Host Marcia Franklin interviews one of the most esteemed writers of the Vietnam War era, Tim
O'Brien. O'Brien, who served as an infantryman from 1969 to 1970, wrote a memoir in 1972 called "If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home." It received excellent reviews, and in 1978, O'Brien won the National Book Award for "Going After Cacciato," a novel about a soldier who goes AWOL and the squad that tries to find him.

O'Brien's most well-known book is "The Things They Carried," a work of linked stories about soldiers in the Vietnam War, published in 1990. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award, and is required reading in many high school and college classes.

Franklin talks with O'Brien about his style of writing, which often blurs fact with fiction, and about his new life as a first-time father later in life. The two also talk extensively about war in our culture, and O'Brien shares his thoughts on how he thinks Veterans Day and Memorial Day would be best observed.

O'Brien was in Boise as the keynote speaker for the Idaho Humanities Council's 2015
Distinguished Humanities Lecture.

Originally aired: 11/13/2015

Marcia Franklin talks with poet Richard Blanco, the first LatinX and gay inaugural poet. Blanco wrote a poem for President Obama's second inaugural and read it at the ceremony. He discusses the process of writing the inaugural poem, "One Today," how the piece reflected his life and his philosophy of writing, the themes of his work, and the power of poetry to change lives. Mr. Blanco was the keynote speaker at the Idaho Humanities Council's annual event in 2019.

Originally aired: 12/20/19

Journalist Louisa Thomas talks about her book Louisa: The Extraordinary Life of Mrs. Adams, which examines the life and times of First Lady Louisa Catherine Adams, the wife of President John Quincy Adams and the first foreign-born First Lady of the United States. Thomas illuminates not only the life of this fascinating woman, but also the political life of America in the 1800s.

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Originally Aired: 9/1/2017

The interview is part of Dialogue's series "Conversations from the Sun Valley Writers' Conference" and was taped at the 2017 conference. Since 1995, the conference has been bringing together some of the world's most well-known and illuminating authors to discuss literature and life.

Dialogue host Marcia Franklin talks with historical novelist Lois Leveen about two of her works: The Secrets of Mary Bowser, about a former slave who was a spy in the Confederate White House, and Juliet's Nurse, which imagines the life of the nurse in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Franklin asks Leveen about how she researches her ideas and what she hopes readers will glean from her works.

Originally Aired: 02/13/15

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin talks about her book, Team of Rivals, which chronicles the sometimes fraught relationship between Abraham Lincoln and his cabinet members. The book was the basis for the 2012 movie, Lincoln, which was nominated for 12 Academy Awards.

Goodwin talks about the lessons we can learn from Lincoln, who was the rare president who asked his main rivals to be a part of his cabinet, and what it was like to spend so much time researching such an iconic person.

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Originally Aired: 12/07/2006

The interview is part of Dialogue's series, "Conversations from the Sun Valley Writers' Conference," and was taped at the 2006 conference. Since 1995, the conference has been bringing together some of the world's most well-known and illuminating authors to discuss literature and life. This was the second year Marcia Franklin interviewed speakers there.

Marcia Franklin talks with Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), the last of the so-called "Big Six" leaders of the African-American civil rights movement. Lewis was the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from 1963 to 1966, and played a seminal role in some of the 56 most important activities of the movement, including the Freedom Rides, the march from Selma to Montgomery and the March on Washington (at which he was the youngest speaker). He became a United States Representative in 1986.

During their conversation, Lewis and Franklin discussed his emotions on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act, the election of President Obama, what Lewis sees as current civil rights challenges, and his advice to the next generation. The two also discuss a trilogy of graphic novels called March that he and a staffer, Andrew Aydin, are writing. The series illustrates the congressman's life in the civil rights movement. The first book hit #1 on the New York Times Best Sellers List.

Originally Aired: 11/14/2014

Pulitzer Prize-winning Kiowa author N. Scott Momaday has died. In this interview from 1996, host Marcia Franklin talks with Momaday about his role in commentating on Native American culture in the recently released Ken Burns documentary 'The West.' Momaday also talks about how to find your voice as an author, as well as the relationship between Native Americans and American society.

Originally aired: 09/25/1996

Host Marcia Franklin talks with historian David Kennedy about Depression-era policies and whether they have parallels to the modern financial crisis.

Kennedy, professor emeritus at Stanford University, is known for integrating both economic and cultural analyses in his works about particular historical eras, as he did in Freedom from Fear, a book about the Great Depression in the United States. That book won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000.

Kennedy is also the author of several other books, including Over Here: The First World War and American Society, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1981.

He and Franklin discuss the differences between the financial crises in the Great Depression and today, as well as issues that concern him including the growing gap he sees between civilian and military society. Kennedy also talks about the priorities for the Bill Lane Center for the American West, of which he was a co-director.

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Originally Aired: 12/23/2010