Why the West Won’t Die

Naoíse Mac Sweeney on writing a different kind of “big history” book

Last Dance

At a World War II internment camp, George Igawa entertained thousands of incarcerated Japanese Americans—while teaching a band of novices how to swing

The Tricolor and the Rojigualda

“Leap Minnows, Leap” by James Still

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Just Imagine

Adam Smith on the faculty that makes us human

No-No-Novel

Resurrecting the legacy of John Okada, the first Japanese-American novelist

A Kingdom of Little Animals

Antoni van Leeuwenhoek’s discovery of microorganisms made possible the revolutionary advances in biology and medicine that continue to inform our Covid age

Laboring

“Huswifery” by Edward Taylor

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Music to Have Revelations To

Small Fools on the band’s brand of “cosmic bardcore”

The Writer in the Family

The fiction of E. L. Doctorow gave a young man hope of connecting his father and his literary hero

Birthday Boy

“The Horses” by Ted Hughes

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Amy Wetsch

Life, magnified

The Weight of a Stone

Searching for stability in an erratic world led Oliver Sacks and other writers to the realms of geology

New Year, Old Year

“The Horses” by Edwin Muir

Poems read aloud, beautifully

The Snow Maiden

Our final episode of 2018 is a send-off to the solstice

A Story for Christmas

“Snow” by Louis MacNeice

Poems read aloud, beautifully

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