156. While You Live, Shine – Christopher C. King (Grammy-winning music producer)
While you live, shine. Have no mourning at all. Life exists a short while And time demands its fee. – From a 2000 year old tombstone in (then) Greek-speaking Asia Minor I’d like to do a little fr...
14 Jul 20181h 2min
155. Lauren Groff (writer) – We Should Die of That Roar
The places we live in shape us. I don’t care who you are how indomitable your will…your spirit is in dialogue with the place you live. For example, I live in New York City, a place I wrapped around me...
7 Jul 201843min
154. Jonathan Safran Foer (writer) – One Thing We Can All Agree Upon
What is food? It’s nourishment. It’s comfort. It’s culture. It’s art. For millions of people, it’s not something you waste much time thinking about. You eat what you’ve always eaten. What everyone aro...
30 Jun 201848min
153. Guns: The Genie and the Bottle – Priya Satia (Historian)
When you think of the industrial revolution what comes to mind? Steam engines probably. Lone genius inventors. Factories and coal mines, perhaps. And depending on your professional interests and polit...
23 Jun 201849min
152. Where You Gonna Run To? Lorena Luciano and Filippo Piscopo (documentary filmmakers)
Imagine you’re a father or a mother of three kids. Your city is in the middle of a civil war. At any time a rocket might burst through your wall. Soldiers might round your family up, or kill them in c...
16 Jun 201855min
151. Jessica Abel (cartoonist, creative coach) – Practical Magic
On an earlier episode of this show the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk said something that I’ve never forgotten. He said that writing programs shouldn’t teach about plots or characters or how to structu...
9 Jun 20181h 4min
150. David Sedaris (humorist) – Sir David of the Spotless Roadways
Life is full of horrible things. I dare you to deny it. Things like death, sickness, and alcoholism. And did I mention death, which lies in wait for us all? But if you talk about these things at dinne...
2 Jun 20181h 1min
149. Yanis Varoufakis (former finance minister of Greece) – Happiness, Inc.
As the Wu-Tang Clan once put it: “Cash moves everything around me... Get the money. Dollar dollar bill, y’all.” I grew up not wanting to believe this. All the stuff that seemed worth having was hard t...
26 Mai 201856min
