Anne Strainchamps sat down with the great Turkish writer Elif Shafak. Her latest novel, “The Architect’s Apprentice,” is an epic tale set in the height of the Ottoman Empire. It has bloodshed. It was palace intrigue. It has romance. And, yes, it has architecture.
Shafak’s tale centers around a 16th century mosque architect named Mimar Sinan. Though a character in her novel, Sinan was also a real person – considered to be the greatest architect in the Islamic World.
Simon Wilde is one of the scientists who found a tiny, four billion year old zircon in Australia. He brought it to his colleague Joe Skullan at the University of Wisconsin and they established that it’s the oldest object on earth...
Zadie Smith portrays London as it really is with people from many races and cultures living together and spillinng over into each other’s lives.
Tom Lutz tells Jim Fleming that human beings are great crybabies. Lutz is the author of “Crying: The Natural & Cultural History of Tears.”
American by birth, Vijay Iyer is trying to create a new kind of music, a synthesis of Western jazz and Indian music.
John Brown was an abolitionist who from the beginning was committed to the abolition of slavery and called for ending it through armed insurrection.
Composer Freddy Knop creates a soundscape to help illustrate Nathan Englander's experience of the muse descending.
Philosopher Susan Brison faced a personal and professional crisis after she was attacked and raped in France. She tells Anne Strainchamps how traditional philosophy failed to comfort her.
