Interviews

Peter Duesberg on Why Robert Koch's Postulates are Germane to Infectious Diseases
Peter Duesberg on Why Robert Koch's Postulates are Germane to Infectious Diseases
On the morning of March 24, 1882, Robert Koch stood before the Physiological Society of Berlin and announced that he had found the cause of tuberculosis. The disease was killing... Read more...
Kevin J. Hayes
“Originality Was His Watchword”: Kevin J. Hayes on Edgar Allan Poe’s Defining Principle
On October 3, 1849, a printer named Joseph Walker found Edgar Allan Poe semiconscious on a cobblestone street in Baltimore, wearing clothes that did not belong to him. Poe was... Read more...
Kurt Smith
Discourse on (Cartesian) Method: Kurt Smith “Provides an Understanding” of René Descartes' Philosophy
On the night of November 10, 1619, a 23-year-old French soldier sheltering from a bitter winter in a small stove-heated room in Bavaria had three consecutive dreams so vivid and... Read more...
Because She Could Not Stop Writing: Wendy Martin on Emily Dickinson's Body of Work and "Life Full of Love and Joy"
Because She Could Not Stop Writing: Wendy Martin on Emily Dickinson's Body of Work and "Life Full of Love and Joy"
In the spring of 1862, a 31-year-old poet from Amherst, Massachusetts, wrote a letter to a literary critic she had never met and enclosed four poems, asking with characteristic directness... Read more...
Scott Donaldson
“The Beginning of the End”: Scott Donaldson on Why the Bell Tolled for Ernest Hemingway's First Marriage
In December of 1925, Ernest Hemingway sat down and wrote what would become one of the most celebrated memoirs in American literature. He was in Schruns, Austria, on a skiing... Read more...
On The Same Page with Jane Austen: Helena Kelly Sets the Record Straight About the English Novelist
On The Same Page with Jane Austen: Helena Kelly Sets the Record Straight About the English Novelist
In 1814, Jane Austen's nephew asked her for advice on writing a historical romance in the style of Walter Scott. She wrote back with characteristic precision, telling him that three... Read more...
R. Kent Rasmussen
A Connecticut Yankee: R. Kent Rasmussen On Why Mark Twain Was “The First Truly American Writer”
In the summer of 1895, a 59-year-old man in serious financial difficulty boarded a ship in Vancouver and began a lecture tour that would take him around the world: across... Read more...
Killing Time: Julian Barbour Explains his “Timeless-view” of the Universe
Killing Time: Julian Barbour Explains his “Timeless-view” of the Universe
In 1905, a twenty-six-year-old patent clerk in Bern published four papers in a single year that remade physics. The last and most consequential of them introduced the special theory of... Read more...
Joel Whitebook
Mama's Boy: Joel Whitebook on Sigmund Freud's Enduring Influence
In the autumn of 1897, Sigmund Freud wrote a letter to his friend Wilhelm Fliess containing one of the most consequential sentences in the history of psychology. He had been... Read more...
Sanford Shieh
On Logic, Language and Numbers: Sanford Shieh Discusses Gottlob Frege’s Enduring Mathematical Legacy
On June 16, 1902, Gottlob Frege received a letter from a young Bertrand Russell that began with generous praise and ended with a bombshell. Russell had been working through the... Read more...
Noam Chomsky
What Kinds of Creatures are We?: Noam Chomsky on the Scope and Limits of Human Knowledge
In the autumn of 1956, a 27-year-old linguist stood up at a symposium on information theory at MIT and delivered a paper that most of the audience did not immediately... Read more...
“The Inimitable” Charles Dickens: Jane Smiley on the British Novelist's Many Sides and Enduring Appeal
“The Inimitable” Charles Dickens: Jane Smiley on the British Novelist's Many Sides and Enduring Appeal
In the spring of 1844, Charles Dickens finished Martin Chuzzlewit, watched it sell disappointingly, declared that the reading public had lost its mind, and promptly wrote A Christmas Carol in... Read more...