Novelist Russell Banks tells Judith Strasser that the great American story is that of the African diaspora and the struggle of many races and cultures to live harmoniously together.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Many of history's greatest scientists, from Newton to Maxwell to Einstein, have devoted significant study to the behavior of light, and, as a result, most physicists thought there was little left to say on the subject. But in April 2016, Paul Eastham, a physicist at Trinity College in Dublin, published a new paper proving that a fundamental assumption scientists had made about light was wrong.
Sarah MacDonald followed the man she loved to India and proceeded to explore that country’s ancient spiritual heritage. She chronicles her spiritual adventures in a book called “Holy Cow.”
When blogger Jenny Lawson recently tweeted about an awkward exchange she had with a cashier at an airport, she couldn't have imagined the flood of responses she'd get from fans recounting their own mortifying moments. The tweet went viral and within a few days she'd received thousands of messages from fans recounting their own awkward stories. The whole affair was proof of something Jenny had long suspected -- that awkwardness can help bring people together.
William Langewiesche tells Anne Strainchamps about the underground rivers at Ground Zero and the extraordinary courage and leadership shown by all the volunteers who participated in the clean up, even as the firemen rejected the heroic language used in the media.
Film critic Roger Ebert talks with Steve Paulson about why chess doesn’t seem to work on the silver screen.
Stacy Peralta was one of the original Z-boys who transformed the sport of skateboarding. Peralta tells Steve Paulson that the Z boys were all wild surfers from a rough neighborhood in west Los Angeles.
Steve Paulson talks with some leading Darwin experts and goes to see Darwin's letters at Cambridge University in England to try to get at Darwin's views on God.
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