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.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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K.C. Cole is working on a book about her friend Frank Oppenheimer. Frank was barred from practicing physics during the McCarthy era, and was deeply troubled by the devastation of the bomb.
How did non-life become life? University of Wisconsin geochemist Nita Sahai talks with Anne Strainchamps about how life might have begun on Earth.
For centuries, the oddities of nature - like two-headed cats and conjoined twins - fascinated people. Science historian Lorraine Daston says a history of wonders is to some degree a history of pre-modern science.
Keli Carender is a Seattle area blogger considered by many to be the very first Tea Party activist. She tells Steve Paulson what the first protests were like.
Jim Fleming talks with Mairin Ui Cheide, a sean-nos singer. Sean-nos is old-style traditional singing where songs usually tell a story.
Philip Harvey tells Jim Fleming about using the profits from his porn business to underwrite his philanthropy.
For Women's History Month, we're celebrating one of history's forgotten women, Jane Franklin. Harvard historian Jill Lepore talks about why she chose to write a biography of Ben Franklin's sister.
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