Rebecca Solnit is the author of "River of Shadows," a book about Eadweard Muybridge and his stop-motion photography.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Jeannette Walls is a famous gossip columnist in New York on MSNBC, but she's the child of hippies who lived a nomadic life in cars and abandoned buildings always one step ahead of their creditors.
Correction: This interview refers to a survey finding that only 22% of Americans trust government at all levels. The actual survey was limited to trust in the federal government, and found that 22% of Americans trusted the government in Washington "almost always or most of the time".
We all know it's important to be involved in local government, but can political participation also be fun? Josh Lerner thinks so. He believes local governments could boost the fun factor in the political process by borrowing a few ideas from game design.
Patricia Smith is an African American who's the four-time champion of the National Poetry Slam.
British novelist Jim Crace is an atheist. He doesn't believe in an afterlife, and tells Jim Fleming that he intended his novel "Being Dead" to be a comfort to readers.
Mike Greenberg is a self-described metrosexual who cares a lot about his appearance and lifestyle.
Sometimes when musicians break the mold, they end up creating new genres. Richard Hell didn't study music as a kid, but he loved how rock and roll let him experiment with self-expression.
Mario Vargas Llosa is one of the godfathers of Latin American fiction. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010. He also once ran for president of his native country, Peru. Politics and literature are the driving forces in his life.
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