WNYC's Anna Sale gives an update on what's happening today in Charlotte and what to expect at the Democratic National Convention.

Ta-Nehisi Coates talks about the role race is playing in this year’s election. His latest article in the September issue of The Atlantic is called “Fear of a Black President.” We’ll look at how race is or is not playing a role in this year’s campaign

Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, talks about her new project to improve her home life. Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life is an account of her nine-month experiment to make her home a place of greater simplicity, comfort, and love.

Emma Straub talks about her novel, Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures, a story of a Midwestern girl who escapes a family tragedy and is remade as a movie star during Hollywood’s golden age.

Many believe a child’s success is based on intelligence and that those who score highest on tests, from preschool admissions to SATs, will succeed in school and in life. Paul Tough argues that the qualities that matter most have more to do with character: perseverance, curiosity, conscientiousness, optimism, and self-control. In How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, he writes of researchers and educators who are using new tools to develop character, uncovers the ways in which parents do—and do not—prepare their children for adulthood, and he and he looks at ways to help children growing up in poverty.

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