The Big Idea: Eula Biss
On Immunity author Eula Biss speaks to Suzanne Koven about mythology, personal freedom, and the history of vaccines.
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Suzanne Koven
24 posts
The Big Idea: Roz Chast
Suzanne Koven talks to Roz Chast about comics, the burdens of elder care, and her new graphic memoir Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?
The Big Idea: Rebecca Mead
Suzanne Koven sits down with the New Yorker's Rebecca Mead to discuss My Life in Middlemarch, the way a single great book can illuminate our lives over decades, and how our reading of that book changes as we grow older.
The Big Idea: Fady Joudah
Suzanne Koven speaks to Palestinian American physician and poet Fady Joudah about poetry and politics, text and context, and the marginalization of the "other" in the literary world.
The Big Idea: Carl Hart
Suzanne Koven talks to neuroscientist Carl Hart about his recent book, High Price, and how misinformation, emotionalism, and racism have played major roles in our country's war—and our culture's views—on drugs.
The Big Idea: Oliver Sacks
To celebrate his 80th birthday, The Rumpus sits down with neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks to discuss his latest book, Hallucinations, and the relationship between hallucinatory experiences and the imagination and creativity.
The Big Idea: Eve Ensler
Writer, journalist, activist, and lifelong feminist Eve Ensler talks with Suzanne Koven and explores the body's relationship to the desecration of the earth, the importance of listening to the "real" in ourselves, and how it feels to be known as "the woman who wrote The Vagina Monologues."
The Big Idea: Gish Jen
“The Big Idea” features interviews with people whose lights stay on—writers, artists, scientists, activists, and others who take a long and broad view of an issue, problem, or concept, and pursue it over many years.
The Big Idea: Andrew Solomon
Writer and journalist Andrew Solomon talks about parent-child differences, and the eleven-year process of writing his latest book, which profiles families of deaf, dwarf, autistic, severely disabled, transgendered, schizophrenic, and other marginalized children.
The Big Idea: Dr. Neal Barnard
Dr. Neal Barnard, who has advocated for animal protection and veganism for the past thirty years, discusses what motivates people to adopt veganism, the idea that humans are natural carnivores, and what’s really involved in producing animal-derived food.
Alternative Medicine
Xeni Jardin cautions against the use of alternative medicines at BoingBoing. “Green smoothies are great, but they alone cannot cure cancer. Oncology isn’t guaranteed to cure us, but quackery is…
Interpreting My Malady
The unpublished catalogue of fiction inspired by illness is limitless, composed every day, at every hour, in every hospital, clinic, hospice, and bedroom where the ill and injured and even the mildly indisposed attempt to make sense of our altered conditions.