Interviews

Michael Patrick Gillespie
Revealing Intimacy: Michael Patrick Gillespie on James Joyce’s Profound Sense of the Human Condition
On the morning of June 16, 1904, a twenty-two-year-old James Joyce walked through the streets of Dublin on what would become, in the hands of his mature imagination, the most... Read more...
Edward Erwin
Freud, Right or Wrong? Edward Erwin on Why Freud is Still Important
In the spring of 1896, Sigmund Freud stood before the Society for Psychiatry and Neurology in Vienna and delivered what he believed was the most important paper of his career.... Read more...
David C. Cassidy
The Winds of War: David C. Cassidy Talks About Werner Heisenberg's Work in Nazi Germany
In the autumn of 1941, Werner Heisenberg travelled to occupied Copenhagen to visit his old mentor Niels Bohr. What passed between them during that meeting has never been fully established.... Read more...
Donna Tussing Orwin
From Riches to Rags: Donna Tussing Orwin Explores Leo Tolstoy's Changing Lifestyle and Philosophy
On the night of October 28, 1910, an 82-year-old man crept out of his estate at Yasnaya Polyana in the dead of winter, leaving behind his wife of 48 years,... Read more...
Martin Kemp
Not a Da Vinci Code: Martin Kemp Explains the “Secrets” of Leonardo's Skill and Mastery
In the winter of 1489, Leonardo da Vinci requested permission from the authorities in Florence to exhume human corpses for dissection. He was thirty-seven years old and had already produced... Read more...
Michael White
Beyond the Apple Tree: Michael White Analyzes Isaac Newton's Dark Secrets
In 1936, a trunk of papers belonging to Sir Isaac Newton came up for auction at Sotheby's in London. The economist John Maynard Keynes bought a large portion of them,... Read more...
The Road Taken: Jay Parini on the “Deepest, Darkest Side” of Robert Frost's Poetry
The Road Taken: Jay Parini on the “Deepest, Darkest Side” of Robert Frost's Poetry
In the winter of 1912, Robert Frost was thirty-eight years old, unknown, and running out of time. He had been writing poetry for two decades but had published almost nothing.... Read more...
Paul Guyer
Pure Reason: Paul Guyer Analyzes Immanuel Kant's Moral Philosophy
In the summer of 1762, a thirty-eight-year-old Immanuel Kant picked up a copy of Rousseau's Émile and did not put it down for days. Kant was famously disciplined in his habits,... Read more...
P.M.S. Hacker
Not in Plain Language: P. M. S. Hacker Explains Wittgenstein's Complex Philosophy
In the summer of 1919, Ludwig Wittgenstein walked into a publisher's office in Vienna and placed a manuscript on the desk. He had written it in the trenches and prisoner-of-war... Read more...
Avrum Stroll
Beyond Paradox: Avrum Stroll's Analysis of Bertrand Russell's Philosophical—and other—Development
In 1940, Bertrand Russell was appointed to teach philosophy at the City College of New York. He never gave a single lecture. A Brooklyn mother named Jean Kay filed a... Read more...
Julian Rushton
Something to Sing About: Julian Rushton Raises the Curtain on Mozart's Operas
In the autumn of 1787, Mozart received a commission from the Prague opera house that would produce, in the space of a few extraordinary weeks, one of the most psychologically... Read more...
Philip Weinstein
Tales From the South: Philip Weinstein Explores the “Emotional Intensity” of William Faulkner's Works
In 1948, William Faulkner was broke. Despite having produced some of the most acclaimed novels in American literature, his books were almost entirely out of print, his Hollywood screenwriting work... Read more...