Atul Gawande is a New Yorker staff writer, a practicing surgeon, and an indie-music fan, and he loves the work of the songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and whistling virtuoso Andrew Bird; Gawande has included Bird’s songs in playlists he uses in the operating room. In 2016, at the New Yorker Festival, Gawande spoke with Bird about songwriting, confronting i ... Show More
Mar 27
John Lithgow on the Controversial Authors Roald Dahl and J. K. Rowling
The new play “Giant,” on Broadway, dramatizes the scandal around Roald Dahl, the beloved children’s-book author who, in the nineteen-eighties, began making antisemitic statements and invoking stereotypes about Jewish influence. John Lithgow portrays Dahl as he faces off against h ... Show More
28m 21s
Apr 2021
Andrew Bird + Jimbo Mathus
Listening to Jimbo Mathus and Andrew Bird’s new album, These 13, is like taking a trip down South … a century ago. It’s new territory for Andrew Bird, a classically trained multi-instrumentalist from the Chicago suburbs who’s been a successful indie folk singer/songwriter and als ... Show More
34m 54s
Jul 2020
For the Birds
In the spring of 1958, when the winter snow melted and the warm sun returned, the birds did not. Birdwatchers, ordinary people, everyone wondered where the birds had gone. Rachel Carson, a journalist and early environmentalist, figured it out — they’d been poisoned by DDT, a pest ... Show More
46m 52s