Kurt Schwitters was a celebrated modern artist in Europe in the twenties and thirties but his career was cut short by the Nazis. Now, his tales have been translated and edited by Jack Zipes.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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We might not have the perfect definition of the word “scoundrel” but we can certainly agree on one thing – Civil War General and US Congressman Daniel Sickles was the epitome of a scoundrel.
Journalist Ian Johnson is the author of “Wild Grass: Three Portraits of Change in Modern China.” He talks with Anne Strainchamps about one of them.
Jack Miles says maybe God became incarnate to repent for having thrown Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, and that Christ initiated the Eucharist as a way for his followers to regain their immortality.
Steve Paulson talks with book critic James Wood about Dale Peck and the business of doing book reviews. James Wood is literary critic at The New Republic.
Conventional wisdom holds that the founding fathers were a group of esteemed gentlemen who peacefully united under a common cause. Historian Paul Aron tells a different story. In his book "Founding Feuds," Aron follows the bitter rivalries and intense conflicts in the early days of the republic. He says our nation's founders could be just as vicious and scathing as politicians today.
So-called "outsider art" has been hot for a while now. What the art crowd calls it has changed, from l'art brut to self-taught art to vernacular art.
Whatever you call it, the work of some these artists will join the cream of the contemporary art crop at the Venice Biennale this summer.
One of the largest collections of vernacular art is right here in Wisconsin. Producer Sara Nics talks with the woman who helped create the collection: Ruth Kohler.
James Carse is the author of "The Religious Case Against Belief." He talks with Steve Paulson about the definition of religion and argues that one can be a religious person without believing in God.
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