Nobel Prize-winning writer Orhan Pamuk offers his take on why he writes.More
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Arts and Culture
Producer Charles Monroe-Kane's son goes to a school with a 13.8% non-vaccination rate. So why aren't his neighbors vaccinating their kids? Charles went out searching for the answer.More
Feeling hopeless? How about cake recipes for the Apocalypse? Shannon O'Malley offers a few of her favorite recipes.More
Mark Mothersbaugh is co-founder of the new-wave band Devo. They think humanity is de-evolving.More
Joan Didion, who died last week at the age of 87, helped shape a highly personal brand of nonfiction that came to be known as the New Journalism. Her early essay collections "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" (1968) and "The White Album" (1979) influenced generations of writers. Her later memoirs, "The Year of Magical Thinking" and "Blue Nights," chronicled the deaths of her husband and daughter. In 2011 Didion talked with Steve Paulson about illness and growing old in the wake of the death of her daughter, Quintana.More
The Reduced Shakespeare Company perform an even further abridged version of their theatrical show "The Bible: The Complete Word of God" - abridged.More
Nikki Giovanni reads Untitled (For Margaret Danner).More
Nicola Griffith set her award-winning historical novel, "Hild," in seventh-century Britain. It's based on the real life of the fierce young girl who eventually became one of the most powerful women of her day -- St. Hilda of Whitby.More
Pattiann Rogers is a celebrated essayist and poet. She's won numerous awards and is the author of fourteen books. She shares some of her favorite bee poems with Anne.More
Jonah Lehrer says that the great French writer Proust described insights into the way the mind processes memory long before the scientists could prove how the brain worked.More
Richard Holmes talks with Steve Paulson about how art and science influenced each other during the Romantic period.More
Lauren Beukes talks about her new novel, "The Shining Girls."More
Marshall Boswell, author of "Understanding David Foster Wallace" recalls that writer's fictional take on Alcoholics Anonymous.More
Kazuo Ishiguro talks with Steve Paulson about his book about a boarding school full of cloned children bred to donate their organs.More
Robert Rand was working as a Senior Editor at NPR when he was crippled by panic attacks. He cured himself by taking up zydeco dancing.More
Reverend Alex Gee tells Steve Paulson how rappers like Tupac Shakur function as prophets for the hip hop generation, and how he incorporates rap music into his liturgy.More
Welcome to the death revolution. Across the country - in cafes, dining rooms, and community centers - there's a new conversation taking shape. Funeral professionals, hospice workers, academics, artists, and just plain folks are working together to change the way we talk about death and dying.More