If there’s one writer who’s identified with the Mississippi River, it’s Mark Twain. He grew up in Hannibal, Missouri — on the river’s edge — and as a young man, he worked as a steamboat pilot. And then he wrote the “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” the novel that turned the Mississippi into myth. But it also created one of the most enduring controversies in American literary history: how to depict race relations in America's past. In this interview, Andrew Levy says that "Huckleberry Finn" is actually anti-racist — and when it was first published, the big controversy was about Twain’s depiction of wild children.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Meaiti Jo Sheamuis is the host of a traditional Irish music show on RTE, the Irish language radio network. He’s also an evangelist for the Irish language.
Kevin Kelly tells Jim Fleming that the sum total of our technology - what he calls “the technicum” - is taking on the properties of life itself.
Will we ever understand the true nature of dark matter and dark energy? Harvard cosmologist Lisa Randall considers these and other great mysteries in physics.
Nobody writes a dystopia quite the way Margaret Atwood does. In this EXTENDED conversation about MaddAddam - and a whole lot more - Atwood talks about utopia and dystopia, and the inherent optimism of all authors.
Michael Dirda won the Pulitzer Prize for his literary criticism in the Washington Post Book World. Among his collections of essays is Classics for Pleasure.
Richard Perle tells Steve Paulson that Iran is harboring Al Quaeda people; that the U.S. should always be on the side on people fighting for freedom and that his reputation as “the Prince of Darkness” results from a case of mistaken identity.
Joyce Carol Oates talks with Jim Fleming about some of the stories in her book “Faithless: Tales of Transgression.”
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