Writer and activist Yasmin Nair's Dangerous Idea? Writers should always
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Lada Adamic is one of a host of data scientists working at facebook. Anne Strainchamps wanted to know what all those sociologists are up to.
Check out Facebook's social science website.
Jerry Apps is a rural historian and chronicler of country life. His book "Old Farm" is a kind of deep history of his land in Wisconsin.
We present two takes on the question of whether or not the world's supply of oil is drying up. Princeton's Ken Deffeyes says production has peaked. Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg says that's just crying wolf.
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.
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.
Celtic historian John Matthews tells Steve Paulson that Merlin probably was a real person and that wizards are related to our ancient shamans.
Norman George wrote and stars in “Poe Alone” - a play set during the writer’s last public lecture.
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