When Alana Casanova-Burgess set out to make a podcast series about Puerto Rico, she struggled with what to call it. Until one word came to mind, a word that captures a certain essence of life in Puerto Rico, but eludes easy translation into English. We talk to Alana about her series, and that particular word, then turn to an old story about treating words as ... Show More
Apr 3
Life in a Barrel
This week, in an episode we first aired in 2022, we flip the Disney story of life on its head thanks to a barrel of seawater, a 1970s era computer, and underwater geysers. It’s the chaos of life. Latif, Lulu, and our Senior Producer Matt Kielty were all sitting on their own littl ... Show More
54m 42s
Oct 2025
[LES ARCHIVES] Les démons d'Anneliese Michel
Née le 21 septembre 1952 à Leiblfing (Bavière), Anneliese Michel mena d'abord une vie normale, caractérisée par une grande piété. Un jour de 1968, elle commença à trembler violemment et à ne plus contrôler son corps. Lors de ses crises, elle perdait sa voix et ne pouvait plus app ... Show More
18m 1s
Aug 2023
The Novelist Esmeralda Santiago on Learning to Write After a Stroke
<p><span>The author Esmeralda Santiago has been writing about Puerto Rico and questions of immigration and identity since the early nineties. But, in 2008, she suffered a stroke that left her unable to decipher words on a page. In the months that followed, she relied on some of t ... Show More
19m 31s
Jan 2021
Turn memory into art: Isabel Allende on “The House of the Spirits”
How do you write the stories of your life? Any time, any place, any order. Isabel Allende was 39, and a refugee from her native Chile, when she started writing a letter to her dying grandfather – recounting the family stories he'd told her – of love, loss, memory, magic. This let ... Show More
38m 9s
Sep 2021
The Secret Life of María Lejárraga - Art Mysteries, Episode 5
When two literature professors discover that a woman named María Lejárraga was behind some of the greatest Spanish literary works of the 20th century, they set out to learn why her name was omitted from history, and do everything in their power to restore her work to her name. A ... Show More
22m 4s