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
Music critic Yuval Taylor tells Steve Paulson that authenticity in music is a complicated business.
Stephen Thompson is an editor at The Onion newspaper, and editor of “The Onion A.V. Club: The Tenacity of the Cockroach.”
Novelist Michelle Wildgen shares a conversation about food, art, and the creative imagination with chef and food activist Alice Waters, founder of the legendary Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse.
Steven Pinker tells Steve Paulson that parents don’t really have much to do with shaping their children’s personalities.
The Canadian surrealist sketch comedy trio, The Vestibules, with their brilliant commercial parody, "Laurence Olivier for Diet Coke."
There's a short story about a guy who's so afraid of other people reading his mind that he wears a tin foil hat to protect his thoughts. The tin foil part is crazy, but protecting your mind is maybe not such a bad idea. Academic psychologist Rob Brotherton says there are certain psychological traits that predispose people to believe in conspiracy theories. For example, there's an experiment done by a group of psychologists in Amsterdam. It involves a group of subjects and a messy desk.
FIND OUT HOW LIKELY YOU ARE TO BELIEVE IN CONSPIRACY THEORIES BY TAKING ROB'S QUIZ.
J.R. Thornton was once a serious tennis player on the junior circuit. Then he moved to China and spent a year training with the Beijing National Team, where he discovered just how different the life of an aspiring champion could be. His novel "Beautiful Country" reveals the incredibly difficult demands on young athletes in China.
Pages
