Victoria van der Laan

Creating New Patterns

Mob Music

T. J. English on the surprising relationship between two grand American traditions—jazz and organized crime

The Right Thing

Different People, Different Stories

On the complexities of lumping psychiatric patients into categories

he Ceiling Outside: The Science and Experience of the Disrupted Mind by Noga Arikha

The Original Influencer

Hilary Hallett on the enduring impact of Hollywood tastemaker Elinor Glyn

Last Rites and Comic Flights

A funeral in a 1984 Japanese film offers moments of slapstick amid the solemnity

The Coward

“I, Lover” by Elsa Gidlow

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Jo Bertini

Desert Song

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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