Best-selling author Ruta Sepetys spends months or years researching for her novels, interviewing dozens of people in the process. Because she's doesn’t write about fictional dystopian worlds — she writes about dystopian reality. Spanish baby-stealing. A German shipwreck that's the largest in history. Soviet work camps. Historical fiction that reminds people about unbelievable stories largely forgotten to time.

In this conversation, Emily Siner interviews Ruta about why some of these epically interesting stories have been left out of our collective remembrance, and how she approaches telling histories that are not her own. (And — we'll talk about what it's like to have your first best-seller confused with one of the most popular erotic novels of all time.)

Movers & Thinkers is a production of Nashville Public Radio. This episode was hosted and produced by Emily Siner, edited by Chas Sisk and Anita Bugg, and mastered by Carl Pederson. Find more in-depth interviews with fascinating Nashvillians at wpln.org/movers.

It's been six years since composer Joel Thompson sat down to write music about the deaths of black men who'd been killed by police. The resulting piece for chorus and orchestra is called Seven Last Words of the Unarmed, a biblical reference to the last words uttered by Jesus.  

In this special crossover episode with the podcast Classically Speaking, producer Colleen Phelps talks to Joel and Nashville-based opera singer Patrick Dailey, both black men, as they explore the question: How can music be used to process tragedy, embody it and lead to change? 

"I could not stop shaking throughout the performance," Patrick says. "To this day, it haunts me … because it actually informs the work that we do in this community." 

Movers & Thinkers is a production of Nashville Public Radio. This episode was hosted and produced by Emily Siner, in conjunction with Colleen Phelps, edited by Chas Sisk and Anita Bugg, and mastered by Carl Pederson. Find more in-depth interviews with fascinating Nashvillians at wpln.org/movers. 

DJ Pryor was catapulted to national fame after a video of him and his young son went viral in 2019. It showed off his natural humor — DJ is a standup comedian — as well as an example of genuine parental love.

But DJ's own childhood was far less positive. And his experiences of abuse and pain, told as comedy, have connected with audiences just as much.

"You'd be surprised how many people walk up to me at the end of shows that had that experience and they say, 'I went through the same thing,' " DJ says.