Rob Richie is executive director of the Center for Voting and Democracy. He talks about how the system of instant run off voting works and why a lot of people, including John McCain and Howard Dean, think it’s a good idea.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Karen Russell talks about her debut novel, "Swamplandia!," which focuses on a family-operated gator wrestling theme park in the Florida Everglades.
Karen Russell's "Swamplandia!" page on Random House's website
Nadine Svoboda’s been all over the world listening to forests. She records their sounds for the British Library Sound Archive.
Mike Tidwell is a freelance journalist who thinks he’s found the biggest environmental catastrophe in America. In this pre-Katrina interview, Tidwell talks about the time he spent with shrimpers in the bayou country and what they taught him about the devastating price we’re paying for the way we control floods on the Mississippi River.
More than 30 million Americans live in small towns. And lots of us will drive through small towns on road trips this summer. Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow just completed the first comprehensive study in half a century of small-town living. Here's his conversation with Anne...
Author Kevin Henkes reads his favorite children's book, "Lucky Song".
Nicholas Carr believes the Internet is rewiring the human brain with its instant access to all sorts of information. Are we losing our ability to focus on one thing for any length of time?
Michael Dirda, the Pulitzer Prize winning senior editor of the Washington Post’s Bookworld has written a memoir called “An Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland.”
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