Interviews By Topic

Scythians at the Tomb of Ovid c.1640 (CC0)

When Donna Zuckerberg noticed references to classical writers popping up on neo-Nazi and white supremacist websites, she decided to investigate. Why are they so invested in the classics?More

The parthenon

As a French-Tunisian Muslim and political scientist, Nadia Marzouki has come to believe that Americans are actually ambivalent about some of our own sacred values - like freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Even democracy.More

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

We take a closer look at one of Shirley Jackson's most haunting short stories, "The Daemon Lover." Joan Wylie Hall is our guide.  She's the author of "Shirley Jackson: A Study of the Short Fiction."More

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

In addition to her haunting short stories and novels, Shirley Jackson also wrote comic essays about her struggles to balance her writing career with family life. Her children Laurence Jackson Hyman and Sarah Hyman DeWitt have assembled a collection of that writing called "Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings."More

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Chuck Palahniuk has made a very successful career out of writing transgressive fiction. So maybe it's not surprising that Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" had a huge impact on Palahniuk.More

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Ruth Franklin is the author of "Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life." In her book, Franklin argues that Jackson's body of work channeled women's anxieties at the time, representing "nothing less than the secret history of American women of her era."More

Black Lives Matter is just one movement whose online presence took root among black Twitter users.

One person’s bubble can be another person’s safe space — a place where you don’t have to pretend and where you can feel supported and understood. For many black Americans, that place is Twitter. Media scholar Meredith Clark explains why.More

American economist James Buchanan won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Economics.

Historian Nancy Maclean wanted to know where the billionaire Koch brothers got their libertarian ideas, and she found that the economist James Buchanan was a huge influence. She says most people don’t realize just how disruptive these ideas are.More

"Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis" book cover

Joe McMoneagle was a "remote viewer" for the U.S. military. Using ESP — or was it a clever magic trick? — he identified the Soviet's secret Shark submarine. McMoneagle and journalist Annie Jacobsen recount this history of government psychics.More

Phos-chek drop during the 2013 Springs Fire

Reflecting on the devastating fires in California, we revisit a conversation with a longtime "hotshot" crew firefighter, Mary Pauline Lowry.  More

The Foo Show set, in virtual reality.

What's it like to host a talk show in virtual reality? We talk avatars with Will Smith, host of “The Foo Show.”More

Mark and Laurie, The Wedding

Our digital producer, Mark Riechers, tells us why he got married in a movie theater.More

Death By Audio

Matt Conboy, co-founder of one of NYC’s most famous indie music venues, tells us how “Death By Audio” died.More

Wooden Japanese figures

Author Min Jin Lee grew up Korean-American and she thought she knew her ancestors.  But when she moved to Tokyo, she discovered a history she didn’t know. The history of Koreans in Japan.More

 Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro just won the Nobel prize. Here's the best stuff he's said to us.More

Torah and jad - exhibits in Big Synagogue Museum, Wlodawa - Poland. (CC BY 2.5)

The story of one famous mathematician’s obsession with the ancient and mystical and numerical world of the Kabbalah, from Shlomo Maital of the podcast "Israel Story."More

The beauty of nature.

Frank Wilczek is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist at MIT. He's kind of obsessed, in his own way, with understanding the universe. Specifically, he’s interested in what he calls “the beautiful question." Is the universe naturally, inherently beautiful?More

Plastic crochet corals from the "Crochet Coral Reef" project by Christine and Margaret Wertheim and the Institute For Figuring.

What if the geometric structure of the universe has been hidden, for centuries, in crochet? Margaret Wertheim can help you get there with a ball of wool, a crochet hook, and some non-Euclidean geometry.More

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