Interviews By Topic

A great horned owl

Jennifer Ackerman writes in her new book "What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds" about how owls are cryptic, hard to find, and difficult to understand. Speaking to Shannon Henry Kleiber, she said that’s part of the attraction.More

Birdwatching gear

Mark Obmascik tells Anne Strainchamps about the biggest competition in North American bird-watching and how he got drawn into the quest.More

sliced mango

Aimee Nezhukumatathil takes us through the layers of food emotion and nostalgia, encouraging us to slow down and experience taste and all the wonder it brings with it.More

stacked up biscuits

Growing up in Appalachia, Crystal Wilkinson learned that food was about community and family. Now she is passing her stories and recipes down to her own children and grandchildren in her new book, "Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts.”More

Jumbo's Good Food, c. 2001

When Joe Hardtke was a kid in the 1980s, Jumbo's Drive-In in Kewaunee, Wisconsin was the place all the farm kids hung out. 40 years later, people still talk about their fries. Joe went back to his hometown to investigate what made those fries so perfect — crispy and filled with flavor — and how the story of Jumbo’s is a reflection on how we all see our hometowns. More

cookie dough

Three authors share recipes that anchor them back to history, both shared and personal.More

Bradley Lomax and Judith Heumann

Sami Schalk is the author of “Black Disability Politics,” a history of disability rights and Black activism. She says understanding Black disability politics is essential to building an accessible future.More

Brian Muraresku

Scholar Brian Muraresku makes the controversial argument that the famous Eleusinian Mysteries were fueled by a psychedelic beer.More

feet

Rae Johnson is a somatic movement therapist and the author of “Embodied Activism.” They say the process of making change is more sustainable when you listen to your body. More

Kenan Kitchen

Religious groups have long had rules and traditions that become part of the fabric of a lifetime. Master food preserver Christina Ward set out to find those histories in her book "Holy Food: How Cults, Communes, and Religious Movements Influenced What We Eat."More

As Steve says in this 2005 profile, part of the magic of Nobel Prize-winning short story author Alice Munro was the way she condensed the essence of a life into a short space. Munro passed away on May 13, 2024. She was 92.More

Jessi Kneeland, a fitness trainer turned body neutrality coach, suggests that aiming for a neutral stance toward one's body — rather than unconditional love — might be more realistic and attainable for many of us.More

Eula Biss

"On Immunity: An Inoculation" author Eula Biss recommends a memoir in which author Maggie Nelson asks questions that bend conventions about gender, sexuality, motherhood, family and identity itself.More

Left to right: Rylea Nevaeh Whittet as Maddy and Margaret Qualley as Alex in episode 101 of "Maid."

Stephanie Land’s 2019 book "Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother’s Will to Survive" detailed her personal experience struggling with precarious work as a housecleaner while raising a young child.More

A woman with child

The time a person spends carrying their child during a pregnancy is only a brief time compared to the time they'll spend being a mother, but as Amanda Henry shares in her story, that time goes differently for everyone, shaping who you are and what impact you'll go on to have on the world around you.More

Frank Stella, Double Gray Scramble, 1973.

Frank Stella sits down with Steve Paulson to talk about a lesser known aspect of his remarkable career — his work as a printmaker.More

Abstract dishes

Fasting is an ancient practice that’s experiencing something of a revival right now in health and fitness circles. But when John Oakes set out to explore the concept, he took it a lot deeper.More

Frans Hals, Meeting of the Officers and Sergeants of the Calivermen Civic Guard, 1633

The Frans Hals Museum in the Netherlands holds an exquisite collection of 16th and 17th century Dutch art — and the largest collection of paintings by artist Frans Hals himself. Steve Paulson takes us along on a tour of Hals’ work, and talks with Steven Nadler, a philosopher who has written a new book about Hals.More

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