In this episode, Here & Now's Robin Young talks with author Andrew Sean Greer about his new novel Less is Lost, the sequel to his Pulitzer Prize-winning Less. This time, Greer's protagonist Arthur Less takes a tour of America in a van, and in the process learns about what it means to be an author today. Less is disappointed by how things are going, but doesn't realize how good things actually are for him. Greer says that he almost didn't write a second book, but by satirizing the literary crowd, he saw the importance of critiquing himself.
Author Tochi Onyebuchi says that a majority of space stories he's come across favor those in power. Rich white people get to escape in spaceships, whereas less affluent Black and brown people are left behind on an increasingly inhabitable Earth. His new science-fiction novel Goliath gets at this power imbalance, and the author spoke to Juana Summers about how it tells us so much about racial and economic disparities right now.
In the aftermath of the Mexican war for independence, a new bride finds herself alone in a haunted house surrounded by people who don't believe her. It's the plot of Isabel Cañas' debut novel The Hacienda, where she blends romance, terror, and the supernatural to tell a story highly embedded with Mexican culture. In an interview with Weekend Edition Sunday, Cañas told Ayesha Rascoe about the themes she wanted to explore in her novel – colonialism, social status, the syncretism of Catholicism and indigenous practices – and her own fear of darkness.
New Year’s Day is not only the day we turn over a new year on the calendar, but also a day where people start resolutions, companies begin new budgets, and everyone screws up writing checks.
While documenting our trips around the sun makes perfect sense, why do we use this day, January 1, as the starting point for our calendar years? Why not some other date?
Learn more about how January 1st became the start of the new year on this Episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
It seems like a highly subjective question that is impossible to answer. However, in 1952 the magazine of the British Film Institute took it upon itself to come up with an answer to the question.
They surveyed an international group of film professionals to ask them what they thought the greatest films of all time were.
They have conducted the survey every decade for the last 70 years.
Learn more about the Sight and Sound Decadal Survey and the greatest movies of all time on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Today's episode centers around two books that explore the rippling consequences of violence against women. First, author Johanne Lykke Holm sits down with NPR's Scott Simon to discuss her new novel, Strega, which follows a group of teenage girls sent to work at an odd hotel – it's a place focused more on reinforcing gendered roles and behavior than welcoming guests. Then, NPR's Michel Martin speaks with Crime Junkie host Ashley Flowers about her fiction debut, All Good People Here, which tracks the eerie cases of missing young women in a small Indiana town.
