Piers Vitebsky studies the Eveny or Reindeer People of Siberia. They keep herds of reindeer for meat, but also have personal, consecrated reindeer animal doubles, which they believe will die for them.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Historian Orville Vernon Burton tells Jim Fleming about the parallels between Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama.
Mark Helprin reads from his new book, “The Pacific and Other Stories,” and talks with Jim Fleming about what really matters in life: courage, integrity, compassion.
Novelists have always mined their own lives for inspiration. But no ever's gone quite as far as Karl Ove Knausgaard. People call him the Norwegian Proust. He recently came out with the sixth volume of his autobiographical novel, "My Struggle." What's remarkable about Knausgaard is not just that he's telling the story of his life as a novel. It's the incredible level of detail.
Paul Feig is the author of "Superstud: Or How I Became a 24-Year-Old Virgin."
No matter how much we learn about the brain, Sacks says we may never understand how the mind works. In this interview, he marvels at how the human brain is fine-tuned to respond to music.
Kevin Smokler tells Steve Paulson that the Internet is changing the world of letters but he thinks it’s progress. Smokler sees a welcome democratization of literature.
The Olympic Games in Russia are on our minds. In particular, the growing political protests against Russia’s recent anti-gay legislation. Which has us remembering the most famous political protest in Olympics history.
Pages
