Best-selling writer Elizabeth Gilbert brings an intrepid 19th century woman botanist to life in her latest novel, "The Signature of All Things." In this conversation, she introduces us to the wonder of moss, Darwin's correspondance with "lady scientists" and the 16th century mystic, Jacob Boehme.
How do you make music from plants? Here's a recent article about the artist Mileece.
Writer and ecologist Terry Tempest Williams talks with Steve Paulson about prairie dogs and their language and her trip to a village for genocide survivors in Rwanda.
The protest at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation has caught fire. Its camp is now larger than most small towns in North Dakota. The protest is not just about an oil pipeline from North Dakota to Illinois. It's about water. Journalist John Fleck, who's spent decades writing about water disputes in the West, tells Anne Strainchamps how the Standing Rock protest figures into this history.
Nina Simone's powerful voice and turbulent life are the subjects of an Oscar-nominated documentary, a new biography and a forthcoming Hollywood biopic. But it's her politics that speaks most forcefully to a new generation of African American activists. Biographer Alan Light talks about the incandescent soul singer and Black Power icon.
In 1935, a group of ornithologists from Cornell University set out on an expedition to find and record America's rarest bird: the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.
Jedediah Berry imagines a future where science can unlock buried thoughts.
Tom Chatfield believes video games could revolutionize education.
Sy Montgomery tells Steve Paulson about swimming with the pink dolphins of the Amazon. She says they inspire lots of folklore, and are really a species of toothed whale.
