Mario Vargas Llosa is one of the godfathers of Latin American writing. His novel “The Feast of the Goat” deals with the Dominican Republic under the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Peter Carey's novel "True History of The Kelly Gang" has been described as "a spectacular feat of literary ventriloquism." Carey tells Steve Paulson that's because he wrote the book in another voice.
Karen Armstrong tries to explain where the Buddha came from and how Prince Siddharta could be a compassionate man yet abandon his family to become the Buddha.
Len Fisher believes in practical physics. His book, "How to Dunk a Doughnut" gives scientific explanations for the minutiae of everyday life.
Anthropologist Jeremy Narby went to the Peruvian Amazon to study the Ashaninca Indians. The experience transformed his outlook on life, especially once he tried their powerful hallucinogen ayahuasca.
Pir Zubair Shah is a Pakistani journalist who risked his life reporting for the New York Times from his homeland -- Waziristan, in the heart of Taliban-controlled Pashtun area. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his work, but had to leave his country.
Ken Eklund is the creator of the alternate reality game "World Without Oil." He describes the game and we hear the comments of several game bloggers.
The 12 people who died during the attack on the Charlie Hebdo office are on our minds this week. Most of the victims were cartoonists for the French satirical weekly. Its reporters and editor received death threats for the magazine’s depictions of the Prophet Muhammad. A hit-list published in an Al Qaeda magazine in 2013 also named the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard. Steve Paulson talked with him a few years ago, while Westergaard was living in hiding in Denmark.
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