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?
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
David Denby hatched a plan to make a million dollars on the stock market. Then the dot com bubble burst, and he watched his new fortune wither away.
Why do certain foods fall out of favor? Aaron Bobrow-Strain tracked the rise and fall of white bread for a book on the subject. He believes our anxieties about food often reflect larger social questions.
Ariel Glucklich tells Jim Fleming about ritual self-punishment in various religions and how the experience of self-inflicted pain can seem liberating.
Brad Hirschfield was once a religious fanatic. He was one of a small number of Jewish settlers living in Hebron, in the middle of thousands of Palestinians.
Christopher Moore talks about untranslatable words.
Elizabeth Strout just won the Pulitzer Prize for her book "Olive Kitteridge." Marilynne Robinson's most recent novel, "Home," was a finalist for the National Book Award. Both women join Steve Paulson to discuss their works.
Pop culture critic Camille Paglia talks with Anne Strainchamps about our obsession with makeovers and the human impulse to mythologize public figures.
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