Karen Armstrong is the author of nearly 20 books on religion. She tells Steve Paulson that traditions from Confucianism to Judaism emerged as responses to the rampant violence of their time. And she says our own time has a lot in common with that age.
Poet Billy Collins bookmarks "The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst."
Historian and president of Harvard University, Drew Gilpin Faust tells Steve Paulson that Civil War deaths consumed the entire nation with grief and transformed America in many ways.
Bryan Palmer tells Steve Paulson how some population groups, from enslaved Africans to religious heretics, jazz musicians, and homosexuals have found refuge and freedom in the night.
Benedict Le Vay tells Jim Fleming that many customs still exist in England and are extremely important to the community, even though the reason for them is long forgotten.
The 13th century Sufi mystic is one of America’s bestselling poets, thanks largely to the translations of Coleman Barks. A Muslim born in Afghanistan, he celebrated the underlying unity of all religions
Canadian novelist Sheila Heti talks about her new novel, "How Should a Person Be?" It's fiction, but the characters are real people -- they seem to be Sheila herself and her friends. Some of the dialogue is from actual conversations she transcribed. So what is this thing?
Apostolos Doxiadis tells Judith Strasser about his novel “Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Conjecture,” in which a man becomes obsessed with solving a mathematical proof.
