American by birth, Vijay Iyer is trying to create a new kind of music, a synthesis of Western jazz and Indian music.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Simon Critchley is the author of "The Book of Dead Philosophers," a quirky account of how various philosophers thought about death and died themselves.
Jill Fredston has rowed more than 20,000 miles of Arctic water, along the coastlines of Alaska and Greenland and alongside whales and polar bears.
Historian William Dalrymple tells Steve Paulson that the British weren't the masters of India when they first arrived. The Mughals were.
Thinking about taking piano lessons at 69? Or violin at 73? Maybe guitar after you retire? Well, even if you're not thinking about those things, maybe you should be. According to Francine Toder, author of “The Vintage Years,” learning a musical instrument is one of the best things you can do for your mind and body as you get older.
Samuel R. Delany has been described as "American science fiction's most consistently brilliant and inventive writer." Delany's non-fiction includes the essay collection, "The Jewel-Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction." He talked to Steve Paulson about his love of language.
In Siberia, for centuries, people have lived in cooperation with reindeer. Anthropologist Piers Vitebsky tells some tales of the Reindeer People.
One of the many utopian groups that started during the late 19th century and early 20th century was the House of David—perhaps the first cult to become a pop culture sensation. Their compound in Benton Harbon, Michigan had an amusement park and a zoo; they had a baseball team that once played an exhibition game against Babe Ruth and the Yankees, and they had bands—highly regarded, touring bands. Here's Henry Sapoznik—the director of the Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture here at the University of Wisconsin—on the mythology and music of the House of David.
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