David Margolick is the author of “Strange Fruit,” a history of the revolutionary Billie Holiday song. Margolick tells Jim Fleming who wrote the song, what happened the first time Holiday sang it, and what it’s lasting impact has been.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Is the experience of wonder always unexpected? Or can we create opportunities for wonder?
Internationally acclaimed sound, video and installation artist Janet Cardiff weighs in.
You can also hear the extended interview with Cardiff here.
Francis M. Nevins is an authority on suspense writer Cornell Woolrich and wrote the introduction for a new anthology called “Night and Fear: A Centenary Collection of Stories by Cornell Woolrich.”
Steve here. 2016 marked the 100th anniversary of America’s beloved National Park system. I could think of no one better to reflect on the importance of national parks than one of my favorite writers, Terry Tempest Williams.
Deborah Scranton gives cameras directly to soldiers, She edits their footage over the internet.
Peter Edelman's Dangerous Idea? Putting people to work doing things we need done.
Angie da Silva is a historian of black cultural life in the United States, going back to the Civil War. She collects stories, both through oral history and archival research. But she's not merely a writer. She brings these stories to life through historical reenactment, often as a slave character she's created named Lila. She says that the stories she hears and tells are too often left out of our history books.
In this interview, she talks about her work and tells the story of Mary Meachum, a free black abolitionist who worked on the Mississippi in St. Louis.
Writer Brendan Koerner reviews Yukio Mishima's classic novel, "Confessions of a Mask".
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