Samara O'Shea is a professional letter writer and the author of "For the Love of Letters." She tells Anne Strainchamps about the ingredients that go into a powerful letter.
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.
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.
Tom Wolfe reads the opening to "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and explains why it's his favorite.
Philosopher and novelist Umberto Eco wrote a history of beauty. A few years later, he followed it up with a study of ugliness. Here’s what he found
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.
Jules Pretty spent a year circumnavigating England's southeastern coast on foot. He discovered tidal paths, secret roads, and beaches covered in tiny fragments of 18th century human bones.
Stephen Thompson is an editor at The Onion newspaper, and editor of “The Onion A.V. Club: The Tenacity of the Cockroach.”
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