August is Ghost Month in Taiwan—a time to commemorate the dead: burn incense, visit shrines, honor ancestors, and avoid large purchases. It's also the setting for Ed Lin's newest mystery. Lin is a 3-time winner of the Asian-American Literary Award.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Michael Feldman, host of public radio’s comedy quiz show “Whad’ya Know,” provides his take on Groucho and putting audience members down when you still want them to like you.
Jorge Drexler is the first person from Uruguay to win an Academy Award, for the song "Al Otro Lado del Rio," which is featured in the film, "The Motorcycle Diaries."
Novelist and poet Lavinia Greenlaw has written a memoir called "The Importance of Music to Girls." She talks with Anne Strainchamps about how music helped her as she grew up, and she reads from her book.
Charles Yu on quantum parenting, time travel and other science fictional paradoxes. Yu is the author of the acclaimed novel "How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe."
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky are the celebrated husband and wife team who've translated many of the great Russian writers. They've just come out with a new version of Tolstoy's "War and Peace."
Chandra McCormick and Keith Calhoun have been photographing life in the Louisiana State Penitentiary for 30 years. They talk about the conditions in the prison - nicknamed Angola, for the plantation that was formerly on the site - and how they've changed over time. When they see the inmates working in the fields, they say, it looks a lot like slavery.
Neda Ulaby, NPR reporter and cultural critic, talks with Jim Fleming about the film adaptation of Laurence Sterne's "Tristram Shandy."
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