Maybe Mr. Rogers was right and every neighbor is a potential friend – someone worth inviting over, getting to know. On the other hand, maybe the weird guy next door will turn out to be Jeffrey Dahmer.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Phillip Jenkins is the author of “The Next Christendom: The Coming of Age of Global Christianity.” Jenkins tells Steve Paulson that Christianity may be declining in the nations of the industrialized West, but Pentecostalism is experiencing explosive growth in Latin America and Africa.
Rebecca and Robert Bluestone tell Judith Strasser what their art forms have in common and how they both use color and a sense of place in their work.
Lada Adamic is one of a host of data scientists working at facebook. Anne Strainchamps wanted to know what all those sociologists are up to.
Check out Facebook's social science website.
Storyteller Lorraine Johnson Coleman tells Anne Strainchamps about the various cultural traditions behind the breads found in Southern kitchens, and in her book.
Joan Didion, who died last week at the age of 87, helped shape a highly personal brand of nonfiction that came to be known as the New Journalism. Her early essay collections "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" (1968) and "The White Album" (1979) influenced generations of writers. Her later memoirs, "The Year of Magical Thinking" and "Blue Nights," chronicled the deaths of her husband and daughter. In 2011 Didion talked with Steve Paulson about illness and growing old in the wake of the death of her daughter, Quintana.
Rachel Fershleiser and Larry Smith tell Anne Strainchamps how they got started soliciting six-word memoirs, recite some of their favorites, and say that crafting them can become an addiction.
Leonard Zwilling tells Jim Fleming about boxing’s impact on the English language. It’s yielded such words and phrases as fan, throw in the towel, and up to scratch.
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