How do you best portray a strong female character, either in TV or in film? That’s a question culture critic Tasha Robinson has been asking herself for a long time now, first during her 13 years as an editor for the A.V. Club and most recently as the senior editor of the movie commentary site, The Dissolve. She tells Charles Monroe Kane that it's relatability — not toughness — that defines a strong woman on screen.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Simon Singh is the author of “Big Bang.” He tells Jim Fleming that the theory is widely accepted now, but that there are still things we don’t understand.
Rudolph Bell tells Jim Fleming that Italian parents of 500 years ago had some very modern ideas about child rearing. And a few wacky ones about pre-determining the sex of your baby.
One of the most horrific episodes in American history occurred on December 29, 1890. The U.S. Cavalry surrounded an encampment of Lakota on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and massacred some 300 people. The details of the carnage of the Wounded Knee Massacre are almost unbearable. As Black Elk, the Lakota medicine man who witnessed the massacre, put it, “Something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died." This tragedy is the bleak backdrop for Jonis Agee's new novel, "The Bones of Paradise." Set 10 years after the Wounded Knee Massacre, all the characters in her novel - from white cattle ranchers to the Lakota - are wrestling with the ghosts of the massacre. Agee tells Steve Paulson about the origins of her novel.
Thomas Pakenham’s passion for trees has led him all over the world. He tells Anne Strainchamps that trees can be majestic, sacred, and haunting.
Tariq Ali about Al-Andalus, the largely forgotten Muslim society on the peninsula that's now Spain and Portugal where Christians, Jews and Muslims once lived together in relative harmony.
Sara Gruen tells Anne Strainchamps why she chose an elephant as a main character for her story of love, avarice and power.
In a small town in northern Wales you'll find a playground where it's normal for kids to play with rusty tools or build fires. It's called the Land, and it's an example of an adventure playground — where kids are free to take risks. The Land's manager, Claire Griffiths, gives us an insider's view of an adventure playground.
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