Stephen Jay Gould was a Harvard University biology professor, prolific popularizer of science, and a pugnacious intellectual who took on creationism and fellow academics who he thought misinterpreted or misused evolutionary biology.
Robert Creeley is often cited as one of the greatest poets of the last half of the twentieth century. I once wrote that he can “shake a lot of meaning out of a few words.” He spoke with me about jazz, poetry, his Yankee influences, his dislike for poetry workshops, and why Robert Frost was the “Colonel Sanders of poetry.”
In August, 2018, I went for a retreat at the Sharpham Estate, a Georgian mansion in Devon, England. Many of the grounds nearby were designed by the 18th-century gardener and landscape architect known as Capability Brown, sometimes called “England’s greatest gardener.”
Although I lived in the United Kingdom for nine years, I didn’t get around to visiting Wales until 2022. I drove in a loop, from Cardiff to Snowdonia National Park via the West Coast. I thought I had seen the height of British gardening in London, but was impressed by Bodnant Garden, near Conwy.
I’ve been to Turkey five times, for both work and pleasure, and I’ve loved every trip. The architecture, the people, the food, and the rich heritage and archaeological sites make it one of my favorite destinations.
I first went to Thailand for work, in 1996, to write about some jazz musicians touring there and to report on AIDS research. I met my future wife then, and married her in 2000. As a result, I have been to Thailand many times and been steeped in its culture, people, and way of celebrating Buddhism.
Immersive technologies, such as virtual reality, have promised to allow users to explore everything from atoms to archaeological sites without ever having to leave a headset. I spoke to leaders in the field and wrote about how the educational use of these technologies is maturing (PDF).
I offer some solutions to a problem that many writers, students, and professors complain about. I’ve always believed that writers’ block is the result of improper research—often too much or too little—and poor planning, rather than actually being an obstacle during writing itself.
In the summer of 2019, the political situation in Sudan looked hopeful. Street protests, led largely by young people, had toppled the regime of the long-time dictator, Omar al-Bashir. But women, who had felt free to escape social restrictions, return to the streets and join the protests, were excluded from a transitional council that was supposed to rule the country.
Cambodia was one of the first countries where I did international reporting. In visits to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the Documentation Center of Cambodia, I got a chilling look at the details of how political prisoners had been tortured to death.
