A.M. Homes was adopted as a newborn. When she was 31, her biological mother made contact, launching the writer on a years-long quest into her identity.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
One of the largely unknown stories about Camus was his friendship with the scientist Jacques Monod. Both later won Nobel prizes - Camus for literature, Monod for biology - and both were heroes of the French Resistance.
Israeli novelist Amos Oz tells Steve Paulson that his own life parallels the history of modern Israel and that his parents were intellectual European emigres.
The film “Buzkashi Boys” is a coming of age story set in Afghanistan’s national sport, Buzkashi. It's a game of horse polo played with a dead goat instead of a ball. Plus, a coda from novelist Khaled Hosseini.
Angus Trumble is Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Yale Center for British Art, and is the author of “A Brief History of the Smile.” He tells Steve Paulson that the Julia Roberts-style toothy grin in a recent fashion that would have seemed improper centuries ago.
From Bloomer, Wisconsin, listener Jonathan Blyth sent us a ghost story called "You Are What You Eat."
In his book "The Ethics of Voting," Georgetown philosopher Jason Brennan argues that we'd be better off if more people stayed home on Election Day. He says citizens don't have a civic duty to vote, and that some of us probably shouldn't vote at all.
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