In this look behind the scenes, producer Veronica Rueckert and Anne Strainchamps remember our interview with Amy Wallace-Havens, the sister of the late David Foster Wallace. More
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Arts and Culture
Jonah Lehrer says that the great French writer Proust described insights into the way the mind processes memory long before the scientists could prove how the brain worked.More
Richard Holmes talks with Steve Paulson about how art and science influenced each other during the Romantic period.More
Lauren Beukes talks about her new novel, "The Shining Girls."More
Marshall Boswell, author of "Understanding David Foster Wallace" recalls that writer's fictional take on Alcoholics Anonymous.More
Kazuo Ishiguro talks with Steve Paulson about his book about a boarding school full of cloned children bred to donate their organs.More
Robert Rand was working as a Senior Editor at NPR when he was crippled by panic attacks. He cured himself by taking up zydeco dancing.More
Reverend Alex Gee tells Steve Paulson how rappers like Tupac Shakur function as prophets for the hip hop generation, and how he incorporates rap music into his liturgy.More
Welcome to the death revolution. Across the country - in cafes, dining rooms, and community centers - there's a new conversation taking shape. Funeral professionals, hospice workers, academics, artists, and just plain folks are working together to change the way we talk about death and dying.More
Ray Kurzweil tells Steve Paulson humans will merge with new technology and vastly improve their intelligence.More
Nikki Giovanni reads "Poem for Lady Whose Voice I Like"More
Some of the world's most celebrated scientists and artists have been dyslexic. Cognitive scientist Maryanne Wolf says dyslexia can be a gift, but schools must learn how to teach dyslexics to read.More
Kazuo Ishiguro discusses his latest novel, "The Buried Giant." Set in a mythic past with ogres and pixies, it's a dramatic shift from his previous work.More
At the height of the Vietnam War, on the night of the full moon, a baby girl is born along the Song Ma River in her mother's grave. Her name is Rabbit, and she can hear the dead. In a luminous debut novel, "She Weeps Each Time You're Born," Wisconsin poet and writer Quan Barry explores wartime Vietnam through the eyes of a little girl with an uncommon gift.More
Nicola Griffith was born in England, is a lesbian and has MS. She's also a writer, whose character Aud, the deep-minded, has starred in several mysteries.More
Mark Mothersbaugh is co-founder of the new-wave band Devo. They think humanity is de-evolving.More
Joan Didion, who died last week at the age of 87, helped shape a highly personal brand of nonfiction that came to be known as the New Journalism. Her early essay collections "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" (1968) and "The White Album" (1979) influenced generations of writers. Her later memoirs, "The Year of Magical Thinking" and "Blue Nights," chronicled the deaths of her husband and daughter. In 2011 Didion talked with Steve Paulson about illness and growing old in the wake of the death of her daughter, Quintana.More