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.
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Patricia O’Connor tells Jim Fleming there’s nothing wrong with splitting an infinitive and that people should stop trying to make English behave like Latin.
Joao Magueijo has been stirring things up in Physics with his book, “Faster Than the Speed of Light.” He posits that the speed of light can vary.
Rebecca Goldstein explains how Spinoza envisioned God and why his conception appealed to later scientists like Einstein.
Nikiko Masumoto's family farm goes back several generations in her family. Today, it grows some of the world's best peaches. Nikiko explains the link between growing food and growing stories.
Jessica Lamb-Shapiro attended a conference of self-help authors featuring Mark Victor Hansen of "Chicken Soup for the..." fame.
Musue Haddad of Liberia went on a two-day trip to visit her parents in 1989. While she was on this trip, civil war broke out in her country. Haddad has not seen her parents or the rest of her family since.
For centuries, the oddities of nature - like two-headed cats and conjoined twins - fascinated people. Science historian Lorraine Daston says a history of wonders is to some degree a history of pre-modern science.
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