Film-maker Shu Kei tells Steve Paulson about his film, “A Queer Story.” It’s the story of a gay couple in Hong Kong, and created a lot of discomfort for its straight audiences.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
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.
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.
It's not just the movies that offer sequels. Susan Heyboer O'Keefe's new novel is called "Frankenstein's Monster"...
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.
Walter Isaacson tells Steve Paulson that Einstein had a rebellious nature and that he didn't impress his teachers.
William Langewiesche tells Anne Strainchamps about the underground rivers at Ground Zero and the extraordinary courage and leadership shown by all the volunteers who participated in the clean up, even as the firemen rejected the heroic language used in the media.
Acclaimed fiction writer - and guest producer of this hour - Nathan Englander talks about creative problem solving. He invited musicologist and composer Freddy Knop to create a soundscape of how it feels when the muse descends.
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