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.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Meg Graham is the co-author (with Alec Shuldiner) of “Corning and the Craft of Innovation.” She says that Corning has a long tradition of nurturing innovation and accommodating eccentricity.
Lucy Kaylin tells Steve Paulson that the average age of American nuns is seventy, and that many orders are folding.
Classical pianist Leon Fleisher was sidelined for many years by a medical condition that crippled his right hand.
Kaari Pitkin produces Radio Rookies, New York's Peabody Award winning radio project for teenagers. She and one of the Rookies, Jaimita Haskell, tell Jim Fleming about the project.
Mead McCormick is one of 100 finalists for the Mars One program, a private venture that hopes to start a colony on Mars by 2027. She talks to Anne Strainchamps about what attracted her to the project, what she imagines it will look like, and her fears about the blackness of space.
Jay Parini talks with Jim Fleming about the power of poetry and how it especially empowers young people in troubled times.
Naomi Klein discusses how countries impose "disaster capitalism" on countries to get otherwise unpopular policies accepted.
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