Princeton historian Robert Darnton says that people in 18th century Paris spread the news by making up topical songs to familiar melodies, and that the police kept records on everybody.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
How do young people in Burma use karaoke as a form of political protest?
Katherine Monk talks with Anne Strainchamps about Canadian cinema, and we hear examples from the work of Guy Maddin and Atom Egoyan.
Liaquat Ahamed talks about the parallels between the recent financial meltdown and the events that led up to the Great Depression. Both situations involved bubbles, and errors by the Federal Reserve System.
Michael Dirda, the Pulitzer Prize winning senior editor of the Washington Post’s Bookworld has written a memoir called “An Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland.”
Kim Isaac Eisler talks with Jim Fleming about Indian casinos, admitting to the same ambivalence society feels. Casinos are fun, but they’re making too much money off their patrons.
Margaret Atwood says it's a mistake to think about debt as simply a matter of money. Debt is embedded in our psyche and rife in our literary and religious history.
Mead McCormick is one of 100 finalists for the Mars One program, a private venture that hopes to start a colony on Mars by 2027. She talks to Anne Strainchamps about what attracted her to the project, what she imagines it will look like, and her fears about the blackness of space.
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