With 1994′s Clerks, Kevin Smith opened up the floodgates for independently produced, micro-budget, dialogue-intensive, cursing-intensive movies by, for, and about a certain stripe of feckless Generation-X twentysomething.

Jamaica Kincaid is out with her first novel in ten years, See Now Then, but she hasn’t been idle, steadily publishing non-fiction and essays in the span between 2002’s Mr. Potter and now. Kincaid is a many-faceted woman: Antiguan native, contented Vermont gardener, improbable literary success story, fierce critic of European colonialism.

Want to know what’s going on the poetry world? Ask University of Pennsylvania professor Al Filreis.

Forward-thinking historians almost come close to forward-thinking comedians in terms of their enthusiasm for podcasting. Perhaps it stands to reason, since excellence at either pursuit, different as they may seem, demands no small degree of memory and articulateness.

Your presence here indicates that you have an interest in culture. But what, exactly is culture? I’ve long addressed that perhaps too-broad question with a simple working definition: if Melvyn Bragg broadcasts about it, it’s probably culture.

Thanks to his frequent appearances on radio’s This American Life, David Sedaris possesses one of the most recognizable author voices in the world. Simultaneously light and insinuating, it has come to seem as much a part of his oeuvre as the Santaland Diaries and his anecdotes about his parents, siblings and boyfriend.

The Moth, a New York City-based storytelling organization, is a rare creature indeed.

I spend a great deal of time visiting unfamiliar cities, spending days walking, cycling, or riding trains and buses through them. Sometimes the people of these cities speak languages I know; sometimes they speak languages I don’t.

It’s certainly not uncommon for celebrities to take up political causes, though this does not usually lead to them getting arrested for holing up in a high tower oil-drilling ship for four days.

In May we posted about Mike Duncan’s The History of Rome podcast, which, upon reaching episode 179, had concluded the tale of the Roman Empire’s heyday. Over its five-year run, Duncan’s show amassed a large, enthusiastic audience, most of whom have no doubt continued their exploration of Roman history elsewhere.