Keepers of the Old Ways

Eliot Stein on the people keeping cultural traditions alive

Above the River of Your Longing

Two new prompts

Casa Gorín

“The Purse-Seine” by Robinson Jeffers

Poems read aloud, beautifully

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

A Solstice Send-Off

A Slavic folktale to tell around the holiday fire

Little People

“Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Outbreaks and Outcomes

Plagues thrive on more than just pathogens

Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of Historyby Paul Farmer

Laura Naples

Lines of Communication

Pencil-Pushing Spies

The secret history of how Imperial Russia kept an eye on its Chinese neighbor

Time Flies

“A Bird, came down the Walk” by Emily Dickinson

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Dusting Off a Classic

Who was Kressmann Taylor, author of a forgotten story of a friendship destroyed by the advent of the Nazis?

If I Only Had a Brain!

Inside the extraordinary minds of people who feel others’ emotions, hear hallucinations, and get lost in their own homes

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