What's it like to win a MacArthur "genius" award? Fiction writer Karen Rusell tells Anne Strainchamps about the day she heard the news, and talks about her special blend of fantasy and realism in her short stories.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Mitch Cantor is the founder of Gadfly Records, and dedicated to spreading the word about obscure, unique and offbeat projects. Cantor tells Steve Paulson about some of the artists he records.
Nicholas Rogers is a historian at York University in Canada and the author of “Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night.” He says that Halloween has both pagan and Christian roots and that the modern holiday once involved more treats than tricks.
There's a big debate among ecologists right now over whether we can have hope in the face of climate change. Science writer Emma Marris says we need it. And it’s not just newspaper headlines and environmental campaigns that need to change, we need to rethink “nature.”
A discussion of what makes a successful children’s picture book. Participants include: Kevin Henkes, Uri Shulevitz, and Barbara Barstow.
Jonathan Kozol tells Jim Fleming about the children in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the South Bronx and why he’s hopeful about them in spite of the terrible problems in their community.
Oklahoma is famous for tornados. And the safest place to be in a tornado is a basement, right? Well in Oklahoma, they don’t have many basements. In fact, only 3 percent of homes have them. Why? Because people in Oklahoma think you can’t build basements in their soil.
This is a poem by Susan Avishai about a single elderly woman who lived next door for more than 25 years.She wrote it just a few months before her neighbor passed away.
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