With mounting concerns over student debt, we're thinking about higher education this week. Christopher Newfield teaches literature and American Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He believes rising tuition and reduced state funding are threatening the nation's public universities.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Novelist Jane Smiley tells Jim Fleming Dickens had extraordinary energy and vitality, and by writing sympathetically about the poor and working class, he changed English literature forever.
Mark Leyner talks to Jim Fleming about his mind-bending, synapse-shattering new novel, "The Sugar Frosted Nutsack."
Italian journalist Riccardo Orizio tracked down seven former dictators living in exile around the world. He talks about what it was like to meet and talk with them.
Anthropologist Richard Wrangham tells Jim Fleming that he thinks cooking contributed to human evolution and is far older than most people think.
Jeffrey J. Kripal talks to Steve Paulson about his book, "Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal."
Historian Jonathan Rose tells Steve Paulson that some members of the British working class in Victorian England and the early 20th century read the classics and used them as a means of intellectual emancipation.
Michael Timmins writes the music and lyrics that his sister Margo Timmins sings as part of The Cowboy Junkies.
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