Les Blank is a much admired documentary film-maker. His subjects have included Polka music, gap-toothed women, and bluesman Lightning Hopkins.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Joan Wylie Hall, author of “Shirley Jackson: A Study of the Short Fiction,” talks with Steve Paulson...
Nicholas Harberd spent a year observing a thalecress in a country churchyard. He kept a diary.
John McWhorter teaches linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley and is the author of “Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care.”
Novelist Mary Gordon used to bristle at the label "Catholic writer," but she's made peace with it now.
Novelist Jane Hamilton reads her favorite novel endings.
Michael Benson is a film-maker who’s compiled an extraordinary book of still photographs. Lawrence Weschler wrote the book’s Afterward.
Travel writer Tony Perrotet has spent his career traveling all over the globe, but he skipped the Mediterranean tour, choosing Tierra del Fuego or the Amazon over Rome. But the discovery of an ancient guide book launched him on his most exotic journey yet, in the footsteps of the Ancients.
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