Before there was iTunes, Spotify, or Pandora, there was the mixtape. Jason Bittner is nostalgic for those days, when sweethearts would spend days crafting the perfect playlist. He's the editor of a book and former website called "Cassette From My Ex". He shares some songs from his collection, and explains why the mixtape is such a powerful medium.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
University of Tennessee Associate Professor Amy Elias identifies the three types of postmodernism for Jim Fleming.
Information overload seems to be the quintessential 21st century problem. Actually, people have worried about this for centuries, going back to the ancient Romans. Ann Blair provides a short history of information-gathering.
When evangelical Christians say they talk to God, what do they mean? Anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann wanted to find out, so she spent two years as a participant observer in a Charismatic church, talking to the congregation and even praying herself. She says prayer involves cultivating the imagination. Luhrmann also describes her cross-cultural study of schizophrenics who hear voices.
The celebrated poet Edward Hirsch says the history of poetry is the history of poetic forms. And to prove it he wrote a 700-page compendium about all things poetry.
Andre Brink is a white South African novelist whose anti-apartheid books inspired Nelson Mandela and became a lightning rod for criticism from the ruling regime.
A. Scott Berg is the author of “Kate Remembered.” The book is a biography of Katherine Hepburn in the form of a memoir of the author’s twenty year friendship with the actress.
Field biologist Alan Rabinowitz has spent decades studying tigers and leopards in Thailand. His book “Beyond the Last Village,” recounts his time in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma.)
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