The Brecht-Weill opera masterpiece from 1930 -- "The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahoganny" -- plays like a raucous contemporary tragedy at Tanglewood. Discussion
The Obama world tour renews old questions about America. Historian Ted Widmer mulls the exceptional nation, and the global nation? Discussion
John Maeda, the graphic artist and computer programmer who has just become president of the Rhode Island School of Design, embarks on a free-form conversational series with Ch ... Discussion
Brain scientist George Lakoff is watching Barack Obama's body language and messaging skill as he maneuvers under pressure. Discussion
What would Roger Say? Williams, that is... the founder of the Rhode Island colony is one old measure of religious freedom and the menace of theocratic meddling in America. Discussion
Tony Schwartz -- who made "the Daisy Spot," the most famous TV commercial in American politics -- built a career on the supremacy of sound, and the ear, in selling. Discussion
How Barack Obama became the world's candidate for president of the US: by tuning the meaning of "American exceptionalism." Discussion
Dan Ariely shows how often we don't know what we're choosing and don't get what we want -- because we are predictably irrational creatures. Discussion
A great American novelist, Russell Banks, thinks out loud about the real historical and emotional context of the United States at decision point. Discussion
Bob Marley and Barack Obama are the absent giants at Jamaica's Calabash festival of writers and readers -- Obama because he, too, seems a monument to imagination. Discussion
Writers in Jamaica at the Calabash literary festival sound notes of lyricism, multiplicity and what feels like a second surge of post-imperial feeling. Discussion
Alpha Males of the Caribbean: Derek Walcott goes to war with the only other West Indian winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, V. S. Naipaul. Discussion
The Scottish world-traveler Ben Haggarty tells "open source" stories -- from as far back as the Stone Age. He says it's the human content, not the cultural variations, that ... Discussion
Black economist and polymath Glenn Loury says that the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's 15 minutes of fame are not over, and shouldn't be. Discussion
Kevin Phillips foresees the collapse of the American Empire, "almost before it started," with high style and deep seriousness. Discussion
Oscar-winner Errol Morris says his Abu Ghraib movie is built on "a graphic representation of American foreign policy, pure and simple." Discussion
The neo-formalist poet Mary Jo Salter teaches and talks about the lessons of beauty, womanhood, artistic and family life Discussion
The Israeli fiction writer (and now filmmaker) Etgar Keret unveils forbidden states of mind in his society: confusion, doubt, fear. Discussion
David Amram learned his "many musics" from Dizzy Gillespie, Jack Kerouac and Bach. His spirit is neither "multicultural" nor eclectic, but "lovingly trying to learn the funda ... Discussion
David Amram learned his "many musics" from Dizzy Gillespie, Jack Kerouac and Bach. His spirit is neither "multicultural" nor eclectic, but "lovingly trying to learn the funda ... Discussion
