Joy Womack made history when she became the first American to join Russia’s famed Bolshoi Ballet Theater. But getting there was a journey that took a grueling physical and emotional toll.

Her new memoir, “Behind the Velvet Red Curtain,” written with MPR News journalist Elizabeth Shockman, is an intimate retelling of what happened when Womack moved to Moscow at age 15 to train under Russian greats and immersed herself in ruthless competition, obsessive training and tenacity in the face of challenge.

She talks about what it took to be an American ballerina in Russia with Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas.

Guest:

• Joy Womack is a ballet dancer and choreographer, currently based in Paris. Her new memoir, as told to Elizabeth Shockman, is “Behind The Red Velvet Curtain.”

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Honor Jones’ debut novel, “Sleep,” begins in the damp undergrowth of a blackberry bush, where main character Margaret is playing a game. It’s a quintessential childhood moment that ends with trauma that marks her forever.

But like many kids, Margaret doesn’t quite know how to hold this painful thing, and the adults in her life are no help. So she stuffs it and believes it will stay buried, where it can harm no one.

And then she becomes a mother.

Jones asks many psychological questions in “Sleep.” Maybe the most poignant: How does a parent keep their own trauma from hurting their kids? How do you raise a child to be safe without infecting them with a sense of fear?

This week, on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Jones joins host Kerri Miller to talk about that, as well as the power of secrets, the complexities of mother-daughter relationships and the tenuous balance between protection and hypervigilance.

Guest:

• Honor Jones is a senior editor at The Atlantic and a writer. Her debut novel, “Sleep,” was named “one of the best summer reads of 2025” by the Oprah Book Club.

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If you’ve spent time this week doomscrolling on your phone — even though you know it’s not good for you, that it ramps up anxiety and you’d be better off taking a walk or just going to bed — Emily Falk’s new book is for you.

“What We Value” is a peek behind the mental curtain. Why do our brains intend one thing and do another? Why is lasting change, even desired change, so hard? Neuroscientist Falk says it’s because our gray matter is silently making value calculations, which don’t always benefit us. If we can identify those calculations, she writes, we can harness them to make more meaningful choices.

Falk joins Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to explain her thesis. Along the way, they touch on the addictiveness of Minecraft, why habits — both good and bad — are so hard to change, and how a book about Benedict Cumberbatch impacted Falk’s research and life.

Guest:

• Emily Falk is a neuroscientist and a professor of communications at the University of Pennsylvania. She also directs the Communication Neuroscience Lab and the Climate Communication Division at the Annenberg Public Policy Center. “What We Value: The Neuroscience of Choice and Change” is her first book.

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