Allen Ginsberg Raw Interview February 3, 1994

Allen Ginsberg was one of the greatest poets, and most generous Americans of the 20th century. I interviewed him quite a bit in 1994 in connection with the publication of his collected poems, and for later for the post-mortem tribute I produced after his death in 1996 (also on this blog). I thought my conversation […]

America’s Search for the Spirit

Despite our technically secular society, questions of meaning and the spirit are as meaningful as ever. In his long form documentary narrated by Gary Edquist, Adam Phillips spoke to experts and everyday people alike about that hunger, the roots of its urgency, and what some are trying to do to live lives of quiet “non-desperation.”

Affective Computing at the MIT Media Lab

Much silicon has been programmed and ink spilled about the human/machine interface and how to make computers truly interactive. No one has been more busy or more intelligent and playful about this than the folks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab. Here we talk with Justine Cassell (now at Carnegie) about what interactivity […]

Conversation with President Adamkus of Lithuania (1998-2003)

Valdus Adamkus was part of the anti-Nazi resistance in Lithuania during World War Two, and fled his native land for the US following the war, where he had a nice life, and rose high in the EPA bureaucracy in Chicago. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and Lithuanian independence, there was a question about […]

A Day in the Life of a Good Humor Man

We all know what it’s like to jump at the sound of an ice cream truck, but what is it like for the mustachioed purveyor of those eclairs, sandwiches etc once he tootles away down to the corner and a new sale? This is a profile of one Good Humor Man as he makes his […]

The Wonders of the Hand (book)

A world famous surgeon who became famous for being able to reattach entire hands and restore their functions writes about this most amazing miracle-that-comes-in-twos.