Literary critic William Gass talks with Steve Paulson about the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, and explicates a poem of Rilke’s about a bowl of roses.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Journalist and poet Ruben Martinez tells Steve Paulson that there are powerful economic incentives for Mexicans to cross the U.S. border to find work.
Recently hundreds of Evangelical leaders met with Donald Trump. One prominent Evangelical who did not attend is Michael Gerson, the former speechwriter and top aide to President George W. Bush. Gerson believes it's time to reframe the conservative agenda and he warns his fellow believers to beware “The Mark of Trump.”
The Pacific Gyre is a region in the middle of the Pacific Ocean around which all the major currents swirl. As a result, debris that floats into the gyre gets stuck there.
In Sara Gruen's new novel "Ape House," a family of bonobo apes are captured to be the main attraction in a reality TV show.
Legendary showman P.T. Barnum once owned a slave named Joice Heth. Barnum claimed she was 161 years old and a former nanny to George Washington. Benjamin Reiss tells the story in his book "The Showman and the Slave: Race, Death, and Memory in Barnum's America."
Everyone thinks The Arabian Nights is a collection of stories and folktales from the Middle East. In fact, some of the most famous were written by Europeans, who fell in love with the tradition and wanted more.
Tony Faber says violins have to age for fifty years to sound their best.
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