Smartest Person in the Room Laura Tremaine

It's finally here! Our best books of the year episode.
Host Laura Tremaine and her real life book club friends Stephanie Newman-Smith and Yasmin Dunn discuss their favorite books of the year and some of the most buzzed about books of 2018. 
 
Books mentioned on this episode:
Becoming by Michelle Obama
The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies by Ben Fritz
You Think It, I'll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld 
Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Florida by Lauren Goff
Lethal White by Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling)
Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires
Dark Sacred Night by Michael Connelly
The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce
Alone Together by Sherry Turkle
The Yes Brain by Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson
Heavy by Kiese Laymon
Good and Mad by Rebecca Traister
Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes's Hollywood by Karina Longworth
(30:40) Circe by Madeline Miller 
(34:50) 9 Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty
(44:36) The Witch Elm by Tana French
(54:55) An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
(1:00:10) The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai 
(1:04:04) Educated by Tara Westover
(1:12:30) The Line That Held Us by David Joy
 
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You've probably heard Rachael MacFarlane speak at some point in her 20 year acting career. She's given voice to characters from Johnny Bravo, Tom & Jerry, Fancy Nancy, Family Guy, and she has played Hayley on American Dad since 2005. 
Now Rachael has written a children's book titled Eleanor Wyatt, Princess and Pirate. Laura talks with Rachael about her career, her new book, parenting in L.A., and why the message of Eleanor Wyatt is so important. 
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On today's episode, Laura is the smartest person in the room because she is the ONLY person in the room. That's right, it's a first for this podcast: a solo show! Laura shares the best books she's read so far in 2018. 
Click here for the full show notes.
Follow Laura on Instagram where she shares what she's reading in real time, or sign up for her Secret Post emails here. 
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This is the final episode in the BIAS series. We're sharing our thoughts on creating and releasing this series, and answering some of the questions we've received over the last few weeks.
We're also making an announcement about the future of this conversation in this space, since of course this work doesn't stop here. Please check out our ever-evolving resource page here. 
Thanks for joining us for the BIAS series of Smartest Person in the Room! 
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Over the past several episodes, we’ve mentioned several times that my friend and co-host for this series Yasmin is married to a white man. Yasmin has talked about how being part of an interracial marriage has given her a unique perspective on the dynamics of race in our culture, and I couldn’t think of a better way to conclude our series on bias than by asking her husband Jason to sit down and talk with us about his perspectives on the reality of racial bias in our country.
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This episode is different from any episode of Smartest Person in the Room that I’ve ever recorded. Months ago, when Yasmin and I were planning this series, I mentioned that though I’ve lived in Los Angeles for 17 years now, I’ve hardly ever been to the historically black neighborhoods of South LA. And so, Yasmin decided to take me on a little field trip in our own city.
 
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