Ruth Padel is an acclaimed British poet and a direct descendent of Charles Darwin. She’s now written “Darwin: A Life in Poems,” having grown up hearing stories about her famous ancestor.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Anne Strainchamps talks with biologist Tyler Volk and science writer Dorion Sagan, co-authors of "Sex and Death" or "Death and Sex" if you flip the book upside down.
The common wisdom is that we’re getting more violent all the time. Witness the genocides and world wars of the last century. But cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker says we have it all wrong. And in his 800 page book “The Better Angels of Ourselves” he makes the case for how violence has declined.
Satish Kumar, a former Jain monk and follower of Ghandi, tells Steve Paulson that the secret to a stress-free life is to take it at a walking pace.
Terry Ryan tells Jim Fleming that her mother loved crafting contest entries and matched her efforts to the tastes of specific judges. And we hear some of her winning verses.
Susannah Cahalan talks about her book, "Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness."
There was a time when others bagged your groceries, planned your trips and pumped your gas, but now they're just another part of our daily routines. Craig Lambert says these are a few examples of the "shadow work" we've unwittingly taken on in service of companies and other organizations. He warns that it's chipping away at our leisure time, and turning us all into middle class serfs.
Dan Lyons was a magazine writer and the technology editor at Newsweek. But one Friday morning, he found out that he'd lost his job. He was 50 with a wife and two kids. What was he going to do? And then he had an idea -- since he had so much experience reporting on Silicon Valley and the tech explosing, why not join it? So Dan scored a gig with HubSpot, a Boston start-up flush with 100 million dollars in venture capital. It was an experience, to say the least.
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