Interviews By Topic

books

Can we ever know how people used to read, say, 500 years ago? Princeton historian Tony Grafton is obsessed with that question.More

Boxing gloves hung up.

Jonathan Gottschall's dangerous idea? Remove the padded gloves from boxers and other fighters. That will reduce the brain damage to fighters.More

Ronda Rousey

At the peak of her fighting career, Ronda Rousey blew through her competition, winning nearly all of her fights in under a minute. She told Charles Monroe-Kane she’s been fighting as long as she can remember.More

Aimee Mullins

Aimee Mullins is an athlete, fashion model and activist who uses whichever of her 12 pair of prosthetic legs is appropriate for the task at hand.More

motor bike lady

Commentator Erika Monroe-Kane reflects on the appeal of driving really fast. Really fast.More

boxing woman

Kate Sekules is a magazine editor, fiction and travel writer, restaurant reviewer and the last person who ever thought she’d find herself in a boxing ring. Until she did.More

bear

Tina Bertoni provides a commentary on what it was like to hunt a bear.More

"Field and Stream" Associate Editor Kim Hiss tells Anne Strainchamps about her first hunt.More

Jennifer Shahade is the author of "Chess Bitch: Women in the Ultimate Intellectual Sport." She tells Anne Strainchamps where the title of her book came from. More

James Wood is often called the best critic of his generation. He looks back at his own career, from writing brutal take-downs at the Guardian to his current perch at The New Yorker, and tells us why genre fiction makes him "anxious." 

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When she moved back to Jordan, molecular biologist Rana Dajani realized that children there didn't read for pleasure. So she started a reading program at her local mosque. Since then, her reading program has reached more than 10,000 kids in Jordan and has spread across the Middle East.More

Writer Kerry Howley on the appeal of mixed martial arts.More

fighter

Ever wonder what goes through the mind of a fighter in the moments before a fight? Here's one take, courtesy of writer Jonathan Gottschall.More

cage fighter

Jonathan Gottschall is an English professor who trained for MMA – mixed martial arts – out of curiosity and wound up in the ring. Steve Paulson talked with him about why, and what it taught him about our relationship with violence.More

Shields (left) vs. Yenebier Guillén Benítez, 2015

Claressa Shields has been boxing since she was 11 years old. Today she’s the world middleweight champion — earning gold medals in the 2012 and 2016 Olympics — and is the subject of the documentary “T-Rex.”More

Sabaa Tahir speaks about the inspiration behind her young adult debut.More

David Thorpe

David Thorpe is a filmmaker who went in search of his voice. For his documentary "Do I Sound Gay?" he investigated why he and many other gay men ended up with a "gay voice"—one with precise enunciation and sibilant "s" sounds.More

Keith Powell in "Keith Breaks His Leg"

Before and since Keith Powell's breakthrough role as Toofer on the sitcom "30 Rock," he has confronted Hollywood's penchant for stereotyping black male voices.More

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