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.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
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.
Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard discusses his six-volume autobiographical novel, "My Struggle."
You could also listen to an extended interview with Karl Ove Knausgaard.
Mark Jacobson and his wife took their three children on a 90-day trip around the world. They've written a book called "12,000 Miles in the Nick of Time: A Semi-Dysfunctional Family Circumnavigates the Globe."
Lucy Kaylin tells Steve Paulson that the average age of American nuns is seventy, and that many orders are folding.
Celtic historian John Matthews tells Steve Paulson that Merlin probably was a real person and that wizards are related to our ancient shamans.
Jay Parini talks with Jim Fleming about the power of poetry and how it especially empowers young people in troubled times.
Phillip Jenkins is the author of “The Next Christendom: The Coming of Age of Global Christianity.” Jenkins tells Steve Paulson that Christianity may be declining in the nations of the industrialized West, but Pentecostalism is experiencing explosive growth in Latin America and Africa.
Pages
