Michael Dirda won the Pulitzer Prize for his literary criticism in the Washington Post Book World. Among his collections of essays is Classics for Pleasure.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Karen Armstrong is one of the world's best-known writers on religion, but her own spiritual path hasn't been easy. She tells us why she joined a convent and then left - and how she later came to appreciate religious texts.
Jo Tatchell and Nabeel Yasin talk about poetry in Iraq, how Yasin got out of the country, and what it was like for him to go back after 27 years.
Anne Strainchamps talks with Robert Pinsky, 39th Poet Laureate of the United States, who reads several of the poems people have been sending him since the attacks.
Writer and teacher Parker Palmer talks with Anne Strainchamps about his experience with clinical depression and attending to people on their deathbeds.
Poet and writer Kenneth Goldsmith talks about his "Uncreative Writing" course in which students are penalized for showing any originality and creativity. Goldsmith is the author of "Uncreative Writing: Managing Language in the Digital Age."
John Matthews talks with Anne Strainchamps about the sacred pre-Christian origins of many of our secular Christmas traditions.
Paul Miller is the unofficial spokesman for remix culture in his persona as DJ Spooky.
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