Jim Fadiman is one of the original psychonauts – a friend of Richard Alpert and Ken Kesey in the Sixties – who went on to do pioneering research on psychedelics and creativity, and helped found the transpersonal psychology movement. In this EXTENDED interview, Steve Paulson talks with Fadiman about a lifetime of unconventional thinking.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Jennifer Angus is an artist who finds insects so beautiful she uses them in her work. Anne Strainchamps visits with her in her studio.
Pat Willard is the author of “Secrets of Saffron.” She tells Steve Paulson how you harvest saffron and why it’s more than a flavoring.
Rob Nixon grew up near the ostrich farms of South Africa. He tells Steve Paulson about the 19th century fashion craze for ostrich plumes and the fortunes it created.
If there’s one writer who’s identified with the Mississippi River, it’s Mark Twain. He grew up in Hannibal, Missouri — on the river’s edge — and as a young man, he worked as a steamboat pilot. And then he wrote the “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” the novel that turned the Mississippi into myth. But it also created one of the most enduring controversies in American literary history: how to depict race relations in America's past. In this interview, Andrew Levy says that "Huckleberry Finn" is actually anti-racist — and when it was first published, the big controversy was about Twain’s depiction of wild children.
Paula Wolfert is one of America’s most admired food writers. Her latest cook book is “The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen.”
Rebecca Goldstein explains how Spinoza envisioned God and why his conception appealed to later scientists like Einstein.
Poet Robert Wrigley is sometimes called a nature poet. His books include “Reign of Snakes” and “Lives of the Animals.”
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