Journalist Ari Berman says the founding fathers created a system that concentrated power in the hands of an elite minority — and that their decisions continue to impact American democracy today.
When actor George Takei was 4 years old, he was labeled an "enemy" by the U.S. government and sent to a string of incarceration camps. His new children's book about that time is My Lost Freedom.
Salman Rushdie is probably most closely associated with his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses, a book inspired by the life of the prophet Muhummad. The book was notorious not just for its contents but because of the intense backlash, and the threat it posed to his safety and wellbeing.
While Rushdie saw it as an exploration of Islamic culture, some Muslims saw it as blasphemous. The year after it published, Iran's supreme leader issued a fatwa, ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie.
Rushdie moved to New York in 2000, and was able to resume the public life of a popular author, but that all changed on August 12th, 2022 when a young man charged at Rushdie while he was on stage at an event, stabbing him at least a dozen times.
After two years, he has chronicled his brush with death, and the aftermath in his new memoir 'KNIFE'.
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Alua Arthur helps people plan for death. A big part of her work is helping them reconcile the lives they lived with the lives they might have wanted. Her memoir is called Briefly Perfectly Human.
Rushdie was onstage at a literary event in 2022 when he was attacked by a man in the audience: "Dying in the company of strangers — that was what was going through my mind." His new book is Knife.
Salman Rushdie is a storyteller. So when you ask him to describe the day, in 2022, when he was attacked and nearly killed by a young man with a knife, Rushdie paints a vivid picture.
Biomedical engineer Rachel Lance says British scientists submitted themselves to experiments that would be considered wildly unethical today in an effort to shore up the war effort.
Author and podcast host Amanda Montell says our brains are overloaded with a constant stream of information that stokes our innate tendency to believe conspiracy theories and mysticism.
We spoke with the prolific, 81-year-old author about her new short story — a powerful allegory of the human condition and the mystery of love — and also AI and what's she's working on now.
'You will see a sun you've never seen before,' says science writer David Baron. He urges people to head to the 'path of totality' to see the total solar eclipse on April 8 for an experience of a lifetime.
Sarah McCammon, a national political correspondent for NPR and co-host of the NPR politics podcast, is also author of a new book, The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church. She spoke with GPB's Pamela Kirkland about the book and the movement of the younger generation of evangelicals away from the church.
Author Nancy Nichols says that for men, cars signify adventure, power and strength. For women, they are about performing domestic duties; there was even a minivan prototype with a washer/dryer inside.
After her father died when she was 24, Catherine Coldstream entered a Carmelite monastery where she lived a life of prayer and obedience for 12 years. Her new memoir is Cloistered: My Years as a Nun.
This episode is brought to you by our play cousins over at NPR's It's Been A Minute. Brittany Luse chops it up with New Yorker writer and podcast host Vinson Cunningham to discuss his debut novel Great Expectations. It's a period piece that follows the story of a young man working on an election campaign that echoes Obama's 2008 run. Brittany and Vinson discuss American politics as a sort of religion - and why belief in politics has changed so much in the last decade.
