Midday on WNYC

Chef Daniel Boulud talks about his coming of age as a young chef to adapting French cuisine to American ingredients and tastes, and how he expresses his culinary artistry at Restaurant Daniel. His new, definitive cookbook, Daniel: My French Cuisine, includes more than 75 signature recipes, plus an additional 12 recipes Boulud prepares at home for his friends on more casual occasions.

Humans have been drinking wine for 8,000 years. On this week’s Please Explain Paul Lukacs tells us all about wine and its long, rich history. He’s the author of Inventing Wine: A New History of One of the World’s Most Ancient Pleasures.

Directors Joe Brewster and Michele Stephenson discuss their documentary, “American Promise,” which spans 13 formative years in the lives of two young black boys, their son Idris and his best friend Seun, as they navigate an elite New York City prep school. The environment is still largely segregated by race, class and culture. It follows both boys as they face challenges at school and the pressures of growing up. “American Promise” opens at the IFC Center and at the Film Society of Lincoln Center on October 18. Joe Brewster and/or Michele Stephenson will be appearing in person and answering questions at the following screenings at IFC: Friday, 10/18, at 7:00 Saturday, 10/19, at 1:10, 4:05, 7:00 Sunday, 10/20, at 1:10, 4:05, 7:00 Joe Brewster and/or Michele Stephenson will be appearing in person and answering questions at the following screenings at Film Society of Lincoln Center: Friday, 10/18, at 8:00 Saturday, 10/19, at 2:00, 5:00, 8:00 Sunday, 10/20, at 2:00, 5:00, 8:00    

Michelle Carstensen, wildlife health program Supervisor at the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, and Kristine Rines, a certified wildlife biologist and moose project leader at the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, and talk about why moose are disappearing and the challenges of studying why it’s happening.

Tennessee Valley Authority is a government-owned corporation that provides electricity at prices below the national average for about 9 million people in parts of seven states in the southeast. It also provides flood control, navigation and land management for the Tennessee River system. Ken Otterbourg talks about the why the TVA is currently in the political crosshairs. His article “Uncle Sam’s River” appears in the October 28 edition of Fortune magazine.

Alice McDermott talks about her latest novel, Someone . It’s about an ordinary life—its pains and joys, its clarity and confusion—lived by an ordinary woman from Brooklyn, and her recollections of childhood, adolescence, motherhood, and old age.  

Journalist Matthieu Aikins lives in Kabul and has been reporting from Afghanistan since 2008. He examines the troubling rise and potential causes of “insider attacks” in Afghanistan and looks at whether we’ll ever be able to leave the country. His article “Portrait of an Assassin” is in the October 7 issue of Mother Jones.

Helen Fielding talks about her long-anticipated new novel, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy. Bridget Jones stumbles through the challenges of loss, single motherhood, tweeting, texting, dating, and sex.

Dr. Roberta Casagrande-Kim, guest curator, and Dr. Jennifer Chi, exhibitions director and chief curator, talk about the exhibition Measuring and Mapping Space: Geographic Knowledge in Greco-Roman Antiquity, focused on ancient cartography and the ways in which Greek and Roman societies perceived and represented both the known and unknown worlds. It’s on view at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) at New York University through January 5, 2014.

Tom Kelley, partner at the design firm IDEO, explains how to unleash our creativity and change the way we approach and solve problems. Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All, written with his brother, David Kelley, IDEO founder and creator of the Stanford d.school, provides principles and strategies for being more creative at work and in life.

Laurel Sturt talks about her life in a high-poverty elementary school in the Bronx.Davonte’s Inferno: Ten Years in the New York Public School Gulag is a study of the crisis confronting today's educators and an indictment of the system.

Jessica Alexander talks about life as a foreign aid worker. She arrived in Rwanda in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide as an idealistic intern, but the experience in the field was messy, chaotic, and difficult—but she was hooked. Her memoir Chasing Chaos: My Decade In and Out of Humanitarian Aid traces her personal journey from naïve newcomer to critical realist.

War correspondent Marie Colvin was killed in a rocket attack in February 2012 while she was covering the uprising in Syria. Her sister Cat Colvin and colleague Paul Conroy discuss Marie Colvin’s life and work. On the Front Line: The Collected Journalismof Marie Colvin includes her interviews with Yasser Arafat and Colonel Gadaffi; reports from East Timor in 1999; accounts of her terrifying escape from the Russian army in Chechnya; and reports from the strongholds of the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers where she was hit by shrapnel, leaving her blind in one eye. Conroy’s book Under the Wirelooks back at their friendship and the final year he spent alongside Marie.

Jo Baker talks about reimagining Pride and Prejudice in her novel Longbourn. In her version, the servants take center stage, taking us beyond the drawing rooms of Jane Austen’s classic into the often overlooked domain of the housekeeper and kitchen maid, highlighting the daily particulars faced by the lower classes in Regency England during the Napoleonic Wars.

Former governor of New Mexico Bill Richardson and Emmy Award-winning Daily Show writer Kevin Bleyer discuss the world of high-stakes negotiation. How to Sweet Talk a Shark talks about Richardson’s successes and failures in some of the world’s least friendly places, including face-to-face negotiations with Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, and two generations of North Korean leadership.