The Art of Doing Nothing Much, Together

Sheila Liming on the importance of chillaxing

Cherry Blossom Bonanza

Naoko Abe on how an English eccentric saved Japan’s beloved cherry trees—and spread them around the world

Filling in the Fragments

Diane Rayor on translating the poetry of Sappho

Reading the Trail Trees

Alexander Nemerov on his efforts to resurrect the spirits of our lost woods

Chaucer’s Leading Lady

Marion Turner on our enduring fascination with the Wife of Bath

The Comic Queen of Metafiction

Gunnhild Øyehaug talks about her twisted new collection of short stories

Justice, Arrested

Joanna Schwartz on the difficulty of holding the police accountable

Past is Present

Marie Arana on how violence, exploitation, and religion have ruled Latin America’s history—and might portend its future

The Promised Land of the Pampas

Javier Sinay on the forgotten history of the first Jewish immigrants in Argentina

Medieval Madams

Eleanor Janega on the overlooked lives of ordinary women

The Shipping News

Ian Kumekawa tells the story of the global economy in one barge

Coming Home

Craig Thompson digs up memories of farm labor and the history of ginseng

Muscle Memory

Michael Joseph Gross on the importance of strength, past and present

The Most Famous Unknown Artist

David Sheff puts Yoko Ono in the spotlight

The Root Cause

Padraic X. Scanlan tells the real history of the Irish Potato Famine

Something New in the West

Kurt Beals on translating All Quiet on the Western Front

Family/History

David Levering Lewis digs into his own origin story

The Epic Viking Saga of the Everyday

Eleanor Barraclough on the ordinary people of Norse history

Keepers of the Old Ways

Eliot Stein on the people keeping cultural traditions alive

The Snow Maiden

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

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