What does it mean to be free? And what does it mean to live a personally authentic, honest life with ourselves and with others? These are the questions that Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and their existential friends wrestled with in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Sarah Bakewell makes the case that their late-night conversations are especially relevant today. She's the author of "At the Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails."
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Music critic Bill Friskics-Warren is the author of “I’ll Take You There: Pop Music and the Urge for Transcendence.” He talks with Anne Strainchamps about the spiritual aide of popular music.
In her new memoir, "Ongoingness," Sarah Manguso talks about how keeping a diary—so often considered a virture—for her became a vice. But her obsessive diary keeping changed with the birth of her first child.
Daniel Alarcon is from Peru and the author of “Lost City Radio,” a fable about a nameless country broken in the aftermath of war and the woman who does a radio program for the families of the disappeared.
NRBQ has been called the world’s greatest bar band, but prefer to say they play “omni-pop,” and explain that’s why they’ve lasted for over 35 years.
Edward Larson tells Steve Paulson what makes the Islands unique, and why they inspired Charles Darwin to write “The Origin of Species."
Carl Honore talks with Anne Strainchamps about how the Slowness movement got started and how it's developed into a revolution.
Augustin De la Pena is a psycho-physiologist who works at a sleep disorders center in South Texas, and a leading authority on boredom.
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