Interviews By Topic

oscilloscope

As media historian Jonathan Sterne tells Craig Eley, signal processing shapes the sound of all vocal media, from your telephone calls to the music of T-Pain.More

Choreogapher Bill T. Jones recommends Lawrence Weschler's biography of Robert Irwin, an artist who spent his career attempting to capture the subjectivity of the act of experiencing the world around us.More

"Conversation in the Cathedral."

Diplomat and writer Emily Parker say by Peruvian Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa uses fiction to uniquely depict what it actually looks like living day-to-day under a authoritarian regime.More

boxes

Junot Diaz — the Dominican-born, MacArthur genius, Pulitzer Prize-winning author — has written some of some of the most brilliant contemporary fiction about the immigrant experience. He spoke to Steve about his book "This Is How You Lose Her."More

internet activist on laptop

In her new book, "Now I Know Who My Comrades Are," Emily Parker profiles a few online activists, and writes about how they're transforming life in China, Cuba and Russia.More

Konya, Turkey.

Orhan Pamuk is Turkey’s most famous writer and a cultural ambassador for Turkey around the world.  He talks with Steve Paulson about his novel “Snow,” in which a secular poet is confronted by Islamic fundamentalists in a provincial town.More

Junot Diaz recommends Samuel R. Delany's reverse-chronology novel that captures the tragic story of a closeted poet who struggles to reckon with his desires.More

David Foster Wallace’s masterpiece — "Infinite Jest" — is famously difficult to read. Colleen Leahy and Makini Allwood climbed the literary mountain of a book, and they share their experience on a podcast called "And But So."More

woman on beach

It's summertime and the living is easy — but the reading shouldn't be. "To The Best Of Our Knowledge" producers compile a reading list for those seeking a challenge as their beach read. More

Syna So Pro

Musical guest Syna So Pro explains how her classical music training informs her electronic loops.More

Bob Hansmen

One professor crosses St. Louis’ racial divide.More

Sam Coster

How a brush with cancer inspired three brothers — Sam, Seth and Adam Coster — to build a bigger game.More

Historical photo of the St. Louis Arch

Edward McPherson on the legacy of the St. Louis Arch.More

Religious historian Jeffrey Kripal believes that anomalous experiences — near-death experiences, telepathic dreams and other primal spiritual encounters — are the deep roots of religion. You might call it "religion before it becomes religion."More

How painting radium on watches and instrument dials killed more than 50 young women working in Ottawa, Illinois.More

Moby Dick

Ricardo Pitts-Wiley is the director and writer of the theatrical production of “Moby Dick: Then and Now,” which re-imagines Melville's tale in a context relevant to its cast — inmates at Rhode Island’s state juvenile correctional facility.More

Borges

When Steve was handed the assignment of interviewing Jorge Luis Borges — but with less than 24 hours to prepare — the opportunity felt like more of a curse than a blessing.More

Marina Lutz grew up with a father who was obsessed with watching her. She discovered the full extent of his obsession as an adult, and made an award-winning short documentary about it called “The Marina Experiment.”
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