ThoughtCast‪®‬ Jenny Attiyeh

When Helen Vendler was only 13, the future poetry critic and Harvard professor memorized several of Emily Dickinson’s more famous poems. They’ve stayed with her over the years, and today, she talks with ThoughtCast’s Jenny Attiyeh about one poem in particular that’s haunted her all this time. It’s called I cannot live with You-
According to Vendler, who has written the authoritative Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries, it’s a heartbreaking poem of an unresolvable dilemma and ensuing despair.

Listen to the shooting of the Law and Order episode “Blood Libel” from its 6th season.
The famous show featured Sam Waterston as Executive Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy, Jerry Orbach as Senior Detective Lennie Briscoe, Jill Hennessy as Assistant District Attorney Claire Kincaid, Benjamin Bratt as Junior Detective Rey Curtis, S. Epatha Merkerson as Lieutenant Anita Van Buren and Steven Hill as District Attorney Adam Schiff.
This story was originally broadcast on WNYC TV.

Behind the scenes at Law and Order: watch the shooting of the episode "Blood Libel" from its 6th season.

Sadly, since this interview was recorded, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Simic has died at the age of 84.

Note: This interview was broadcast on KUT-FM, an NPR station based in Austin, Texas.
Kate Rosenberger is one of those rare people who collects independent book stores in San Francisco the way the rest of us collect antique door stops, or unusual African masks. Her most recent acquisition is Alley Cat Books, but she also owns Phoenix and Red Hill Books, and we met at Dog Eared Books, her fourth store, in the Mission district.



When asked to discuss a piece of writing that's had a profound impact on her, Kate chose Charles Simic's poem Gray-Headed Schoolchildren. Born in Serbia, Simic came to the US as a teenager, but went on to write his poems in English, win the Pulitzer prize, and become the U.S. Poet Laureate. His poetry is often stark, perhaps reflecting his formative years, spent surviving World War II.

Note: This interview is the sixth in a ThoughtCast series which examines a specific piece of writing — be it a poem, play, novel, short story, work of non-fiction or scrap of papyrus — that’s had a significant influence on the interviewee, that’s shaped and moved them. Prior interviewees include author Tom Perrotta, poetry critic Helen Vendler, and other independent bookstore owners - from Ireland!

Click here to listen (11 minutes.)

Note: an audio version of this interview was broadcast by the WGBH affiliate WCAI, the Cape and Islands NPR station, and by KPIP in Missouri.

The forests of New England are, remarkably, a success story. They've recovered from attack after attack. The early settlers hacked them down, by hand, for houses, fences and firewood. Later on, the insatiable sawmills of a more industrial age ate up the lumber needed for our expansion.
Today, the forests contend with acid rain, invasive plants and exotic beetle infestations -- evidence of our ever more global economy. And the future of these forests? Going forward, that's a story that's largely ours to shape, and narrate.



If only these trees could talk ... Well, we have the next best thing - Donald Pfister, the Dean of Harvard Summer School, curator of the Farlow Library and Herbarium, a fungologist (the more erudite word is mycologist), and the Asa Gray Professor of Systematic Botany at Harvard University.
In this Faculty Insight interview, produced in partnership with ThoughtCast and Harvard Extension School, he tells the tale of the New England forest from as far back as the glacial Pleistocene era.
To help illustrate this tale, we've made grateful use of high resolution images of some dramatic landscape dioramas, which are on display at Harvard's Fisher Museum, in Petersham, Massachusetts.
And finally, for an audio version of this story, click here: to listen (9:47 mins).

The End of Our Universe with astrophysicist Alex Vilenkin. On ThoughtCast!