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To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Andrew Solomon talks with Steve Paulson about his own experience with depression, and why depressive illness is becoming more common.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

National security, civil liberties, terrorism...those issues obsessed Romans 2,000 years ago just as they obsess us today. Renowned classicist Mary Beard says we have lots to learn from Ancient Rome, including insights into how empires rise and fall.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Dan Chaon's short story collection, "Stay Awake," is set in post-recession America, where dreamers, losers and troubled souls feel like ghosts in their own lives.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Adam Sisman and novelist Beryl Bainbridge talk with Steve Paulson about Boswell and Johnson and Boswell’s immortal biography of the brilliant 18th century man of letters. 

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Ali Allawi tells Steve Paulson why the in-fighting of the transitional government in Iraq forced him to resign and why he feels the American efforts there were doomed.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Not all architecture in the Arab world glitters like a golden dome. Some are being shelled to dust by war. Such is the horrifying story of Homs, Syria.  Once a cosmopolitan and tolerant city of more than one million, Homs has hosted clashes between rebel groups and President Bashar Assad’s forces since 2011. Those clashes have mortared and shelled the city into an oblivion. Thousands of residents have been killed. Most of the remaining have fled. But not all.

Marwa al-Sabouni and her family have stayed. Marwa al-Sabouni has her PhD. in Islamic architecture and wrote a compelling memoir about architecture and destruction in Homs called “The Battle for Home.”

Marwa al-Sabouni spoke with Anne Strainchamps via Skype from her apartment in Homs, Syria.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Poet Anna Rabinowitz found a shoe box full of old letters and photos of family and friends killed in the Holocaust.  She wrote the poem "Darkling" to feature their voices.   We also hear excerpts from the opera "Darkling."

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Benjamin Kunkel is not only a bestelling novelist and co-founder of the literary magainze n+1. He tells Steve Paulson why he's also a become Marxist public intellectual. 

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