One of the many utopian groups that started during the late 19th century and early 20th century was the House of David—perhaps the first cult to become a pop culture sensation. Their compound in Benton Harbon, Michigan had an amusement park and a zoo; they had a baseball team that once played an exhibition game against Babe Ruth and the Yankees, and they had bands—highly regarded, touring bands. Here's Henry Sapoznik—the director of the Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture here at the University of Wisconsin—on the mythology and music of the House of David.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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People who like baseball call it "the thinking person’s game," but for the first 100 years, baseball was governed by a surprisingly limited range of critical thinking. Decisions were made by insiders, the current and former players who spent a lifetime around the diamond, and did things mostly one way: the way they've always been done. But in the last 3 or 4 years, that storehouse of common knowledge—much of which was kept guarded in a true "old boy's club"—has been cracked wide open. Now the game isn't driven by intuition, it's driven by data. And the math nerds who rode the bench in Little League—if they played at all—are now telling pro ballplayers what to do. Journalist Travis Sawchik tells Steve Paulson the story.
Zadie Smith portrays London as it really is with people from many races and cultures living together and spillinng over into each other’s lives.
The number one selling gospel artist last year is also a lightning rod in the Black Church.
Here is our Executive Producer Steve Paulson's list of books that have blown his mind recently, with hopes that some of them will expand yours in 2015, if they haven't already.
Sara Nelson tells Anne Strainchamps what publishers can do to make a book a best-seller and why the actual number of copies sold is a state secret.
Roberta Gregory writes and draws the comic strip featuring the mis-adventures of Midge McCracken, AKA "Bitchy Bitch."
Susan Friedman maintains an e-mail correspondence with a colleague in Iraq whose messages describe the hardships and terror of life in Iraq...
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