Jerry Apps is a rural historian and chronicler of country life. His book "Old Farm" is a kind of deep history of his land in Wisconsin.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Nicholas Ostler talks to Jim Fleming about how languages spread and the similarities and differences between Chinese and English.
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.
Singer/songwriter Lisa Germano played violin for rock artist John Mellencamp. Her own album, “Geek the Girl” contains a song, “The Psychopath,” based on her experiences with an obsessed fan.
This week we mourn the death of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Here's his English translator, Edith Grossman.
Ecologist Mark Hunter talks with Jim Fleming about the destructive capacity of alien insects.
Celtic historian John Matthews tells Steve Paulson that Merlin probably was a real person and that wizards are related to our ancient shamans.
Lucy Kaylin tells Steve Paulson that the average age of American nuns is seventy, and that many orders are folding.
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