Are we ever good enough, or are we doomed to self-optimization for our entire lives?
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Jonathan Kaplan is a surgeon who specializes in emergency field treatment. “Groups like “Doctors without Borders” send him to war zones all over the world. His memoir is called “The Dressing Station: A Surgeon’s Chronicle of War and Medicine.”
Paul Collins describes his experience as an antiquarian bookseller in the Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye in his book “Sixpence House.”
Writer Michael Perry talks with Anne Strainchamps about his life combining writing with the new "back to the land" movement...
Julia Hansen chained herself to the radiator in her dining room for a week in an effort to quit smoking cigarettes.
Mary Lefkowitz is the author of “Greek Gods, Human Lives: What We Can Learn from Myths.” She says that the Greek gods seem too much like us to impress most modern people.
If traditional religion has lost its luster, where do you find sacred experiences? Anthropologist Erik Davis goes looking around the edges of contemporary culture - from Burning Man and trance music to psychedelics.
Novelists have always mined their own lives for inspiration. But no ever's gone quite as far as Karl Ove Knausgaard. People call him the Norwegian Proust. He recently came out with the sixth volume of his autobiographical novel, "My Struggle." What's remarkable about Knausgaard is not just that he's telling the story of his life as a novel. It's the incredible level of detail.
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