The "connectome" is one of the most audacious science projects ever conceived: a detailed map of the human brain, neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse. In this EXTENDED interview, MIT computational neuroscientist Sebastian Seung explains what we can learn.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Literary critic William Gass talks with Steve Paulson about the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, and explicates a poem of Rilke’s about a bowl of roses.
Solar engineer Martha Lenio was the first woman to command a mission on the HI-SEAS — the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation. It's a project co-sponsored by NASA and the Univeristy of Hawaii that simulates what it would be like to live on Mars for eight months. To survive in such extremes, they were sequestered into a 1,000 square foot dome, and when they went outside they had to wear space suits. When Lenio got there, she said it didn't feel much like Mars, but she changed her mind after 8 months without the sun and wind on her skin. She spoke with Anne Strainchamps about missing her family — and missing YouTube cat videos.
Legendary showman P.T. Barnum once owned a slave named Joice Heth. Barnum claimed she was 161 years old and a former nanny to George Washington. Benjamin Reiss tells the story in his book "The Showman and the Slave: Race, Death, and Memory in Barnum's America."
"I had never known that beauty and death could go together." Joanna Ebenstein runs Brooklyn's Museum of Morbid Anatomy, which celebrates the memento mori that were part of daily life in the past. From art sculpted out of a dead person's hair, to death masks molded from a corpse's face, she give us a tour.
Zorba Paster tells Jim Fleming that many of the practices outlined in his book “The Longevity Code” grow out of his Buddhist practice and belief.
Stephen Thompson is an editor at The Onion newspaper, and editor of “The Onion A.V. Club: The Tenacity of the Cockroach.”
Ronda Rousey may be the best mixed martial arts fighter who ever lived, and she continues to dominate the MMA. But her rise to the top hasn't been easy. She tells the remarkable story of how she became a champion fighter.
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