Christine Wicker is a former religion reporter for the Dallas Morning News, and the author of “Lily Dale: The True Story of the Town that Talks to the Dead.”
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Sarah Bakewell recommends "The Pillow Book" by Sei Shonagon (translated by Ivan Morris).
TTBOOK's Technical Director, Caryl Owen, provides an essay on her lifelong fascination with sound and technology, and her fear of losing her hearing to the condition known as tinnitus.
One of the most enduring questions about Coke is does it contain cocaine? Or did it used to? Bart Elmore has the answers.
74 year-old Cree musician Buffy Sainte-Marie has done a lot since she was 24. She got her Ph.D. She got politically active in the American Indian Movement and the anti-GMO movement. She raised a family. She was even on Sesame Street for five seasons—and was the first woman to breast feed on American television.
But most of us know Buffy Sainte-Marie as an iconic 60s folk singer with such hits as "Universal Soldier" and "It's My Way." And now, some 50 years after her debut album, Buffy has a new one. It’s called “Power in the Blood.” This new CD proves that this Oscar, Juno, and Golden Globe award-winning woman's career is not over yet.
According to historian Thomas Laqueur, neither sanitation nor the soul fully explain the rang of rituals we've developed for caring for dead bodies. For him, there is a deeper anthropological truth at work: caring for the dead marks the human transition from nature into culture.
Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Her most noted novel is called “Half of a Yellow Sun.”
David Orr says modern poetry shouldn't intimidate us. He's the author of "Beautiful and Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry."
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