Cultural critic Cintra Wilson thinks American’s fascination with fame is a grotesque, crippling disease. She tears into it in her book “A Massive Swelling.”
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Fashion designer Suzanne Lee makes jackets and skirts out of cloth she grows by fermenting liquid in a big vat. In the future, she believes we'll harness nature to grow all sorts of clothing and other products.
Playwright and actor Eric Bogosian has written a novel, “Mall.” It’s a satire about the suburbs involving the activities of several unappealing characters who interact at the local mall.
Carlos Eire has written a memoir about the Cuba he remembers. Castro came to power when Carlos was eight. Eire tells Jim Fleming about his childhood in Cuba and after he was air-lifted to the U.S. His memoir is called “Waiting for Snow in Havana.”
Dick Ringler taught "Beowulf" for decades at the University of Wisconsin, and has just put out a new translation from the old English.
A Pakistan school is de-radicalizing Taliban boy soldiers, many of whom were forcibly recruited. Psychologist Feriha Peracha directs the experimental program.
Over the last several years, new developments in personal health tracking products have multiplied exponentially. But human interest in measuring and tracking elements of our bodily needs stretches back hundreds of years. Professor Natasha Schüll discusses these current trends and their history, based on research she's done for a forthcoming book called "Keeping Track."
Charles Siebert provides a version of an essay he wrote for the New York Times Magazine about the ironies of the human longing to keep wild creatures close to us.
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