Lauret Savoy believes too many nature writers focus on pristine wilderness and neglect the gritty reality of the places where people actually live - in cities, for instance, maybe even near toxic waste sites - which forces us to grapple with questions about race and poverty.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Writer Ayelet Waldman was struggling...with her marriage, her kids, her life.Then she took daily microdoses of LSD for a month and found a kind of beauty and calm she hadn’t known for years.
Liza Dalby is the first Western woman to become a geisha. Dalby tells Steve Paulson what being a geisha means and explains why modern women have trouble wearing kimonos.
Ruth Ozeki's novel, "A Tale for the Time Being," is just out in paperback. Anne Strainchamps talks to Ozeki about her book, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
The best pies use ugly, tasty, local apples and have a good crust according to John T. Edge.
Every spring in Japan, people crowd under blooming cherry trees. They're signs of spring, and remembrances of life's transience.
Master gardener Sadafumi Uchiyama says the blossoms are the quintessential representation of the Japanese principle of mono no aware... beauty in the intertwining of life and death.
Jan Harold Brunvand reviews some of his favorite urban legends for Steve Paulson and explains that they always happened to a friend of a friend.
Take a look at any portrayal of the Dark Ages and you might come away believing it was a gruesome and violent time, but is that historically true?
Pages
