As the Books Editor of Paste Magazine, Charles McNair cares deeply about what we read. But McNair is concerned that we're only reading a handful of the artists available to us, thanks to what he calls a kind of geographic hegemony of taste-making. In other words - we're all reading the same books because a handful of respected critics on the East and West coasts tell us to.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Ben Folds is fascinated with the human voice, especially in the genre of A Cappella music.
Biologist and science writer David Bainbridge tells Steve Paulson that a prolonged adolescence is unique to humans and one of our greatest evolutionary advantages.
A young man named Black Nature is one of the Sierra Leone Refugee All-Stars. He tells how the group formed while fleeing from the brutality and bloodshed of their country's civil war.
Eric Toso was walking home from a swimming pool when he was bitten on the foot by a rattlesnake. It nearly killed him, but he had a spiritual awakening and found a new appreciation for living in the moment and respecting the Wild.
Gabe Hudson was a Marine Reservist whose unit served in the Gulf War. Hudson himself didn’t see combat, but based on his friends’ war stories, Hudson has written a book of surreal short stories.
Long before the Occupy movement made headlines, writer Dean Bakopoulos foreshadowed it in a darkly comic novel called My American Unhappiness.
Douglas Wolk tells Steve Paulson why comics became such a vital medium for individual artistic expression.
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