Margalit Fox on “Story in the Public Square”

Rebroadcast dates: February 24-25, 2018

Original air dates: January 13-14, 2018

Death, the old saying goes, is part of life. That wisdom seems especially appropriate if, like this week’s guest, Margalit Fox, you are a staff writer on the Obituaries desk at The New York Times.

Ms. Fox has been a staff writer on the Obituaries desk of The New York Times since 2004. She was previously a staff editor at the Book Review. Ms. Fox has written the Page One send-offs of some of the best-known cultural figures of our era, including Charles Manson; the pioneering feminist Betty Friedan; the writer Maya Angelou; the poets Seamus Heaney and Adrienne Rich; the children’s author Maurice Sendak; and the advice columnists Dear Abby and Ann Landers. She has also written the obituaries of many of the unsung heroes who have managed, quietly, to touch history, among them the inventors of the Frisbee, the crash-test dummy, the plastic lawn flamingo and the bar code.

She is the author of, Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind, and, The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code.  She discusses these, and her forthcoming true-crime book, Conan Doyle for the Defense, in the episode. You can read some of Ms. Fox’s obituaries at The New York Times website.

“Story in the Public Square” airs on Rhode Island PBS in Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts on Sundays at 11 a.m. and is rebroadcast Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. An audio version of the program airs Saturdays at 8:30 a.m. & 9:30 p.m. ET and Sundays at & 12:30 p.m. ET on SiriusXM’s popular P.O.T.U.S. (Politics of the United States), channel 124.

Story in the Public Square is a partnership between the Pell Center and The Providence Journal. The initiative aims to study, celebrate, and tell stories that matter.