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.
Audio
Jon Kabat-Zinn talks with Steve Paulson about what it means to be mindful of the body’s functioning, like breathing.
Why are most Danes and Swedes happy to get along without religion?
Mick Aston is an archeologist and the co-creator of the British television show “Time Team.” Aston and a crew of archeologists and scientists descend on a site and see what they can come up with in three days.
Mitchell is a literary virtuoso, best known for his 2004 novel “Cloud Atlas.” He’s famous for the intricate structure of his novels - which weave together multiple narrators, interconnected stories and even different genres - all within the same book. He’s done it again with “The Bone Clocks."
Michael Gurian is an educator and therapist and author of “The Wonder of Girls.” He gives Jim Fleming some advice about helping girls master math.
Jeff Ferrell quit his job as a tenured professor and moved back to Fort Worth for a year long experiment in living off the street.
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.
Pages
