Audio

Renunciation can be a creative force. American scholar Ross Posnock tells stories of writers, philosophers and artists who've committed "acts of abandonment," leaving careers and creative lives behind. They weren't failures, Posnock says — they were necessary departures that led to creative and intellectual breakthroughs.More

Shulem Deen was a Skverer— a member of one of the most insular Hasidic sects in the U.S.  Then he got curious about secular life and the world outside his small village in Rockland County, NY.  The community branded him a heretic and expelled him.More

Could you give up alcohol for a whole month? No cocktails with friends, wine with dinner, or beer after a game. Ten years ago, John Ore and his wife started a new tradition and named it "Dry- nuary ." Today, people all over the world observe it. John says even after a decade, it's still a challenge — but worth it.More

Hemingway rewrote the ending to his classic novel dozens of times. After he died, his grandson Sean Hemingway collected those other endings and published them in a new edition of the literary classic.More

About a year ago, a group of progressive activists started a campaign to buy Twitter. Give the public shares in everyone’s favorite social media platform and turn it into a co-op. How's that working out?More

Web video superstar Felicia Day talks about how the Internet allowed her to use her weirdness to achieve her dreams of becoming an actress and to fulfill her creative ambitions.More

When it comes to writing, it's easy to procrastinate. But Canadian philosopher Mark Kingwell has managed to avoid that temptation.More

Chrisoula Andreou offers some strategies that can help us stop putting things off.More

Is procrastination just a bad habit? Or is it something worse, like a vice? Jennifer Baker waxes philosophical about the dark side of putting things off.More