Stephen Thompson is the founder of the A.V. Club, the arts section of the satirical newspaper, "The Onion," originally based in Madison, Wisconsin. Thompson eventually left Madison for Washington DC, to work at NPR as an editor and reviewer at NPR Music. In this interview, Thompson tells Steve Paulson about the forces that drew "The Onion" staff to New York, and what it means to be an artist in the Heartland.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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2010 was a great year for documentaries, even if they weren't actually documentaries.
Benjamin Percy's new novel"The Dead Lands" is a wilderness thriller set in a post-apocalyptic landscape. The descendants of Lewis and Clark reprise their ancestors' epic cross-country journey in search of a new beginning.
Sticky Fingers is a tribute band whose members impersonate The Rolling Stones. Steven Kurutz spent a year with them and wrote about it in a book called "Like A Rolling Stone: The Strange Life of A Tribute Band."
William Powers wrote "Hamlet's Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building A Good Life in the Digital Age" because he feared people were getting lost in their electronic worlds.
Screenwriter Charlie Kauffman (“Being John Malkovich”) made himself a character in his adaptation of Susan Orlean’s book “The Orchid Thief”. The movie is called “Adaptation,” and is up for several Academy Awards, including one for Meryl Streep who plays the author.
Falling in love is easy. Staying in love for 30 or 40 years takes some skill. Social psychologist Arthur Aron identifies some of the techniques devoted couples use to keep the spark alive. Aron's the psychologist who figured out how to build intimacy in just 36 questions. He gives us some more lab-tested tips for keeping the love you find.
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