Steven Biel talks about Grant Woods' iconic American painting: who the models were; how the painting's been received and why it's so often parodied.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
According to self-described "space dork" Andy Weir, he was just sitting around at home one day imagining a manned Mars mission — not with any goal in mind, but just as a thought experiment. Soon, he realized this would be a pretty good premise for a story. And boy was he right. His novel "The Martian" started as a series of blog posts and has become a blockbuster motion picture. In this interview, he reads excerpts from the novel and discusses the balance between pure fantasty and scientific accuracy in science fiction.
The most popular baby names in the US last year were Noah and Emma. We know that because 20 years ago, Michael Shackleford wrote a computer program to track the annual popularity of baby names. Expectant parents everywhere should thank him.
It's not just the movies that offer sequels. Susan Heyboer O'Keefe's new novel is called "Frankenstein's Monster"...
In a small studio in Brooklyn, one artist is reimagining selfies. Erin Riley finds online self-portraits and transforms them into larger-than-life tapestries. The woven women don’t have faces… but they do have stories.
Thug Kitchen is a wildly popular, foul-mouthed vegan food blog. The formerly anonymous writers have just come out with a cookbook and revealed their identities. Michelle Davis and Matt Holloway are a white couple from L.A. Now they're fielding questions about the racial politics of the way they write about food.
TTBOOK producer Charles Monroe-Kane is a great storyteller who's led an adventurous life. Here's a wild story from his memoir "Lithium Jesus" about smuggling mob money when he lived in Prague in the '90s.
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