Ethan Warren, "The Cinema of Paul Thomas Ande...

In Ambitious and Anxious: How Chinese College Students Succeed and Struggle in American Higher Education (Columbia UP, 2020), sociologist Yingyi Ma offers a multifaceted analysis of a new wave of international Chinese students—mostly self-funded—who have transformed American high ...  Show more

Forests in fiction are often understood simply as settings, symbols, or remnants of a premodern past. Yet many African novelists have turned to the forest to experiment with worldbuilding and to imagine new futures. This groundbreaking book explores the life of the forest in Afri ...  Show more

Every other week this fall, we will be airing some of Alec’s favorite episodes from our archives. This week features two incredible authors: chronicler of Hollywood legends, Sam Wasson, and the Pulitzer-Prize winning The New Yorker writer, Lawrence Wright. Sam Wasson ...

Wesley Morris has served as critic at large at The New York Times since 2015, covering film, politics, and pop culture. He joins this week to discuss this year’s Academy Award nominations. At the top, we discuss the omission of Greta Gerwig from the Best Director category (6:07), ...  Show more

Over the past 15 years, filmmaker Ava DuVernay (Selma, Queen Sugar) has become something of an institution in Hollywood. As a writer, director, and producer she’s worked to make our industry more just and diverse—creating opportunities for voices that have historically been under ...  Show more

From Blake Edwards and Paul Mazursky, to Audrey Hepburn and the history of Improv, Sam Wasson tackles distinctive creators and seminal moments in Hollywood history. Alec loved Sam Wasson’s latest, The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood. In this fas ...