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THIS WEEK'S SHOW: July 6
The Bicentennial of Henry David Thoreau, pt. 2
Past Shows
Walden & the Natural World of Transcendentalism
Henry David Thoreau, our specimen of American genius in nature, wrote famously short, and long. “Simplify,” in a one-word sentence of good advice. But then 2-million words on 7-thousand pages in his quotable lifetime journal. ...A Wild & Disobedient Life
Henry David Thoreau, on his 200th birthday, is an American immortal who got there the hard way – against the grain of his town and his times. By now he’s the heroic non-conformist who modeled ...Philip Roth
This is an archive broadcast from May 12, 2006.Philip Roth [David Miller] This Memorial Day weekend we’re talking with Philip Roth about everything. It’s a free-range conversation that gets us beyond the books and into ...Something’s Happening Here
In the first summer of Trump, 2017, there’s something happening and it feels bigger than the Comey hearings, even Russia-gate. Who knew that a British election with an inconclusive photo finish could re-channel the anger ...The Chomsky Effect With Robert Barsky
Noam Chomsky had two giant careers: one in the science of language, another in the rough and tumble of anti-war politics, beckoning the question is it one Chomsky or two? In our two weeks of interviewing, ...American Socrates: The Life and Mind of Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky for 50 years has been America’s Socrates, our public pest with questions that sting … not the city-square of Athens but a vast global village in pain and now, it seems, in danger.The ...Lessons from Nixonland
Welcome back to Nixonland: After four decades, the Oval Office is once again the seat of empire, occupied by a paranoid pilot hellbent on an unremittingly personal fight, and no holds are barred. Between US Presidents ...JFK Turns 100
In John F. Kennedy’s hundredth birthday spring, we’re looking again at the family portrait we all know, by the painter Jamie Wyeth.His canvas summoned the late president as a ruddy sort of ghost, face aglow against deep brown ...Etcetera
August 26, 2013
Paul Harding, Transcendentalist, From Tinkers to Enon
Short form: Tinkers was no fluke — the little gem of a novel that caught a word-of-mouth wave and won the Pulitzer Prize in 2010; it’s the snowy paperback still stacked like bait around the ...
June 1, 2017
American Socrates: The Life and Mind of...
Noam Chomsky for 50 years has been America’s Socrates, our public pest with questions that sting … not the city-square of Athens but a vast global village in pain and now, it seems, in danger.The ...
December 4, 2014
Ferguson is Everywhere
We’re all caught in the floodlights of Ferguson, Missouri, still reeling from the death of Michael Brown and the non-indictment of Darren Wilson, the man who shot him. We seem to be seeing American society ...
July 7, 2014
Wynton Marsalis on Louis Armstrong
“What we play,” Louis Armstrong said, “is life.” We’re learning that Louis Armstrong was not just the world’s greatest trumpet player, not just the most original and influential voice in jazz, not just the founding father of an American music...


















