Notebook On Cities And Culture

A conversation with Gail Pool, author of Faint Praise: The Plight of Book Reviewing in America.

A conversation about economics, evolutionary biology and Ayn Rand with Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine and author of The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics.

A conversation about the interplay between early modern science and poetry with Angus Fletcher, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the City University of New York Graduate School and author of Time, Space and Motion in the Age of Shakespeare.

A conversation about bridging the gap between history and prehistory with Daniel Lord Smail, professor of history at Harvard University and author of On Deep History and the Brain.

A conversation about using incentives, eating ethnic food and becoming a cultural billionaire with Tyler Cowen, professor of economics at George Mason University and blogger at Marginal Revolution.

A conversation about publishing, book criticism and LA literary culture with David L. Ulin, editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review.

A conversation about literature, the human brain and umami with Jonah Lehrer, editor-at-large at Seed magazine and author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist.

A conversation about college towns, the importance of story and MFA programs with novelist Joshua Henkin, author of Matrimony.

A conversation about online journalism, travel writing and H.L. Mencken with Jason Wilson, editor of The Smart Set from Drexel University and The Best American Travel Writing series.

A conversation about consciousness, free will and toilet training with David P. Barash, professor of psychology at the University of Washington and author of Natural Selections: Selfish Altruists, Honest Liars and Other Realities of Evolution.

A conversation about the revolution in decisionmaking brought about by large-scale quantitative analysis with Yale law professor and economist Ian Ayres, author of Super Crunchers: Why Thinking by Numbers is the New Way to Be Smart.

A conversation about voting one way and living in a place that votes another with David Starkey, poet, playwright, professor of English at Santa Barbara City College and editor of Living Blue in the Red States.

A conversation about Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind on the 20th anniversary of its publication with Roger Kimball, editor of The New Criterion.

A conversation about Barry Goldwater with CC Goldwater, the 1964 presidential candidate's granddaughter and producer of the new film Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater.

A conversation about ridiculous military hardware and highly un-epic science fiction with Zack Parsons, editor at the popular humor site Something Awful and author of My Tank is Fight!: Deranged Inventions of World War II.

A conversation about the 1960s with Cathy Wilkerson, former member of Students for a Democratic Society and Weatherman, whose new book is Flying Close to the Sun: My Life and Times as a Weatherman.

A conversation about the very definition of a powerful idea with Lynn Hunt, Eugen Weber Professor of Modern European History at UCLA and former president of the American Historical Association. Her latest book is Inventing Human Rights: A History.

A conversation about food writing, Lost Girls and the disappointing DVD of David Lynch's Lost Highway with Jessa Crispin, founder and editor of Chicago-based literary webzine and blog Bookslut.

A conversation about that most revered of all beverages and the devices that close our bottles of it with George M. Taber, wine journalist and former business editor of Time magazine. His new book is To Cork or Not to Cork: The Billion-Dollar Battle for the Bottle.

A conversation about optimism, eternal studenthood and funny conservatives with entrepreneur and author Ben Casnocha. His most recent book is My Start-Up Life.