Salman Rushdie’s 1988 novel, “The Satanic Verses,” made him the target of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who denounced the book as blasphemous and issued a fatwa calling for his assassination. Rushdie spent years trying to escape the shadow the fatwa cast on him, and for some time, he thought he succeeded. But in 2022, an assailant attacked him onstage at a sp ... Show More
Apr 24
Stewart Brand, Silicon Valley’s Favorite Prophet, on Life’s Most Important Principle
Stewart Brand might be the most influential philosopher of the internet – at least in its more idealistic era. In the 1960s, Brand was the central bridge figure between the San Francisco counterculture and the emerging technology scene. He created the legendary Trips Festival wit ... Show More
50 m
Apr 21
Why Are Palantir and OpenAI Scared of Alex Bores?
Leading the Future, a super PAC whose funders include the founders of companies like Palantir and OpenAI, is spending millions of dollars this election cycle, and a considerable amount of that money is going toward attack ads against Alex Bores – even though Bores himself used to ... Show More
1h 32m
Apr 17
Our Tax System Should Make You Furious
Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg and Warren Buffett are three of the richest people in the world, but they pay little in income tax relative to their wealth. In 2021, ProPublica published an investigation built on leaked tax documents that reveal what some of the richest Americans r ... Show More
1h 5m
Jun 2021
Salman Rushdie on Truth, Language and the Power of Stories
Salman Rushdie, internationally bestselling author and ‘Best of the Booker’ winner, is a storyteller of the highest order, illuminating truths about our society and culture through his dazzling prose. Best known as a novelist, he is also a compelling essayist and last month he ca ... Show More
55m 58s
Jun 2022
Weekend Woman’s Hour: Grease stars Olivia Moore & Jocasta Almgill, Female Bouncers & the Power of Silence
As the nation celebrates the Queen’s 70 year reign this jubilee weekend we ask what impact will the changes to primogeniture mean for future British monarchs? We hear from five historians, Alison Weir, Lady Antonia Fraser, Jung Chang, Tracey Borman and Kate Williams.Author Julie ... Show More
55m 9s
<p><span>Salman Rushdie reads his story from the July 29, 2019, issue of the magazine. Rushdie has published eleven novels, including "Midnight's Children," "The </span><span>Satanic</span><span><span> </span>Verses," "Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights," and "The Gol ... Show More
<p>Chang-rae Lee’s new novel, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/05/books/review/chang-rae-lee-my-year-abroad.html" target="_blank">“My Year Abroad,”</a> is his sixth. On this week’s podcast, Lee says that his readers might be surprised by it.</p><p>“It’s kind of a crazy bo ... Show More