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.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Peggy Orenstein tells Anne Strainchamps about “parasite singles” - young Japanese, mostly female, who reject the traditional life of marriage and children.
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.
Lucy Kaylin tells Steve Paulson that the average age of American nuns is seventy, and that many orders are folding.
Rachel Fershleiser and Larry Smith tell Anne Strainchamps how they got started soliciting six-word memoirs, recite some of their favorites, and say that crafting them can become an addiction.
Celtic historian John Matthews tells Steve Paulson that Merlin probably was a real person and that wizards are related to our ancient shamans.
Robert Ellis Orrall is a musician who lives in Nashville, on the same street where Al Gore bought a house. So he wrote a song about it!
Karen Russell talks about her debut novel, "Swamplandia!," which focuses on a family-operated gator wrestling theme park in the Florida Everglades.
Karen Russell's "Swamplandia!" page on Random House's website
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