Nadine Svoboda’s been all over the world listening to forests. She records their sounds for the British Library Sound Archive.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Leonard Zwilling tells Jim Fleming about boxing’s impact on the English language. It’s yielded such words and phrases as fan, throw in the towel, and up to scratch.
Joan Didion, who died last week at the age of 87, helped shape a highly personal brand of nonfiction that came to be known as the New Journalism. Her early essay collections "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" (1968) and "The White Album" (1979) influenced generations of writers. Her later memoirs, "The Year of Magical Thinking" and "Blue Nights," chronicled the deaths of her husband and daughter. In 2011 Didion talked with Steve Paulson about illness and growing old in the wake of the death of her daughter, Quintana.
Nicholas Carr believes the Internet is rewiring the human brain with its instant access to all sorts of information. Are we losing our ability to focus on one thing for any length of time?
Food is certainly the most palatable expression of culture, and the most easily shared.
LA Times food critic Jonathan Gold has spent his career seeking out the best plates of authentic – or reinterpreted - culture. In this UNCUT interview, he talks with Anne Strainchamps about food in translation.
It'll get your stomach growling, so have some snacks handy!
Jay Parini talks with Jim Fleming about the power of poetry and how it especially empowers young people in troubled times.
Classical pianist Leon Fleisher was sidelined for many years by a medical condition that crippled his right hand.
Celtic historian John Matthews tells Steve Paulson that Merlin probably was a real person and that wizards are related to our ancient shamans.
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