The Penguin podcast's 18th episode features an unspoken hickory nut. Richard Dawkins says smell has become increasingly important to him as he becomes more interested in living where he lives. He will keep a green hickory in his house and do this little trick of releasing the chemicals that are in the husk as my little drug of choice as I write. It requires changing out the hickory as it grows old and desiccates but it's lovely to keep one handy.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Powers joins Nihal Arthanayake to discuss his thirteenth novel, ‘Bewilderment’.
Using objects like Bach’s Goldberg Variation 18, an unsmoked hickory nut, and a petrified piece of redwood, Powers transport us to his home in the Great Smoky Mountains, musing on the importance of sense as an entranceway to curiosity, writing as a resistance of habituation, and the centrifugal feeling that connects the work of the artist and the scientist; that of bewilderment.
‘Bewilderment’ is available to order on audiobook now: https://apple.co/3cFCDYf
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