According to self-described "space dork" Andy Weir, he was just sitting around at home one day imagining a manned Mars mission — not with any goal in mind, but just as a thought experiment. Soon, he realized this would be a pretty good premise for a story. And boy was he right. His novel "The Martian" started as a series of blog posts and has become a blockbuster motion picture. In this interview, he reads excerpts from the novel and discusses the balance between pure fantasty and scientific accuracy in science fiction.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
The first stories in "Thousand and One Nights" were written down in the ninth century. They’ve been added to over the years. In some ways, it’s not so much a book as a living river of stories. Some of the most recent additions come from the celebrated novelist Salman Rushdie.
You can also hear many more interviews with Rushdie.
Thug Kitchen is a wildly popular, foul-mouthed vegan food blog. The formerly anonymous writers have just come out with a cookbook and revealed their identities. Michelle Davis and Matt Holloway are a white couple from L.A. Now they're fielding questions about the racial politics of the way they write about food.
TTBOOK producer Charles Monroe-Kane is a great storyteller who's led an adventurous life. Here's a wild story from his memoir "Lithium Jesus" about smuggling mob money when he lived in Prague in the '90s.
In a small studio in Brooklyn, one artist is reimagining selfies. Erin Riley finds online self-portraits and transforms them into larger-than-life tapestries. The woven women don’t have faces… but they do have stories.
Tony Rothman talks with Jim Fleming about Sangaku - the ancient tradition of Japanese temple geometry, which flourished during Japan’s period of isolation from the West.
Scott Weidensaul talks with Jim Fleming about several animals that have turned up after their species was thought to be extinct.
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