Simon Montefiore is the author of “Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar.” He says Stalin was more complex than we thought, but still a monster.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
One hundred years ago, Fritz Haber invented the first chemical weapon and convinced the German army to use it. His wife Clara, also a chemist, fiercely opposed her husband's project. When she couldn't stop it, she committed suicide. Judith Claire Mitchell tells the story in her tragic and yet funny novel "A Reunion of Ghosts."
The Book of Pythia is part of the sacred scrolls of the Twelve Tribes of Kobol and in the four seasons of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, The Book of Pythia plays a crucial role. This may be a fictional universe, but the book itself is real.
Senegalese pop star Youssou N'Dour is the top-selling African musician of all time.
Howard Axelrod was accidentally blinded in one eye in a freak accident when he was in college. Disoriented and depressed, he retreated to an off-the-grid cabin in the Vermont wilderness. He stayed there, alone, for 2 years. Now he's published a memoir about his period of renunciation, "The Point of Vanishing."
Is science really open to every good idea? Controversial biologist Rupert Sheldrake says modern science is mired in various dogmas - boundaries you're not supposed to cross, at least if you value your job and your reputation.
For the Aboriginal people of Australia, the concept of "The Dreaming" means an existence with no linear time.
Sarah Bakewell is the author of “How to Live” an unorthodox biography of the great French philosopher and essayist Montaigne.
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