Karen Armstrong tries to explain where the Buddha came from and how Prince Siddharta could be a compassionate man yet abandon his family to become the Buddha.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Mario Vargas Llosa is one of the godfathers of Latin American writing. His novel “The Feast of the Goat” deals with the Dominican Republic under the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo.
Linda Kauffman talks with Jim Fleming about artists who make deliberately provocative and sensational art. She feels it’s a good thing to challenge our beliefs about what can be seen.
Punk legend Patti Smith. 40 years ago, she came out with the seminal punk album Horses –with cover photo by her friend and lover Robert Mappelthorpe.
According to John Leland, the hipster is an outsider who crosses boundaries and challenges the mainstream. He also talks about the overlap between being hip and using drugs.
If you think the American middle class has it bad, consider life in debt-ridden Italy or Greece. Best-selling financial writer Michael Lewis portrays the downfall of several European countries with his usual verve, in Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World.
Jason Zinoman talks to Jim Fleming about his book, "Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror."
For millennia the Hazara people have been telling folk tales. Najaf Mazari and Robert Hillman have collected them in a book called “The Honey Thief.”
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