Mike Tidwell is a freelance journalist who thinks he’s found the biggest environmental catastrophe in America. In this pre-Katrina interview, Tidwell talks about the time he spent with shrimpers in the bayou country and what they taught him about the devastating price we’re paying for the way we control floods on the Mississippi River.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
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.
Jan Harold Brunvand reviews some of his favorite urban legends for Steve Paulson and explains that they always happened to a friend of a friend.
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.
Norman George wrote and stars in “Poe Alone” - a play set during the writer’s last public lecture.
NY Times film critic Manohla Dargis selects her favorite film of the year: Richard Linklater's "Boyhood," filmed over the course of 12 years.
Celtic historian John Matthews tells Steve Paulson that Merlin probably was a real person and that wizards are related to our ancient shamans.
Lorrie Moore has a new collection of short stories. She tells Steve Paulson that life is filled with absurdity; ghost stories are great fodder for fiction; and North America now owns the short story.
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