Dive Bars And Ancient Philosophy Collide In 'The Drunken Spelunker's Guide To Plato'

Sociologist Kathy Giuffre studies creativity and social networks. Her debut novel 'The Drunken Spelunker's Guide to Plato' blends a look at dive bar culture with ancient philosophy.
Kathy Giuffre

This is a rebroadcast of a show that aired earlier this year.

Sociologist Kathy Giuffrehas spent much of her career as an objective outsider who writes about cultures that are not her own.

She studies artistic communities and creativity in the South Pacific, and eventually this work encouraged her to examine her own life and the spaces she grew up in. Her debut novel “The Drunken Spelunker’s Guide to Plato”(John F. Blair/2015) is based on her time in dive bars during graduate school at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Giuffre tended bar at The Cave, a Chapel Hill dive bar. She believes dive bars are one of the few places where people who do not know each other end up in deep conversations, and it sometimes seems like time is suspended.

Host Frank Stasio talks to Kathy Giuffre about her life and debut novel.

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Anita Rao is an award-winning journalist, host, creator, and executive editor of "Embodied," a weekly radio show and podcast about sex, relationships & health.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
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