ThoughtCast®

Note: This interview was broadcast on KUT-FM, an NPR station based in Austin,Texas. James Joyce was born and raised in Dublin, and it was from Dublin he fled as a young man, to Trieste, in order to write Ulysses, perhaps the key novel of the early 20th century. But before he left, he began to write A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which, as most of us will remember, is a rite of passage not only for its main character, the sensitive, acute Stephen Dedalus (the alter ego for Joyce himself), but also for the impressed and impressionable reader. When I asked the scholar, bookseller and editor Maurice Earls to pick a piece of writing to discuss that's had a tremendous impact on him, it was this novel that he chose. Himself a Dubliner, Earls is joint editor of the Dublin Review of Books. Of special interest to ThoughtCast listeners, he's also penned an essay on Helen Vendler's Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries. Just hours before an author event was to take place in his small, singular independent bookstore Books Upstairs, ThoughtCast spoke with Earls about "A Portrait" at length. The conversation brought me back to my own strong feelings about this book, which had a tremendous impact on me as well, many years ago. Click here (24 minutes) to listen!

Sadly, since this interview was recorded, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Simic has died at the age of 84. Note: This interview was broadcast on KUT-FM, an NPR station based in Austin, Texas. Kate Rosenberger is one of those rare people who collects independent book stores in San Francisco the way the rest of us collect antique door stops, or unusual African masks. Her most recent acquisition is Alley Cat Books, but she also owns Phoenix and Red Hill Books, and we met at Dog Eared Books, her fourth store, in the Mission district. When asked to discuss a piece of writing that's had a profound impact on her, Kate chose Charles Simic's poem Gray-Headed Schoolchildren. Born in Serbia, Simic came to the US as a teenager, but went on to write his poems in English, win the Pulitzer prize, and become the U.S. Poet Laureate. His poetry is often stark, perhaps reflecting his formative years, spent surviving World War II. Note: This interview is the sixth in a ThoughtCast series which examines a specific piece of writing — be it a poem, play, novel, short story, work of non-fiction or scrap of papyrus — that’s had a significant influence on the interviewee, that’s shaped and moved them. Prior interviewees include author Tom Perrotta, poetry critic Helen Vendler, and other independent bookstore owners - from Ireland! Click here to listen (11 minutes.)

Note: an audio version of this interview was broadcast by the WGBH affiliate WCAI, the Cape and Islands NPR station, and by KPIP in Missouri. The forests of New England are, remarkably, a success story. They've recovered from attack after attack. The early settlers hacked them down, by hand, for houses, fences and firewood. Later on, the insatiable sawmills of a more industrial age ate up the lumber needed for our expansion. Today, the forests contend with acid rain, invasive plants and exotic beetle infestations -- evidence of our ever more global economy. And the future of these forests? Going forward, that's a story that's largely ours to shape, and narrate. If only these trees could talk ... Well, we have the next best thing - Donald Pfister, the Dean of Harvard Summer School, curator of the Farlow Library and Herbarium, a fungologist (the more erudite word is mycologist), and the Asa Gray Professor of Systematic Botany at Harvard University. In this Faculty Insight interview, produced in partnership with ThoughtCast and Harvard Extension School, he tells the tale of the New England forest from as far back as the glacial Pleistocene era. To help illustrate this tale, we've made grateful use of high resolution images of some dramatic landscape dioramas, which are on display at Harvard's Fisher Museum, in Petersham, Massachusetts. And finally, for an audio version of this story, click here: to listen (9:47 mins).

The End of Our Universe with astrophysicist Alex Vilenkin. On ThoughtCast!

International News Coverage in America and the public's attention span

NOTE: Caroline Elkins is in the news again, with a new book called Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire. In it she continues her searing research into first world abuse and torture of numberless Africans under their colonial control. How does history get rewritten? How do victimizers become victims, and the valiant turn into villains? As Harvard history professor Caroline Elkins has learned, this process can be a hazardous one. The Pulitzer prize-winning author of Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya devoted many years to the study of the Mau Mau uprising in the early 1950s, and the British response, a model of counter-insurgency technique -- or so she thought. The Mau Mau were a group of native Kenyans who turned to violence and terror to drive out their colonial British masters, but as Elkins discovered, they weren't the only ones to use such tactics. Now a court case will decide where the truth actually lies, as you will hear in this Faculty Insight interview, produced in partnership with ThoughtCast and Harvard Extension School. For an audio version of this story, click here: to listen. (6:50 mins).

Natalie Goldberg, the well-known author and writing teacher, is also a painter and a practitioner of Zen.

Ron Brown works with his dance company Evidence.

Note: This interview was broadcast on WGBH radio, Boston's NPR station for news and culture, on April 17, 2011! Photo: courtesy US Marine Mammal Commission The endangered North Atlantic Right Whale is probably our closest cetacean neighbor. There are only about 350 of them in total, and they live precariously near to shore, along the Eastern seaboard, in a horrendously busy commercial shipping corridor that stretches from Nova Scotia to Florida. Scott Kraus, the vice president for research at Boston's New England Aquarium, and the head of its right whale research project, has studied these whales for decades, and the aquarium's efforts on their behalf have led to dramatic improvements in right whale habitat. Courtesy Rosalind Rolland/New England Aquarium But they remain nonetheless threatened -- primarily by us humans. ThoughtCast's Jenny Attiyeh met with Kraus at the New England Aquarium recently, to discuss his latest book, which he co-edited with his colleague Rosalind Rolland, called The Urban Whale. Click here (4 minutes) to hear Scott Kraus read a poignant passage he wrote (about a baby whale) from The Urban Whale. Click here (20 minutes) to listen! And click here (4 minutes) to hear Scott Kraus read a poignant passage he wrote (about a baby whale) from The Urban Whale.

Division of Labor: Women's Work was an exhibition at the Bronx Museum of the Arts in 1995

ThoughtCast spoke to author and academic Rebecca Goldstein about her novel "36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction".

The Dan Flavin Art Institute, overseen by Dia Center for the Arts, is filled with the florescent tubes that made Flavin famous.

The three Peabody sisters, Elizabeth, Mary and Sophia, were key players in the founding of the Transcendentalist movement in the 19th century.

The dinosaurs return to the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan.

Note: The WGBH sister stations WCAI and WNAN broadcast this interview, and it also received a 5 star review on PRX! Former poet laureate Robert Pinsky tackles King David of the Bible - the shepherd, poet, warrior and adulterer - in his "Life of David." Is David a legend? A real, flesh and blood warrior who killed Goliath, and united the 12 Jewish tribes into one nation? Robert Pinsky delves into these questions, and into David's story, with relish. David's story has been told many times, and the tale has changed with each telling. There's the David of the Hebrew Bible, and another version of his life in the Talmud. We know he slept with Bathsheba, but was this a sin? An act of love? Of violence? It depends on whom you ask. David, who lived about 3000 years ago, was beloved of God, and as a result, he got away with more than his share. He was a seductive, wily politician, a doting father, a bitter old man. These contradictions in David's character spur Pinsky on, and he adds his own twist to the tale, as you will hear, on ThoughtCast! Click here: to listen (28:30 mins).

What does the word rock mean? Simple enough question. But how did the term originate? Where -- and why? Find out the answer on ThoughtCast.

Buffalo Dance From the secret Kiva past collapse they stomp and sing the story

On a beautiful spring day in the mid 1990s, I meandered the streets of Red Hook, when it was still a rundown Brooklyn neighborhood. I met its first art gallery owner, and the two longshoremen who ventured inside.

Tom Perrotta, author of the novels Mrs. Fletcher, Little Children, Election, The Abstinence Teacher and The Leftovers, speaks with ThoughtCast about a writer who fascinates, irritates and inspires him: Flannery O'Connor.

Dershowitz is back in the spotlight, but he's been here before, on ThoughtCast!