Quan Barry is an award-winning poet and novelist who founded the website ASPHODEL.INFO, which is dedicated to publishing a new poem each week in response to current events.More
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Interviews By Topic
When you hear "poet", what kind of person comes to mind? Emily Dickinson in her white dress? Robert Frost in the snowy woods, with...More
Anger can separate us into partisan camps, but it can also inspire people to work together to achieve amazing things. Michael Eric Dyson knows this firsthand.More
Brendan Steinhauser was watching Rick Santelli on Squawk Box, listening to the CNBC editor’s now-legendary rant following the 2009 bailout of the financial sector that ended with his call for a “Chicago Tea Party” outside of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Steinhauser thought it sounded like a good idea.More
Psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett runs a lab where she studies emotions and says that if you pay attention, everyday anger can be a source of wisdom.More
Writer Pankaj Mishra traces the roots of contemporary political rage back to a surprising source: the 18th century Enlightenment. More
Could we, as a nation, be addicted to anger? That’s what science fiction writer and astrophysicist David Brin thinks. In fact, he wrote an open letter to addiction researchers and psychologists, asking them to investigate America’s epidemic of self-righteous indignation.More
Siri Hustvedt on developing voices on new platforms, all while coping with old-fashioned sexism. More
Facing the costs to being a victim of online harassment, where’s the law when you need it?More
Writer Roxane Gay talks about tackling her trolls and “writing to the point of uncomfortability.”More
In 2015, Mingyur Rinpoche completed a four and a half year wandering retreat, an experience that nearly killed him. He told Steve Paulson about the incredible journey, and the meditative insights he learned along the way.More
Psychologist Clark McCauley has studied terrorist groups and lone actor extremists for years. He says in many cases, it's not ideology that inspires terrorists — it's social bonds.More
Can psychedelics help you find God? Clinical psychologist Bill Richards thinks so. More
Psychedelic drugs show remarkable promise for treating addiction and end-of-life anxiety.More
Katherine MacLean describes her work as a skilled guide to a psychedelic trip. More
Doug Eck directs Google’s new “Magenta” project, an experiment in teaching machines to make art, leveraging advances in machine learning like neural networks to enable computers to do things like compose music.More
As an acquisitions editor for Penguin Books, Jodie Archer saw many novelists struggling to write books that would sell. Then she went to grad school at Stanford, where she and her advisor created an algorithm to help.More
When a computer program fixes a writer’s novel, or improvises a few bars of music, is that real creativity? Are they not just doing what they were programmed to do? Blaise Agüera y Arcas would wholeheartedly disagree.More