to try to loosely quote myself. It's about having strength, rather than fragility, or resilience and faith and nerve and really leaning hard into work rather than worry and anxiety... You have to get your ass on the floor and get to work." Read: Wild

Podcast #53: RuPaul on Fantasy, Identity, and Diana Ross

“Diana [Ross] had it, that thing that cannot be described—still has it. At that time—this was 1965, 1966—the promise, the optimism that her body language has at that point, and the songs, the optimism of the songs, and the joy, it's all there. And that's why I was attracted to it… you know, at that time for brown-skinned people, it was Diana Ross and Billy Cosby were the two people who could be in a room with anybody in the world. They could be there, and it didn't seem like, ‘Oh my God, who are you!?’ And Sammy Davis. Sammy Davis too. But it was important, and she spoke to me with her voice.” Read: Workin' It!

Podcast #82: Patti Smith on Authors She Loves

"The Thief's Journal is my favorite book of Genet's... I love it because he writes my kind of memoir. It's a memoir yet it's completely true and simultaneously completely false, because that's the kind of guy Genet was. But when I say false, I mean that's the part that he transforms truth into art. He elevates it as poetry. I don't even like reading memoirs. People say, 'Who's your favorite memoirist? Whose memoirs do you like?' I hardly ever read them. I like fiction really. Really strange that I should be writing nonfiction, but it just happened." Read: M Train

Podcast #59: Sonia Sotomayor on Education and Color Blindness

“My advice—and I say it in my book—if you're going to college today, in my situation, find your community who's going to support you, but make sure you learn about the other people in your environment. Make friends with people who are different than you. They will teach you valuable things that you can't even anticipate. Sometimes, and for some people, it's how to use a knife and fork. That sounds strange, but it helps. I had a friend teach me how to do interviews. I had no innate knowledge. I had a parent who couldn't help tell me how to do an interview, and I had a friend who in college took me aside and said, 'This is the kind of research you have to do before you go, and you have to have a list of questions prepared. You have to think about the institution and what's it's mission and what is it that attracts you to it so you can articulate your interest in the job. And then you need to manage to talk about the skills you think you're giving them.' All of these things are things I didn't or wouldn't have known, except because I made friends outside my own circle.” Read: My Beloved World

In Memoriam: Oliver Sacks on Hallucinations

"The old notion used to be that when you are asleep, the brain shuts down. On the contrary, it is more active in dreaming than at any other time, but it’s a different sort of activity. And this is also true of the perceptual systems. If there’s no visual input, the visual system doesn’t shut down, it becomes hungry, it wants activity, it has to keep going, and it will start to generate images or hallucinations of its own. And one can show, that with visual deprivation or visual impairment, the visual parts of the brain become hyperactive, and in particular those parts of the brain which— which would perceive particular things. There are different parts of the brain involved, say, in the perception of faces, of animals, of landscapes, of lighting, and of this and that, and if one does imaging, as one can do, on someone, while they are experiencing hallucinations, when they say, 'I see a face,' or whatever, or maybe like Rosalie, the greatly enlarged teeth on one side, you will find activity, a sudden surge of activity, in that particular part of the brain. There’s also quite recently been a description of particular cells in the brain which are involved in the perception of, or recognition of, faces, landscapes, and these too become active." Read: On the Move

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