Books, questions, and public consequence.
Reader's Corner pairs a steady interviewer with writers whose books carry a public argument. The conversations move from premise to evidence, using biography, history, reporting, and research to make large issues easier to follow.
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Reader's Corner is a steady public-radio interview show organized around books and the ideas they carry into public life. Its center is the author conversation. The pace is calm. Episodes usually begin with the premise of a recent book, then let the guest build the case through research, scene, archive, or lived historical consequence. The subjects are broad, but the method is consistent: take a complicated question and keep it attached to evidence. Recent conversations examine a consulting company's influence on corporations, governments, China-linked companies, and Pentagon-adjacent conflicts. Another episode follows the pressure to mine lithium and copper for electric vehicles, solar panels, phones, and other technologies, while facing community, environmental, and Indigenous concerns. The show also gives room to biography and historical memory. A discussion of Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson turns on Cold War pressure, HUAC testimony, Branch Rickey, Lester Granger, Rachel Robinson, and the contested authorship of public courage. A conversation about sports gambling looks at leagues, courts, advertising money, fan behavior, and the costs that followed legalization. Science appears as intellectual history, as in an episode on metamorphosis that moves from Aristotle and Darwin toward present-day research. Literary history enters through women reporters, Shanghai, empire, gibbons, and the difficulty of compressing large lives into one book. Espionage appears through Polish spies, the CIA, Iraq, Operation Desert Storm, post-9/11 black sites, and the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Fiction is treated seriously too, with a World War II Poland novel tied to family history, Holocaust survival, and cultural memory. The show rarely performs excitement. It earns attention by asking direct questions and letting an author answer at length. Follow-ups tend to clarify rather than interrupt. That restraint is the point. Reader's Corner works best for listeners who want an informed guide through books about institutions, power, history, science, and moral consequence.
Made for: For readers and public-radio listeners who want thoughtful author conversations about history, politics, science, biography, and social change. It suits people who prefer patient explanation to personality-driven talk.
What sets it apart: The show gives authors enough room to lay out their evidence while keeping the conversation grounded in plain-language questions. Its range is wide, but its editorial habit is steady: books become maps of power, memory, and consequence.
Welcome to Reader's Corner, a weekly radio show hosted by Boise State University president emeritus Bob Kustra that features lively conversations with some of the nation's leading authors about issues and ideas that matter today.Support for this podcast comes from Saint Alphonsus Sports Medicine
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Reader's Corner connects scientific and technical questions to the institutions, incentives and histories that shape their consequences.
Bob Kustra builds Reader's Corner around sustained conversations with authors, following each book into the institutions and decisions behind its subject.
Jackie Robinson's HUAC speech went through drafts; your book club can argue over who held the pen.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A compact look at McKinsey, cost-cutting, China, and national-security concerns.
Reader's Corner talks with Walt Bagdanich about McKinsey as a firm tied to hard-edged cost-cutting, short-term profit, and executive wealth, with workers and safety measures often paying the price.
A clear look at the mineral politics behind the technologies people keep buying.
Reader's Corner takes on the awkward center of the clean-energy transition: the mines needed for lithium and copper. Ernest Scheider follows the fight over electric vehicles, solar panels, cell phones, and other devices into a larger argument about whether habitats of rare…
Jackie Robinson's HUAC testimony becomes a study in authorship and Cold War pressure.
Howard Bryant's book on Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson treats their lives as shaped by the Cold War, and Bob Kustra keeps the focus tightly on Robinson's testimony before HUAC.
A clear look at sports gambling's rise, its money math, and its policy stakes.
Reader's Corner uses Danny Funt's Everybody Loses to trace how American sports gambling has moved from a niche habit to a booming national industry with real policy stakes.
A sharp literary history of women reporters whose daring reshaped work, writing, and journalism.
Julia Cook's conversation about Starry and Restless follows three women reporters who reshaped work, writing, journalism, and the worlds they moved through.
A P-61 pilot's Iwo Jima missions are examined through night-fighter technology and the family he left at home.
Paul Hendrickson's account of his father's wartime life starts with a family goodbye, then moves into the technical and emotional demands of night combat.
A sharp espionage account of wartime improvisation, alliance-building, and the politics behind a fragile partnership.
John Pomfret's From Warsaw with Love gives Reader's Corner a sharp account of espionage and alliance-building, opening with the 1990 rescue of six U.S. officers in Iraq and the CIA's appeal to Poland, a longtime Cold War foe known for its spies.
Reported narratives on hackers, spyware, and data crimes from Dina Temple-Raston.
Dave, Joe, and Maria break down phishing kits, deepfakes, and social-engineering scams weekly.
IAPP's Jedidiah Bracy interviews the regulators and lawyers writing privacy and AI law.
A daily cybersecurity briefing hosted by Dave Bittner, pairing breaking incidents with a guest interview.
John Pomfret discusses his book 'From Warsaw with Love,' which details the unlikely intelligence alliance between Poland and the United States after the Cold War.
Chris Pavone discusses his thriller novel 'Two Nights in Lisbon' about a woman whose husband disappears in Lisbon.
An interview with Daniel Golden about his book 'The Ransomware Hunting Team', which follows a group of self-taught codecrackers fighting ransomware.
Paul Hendrickson discusses his book 'Fighting the Night,' which chronicles his father Joe Paul Hendrickson's service as a P-61 Black Widow night fighter pilot on Iwo Jima during World War II.
Reader's Corner turns to McKinsey & Company and the book about its hidden influence.
Bob Kustra welcomes Ernest Scheider to Reader's Corner.
Bob Kustra opens the hour by introducing Howard Bryant, the author of Kings and Pawns, Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America.
Bob Kustra talks with journalist and author Danny Funt about sports gambling and his book Everybody Loses.
Oren Harmon discusses his book 'Metamorphosis: A Natural and Human History,' exploring why creatures transform and the science behind metamorphosis.
Julia Cook’s Reader’s Corner conversation centers on Starry and Restless, a book about Rebecca West, Mickey Hahn, and Martha Gellhorn, three writers who worked for the New Yorker, the New York Times, and the Atlantic.
John Pomfret discusses his book about the unlikely alliance between Polish spies and the CIA during the Gulf War and beyond.
Tod Lending discusses his debut novel 'The Umbrella Maker's Son', set in WWII Poland, about a Jewish teenager's fight for survival and love.
Ben Macintyre discusses his book 'Prisoners of the Castle' about the Nazi fortress prison Colditz and the society formed by its allied prisoners.