Several grammy-winning folk musicians have written songs based on the stories in a book called "Wilderness Plots" by Scott Russell Sanders.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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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."
Back in 1969, Marine Karl Marlantes was dropped in the middle of a jungle in Vietnam - at the age of 23, put in charge of the lives of 40 other young men. He says he wasn't psychologically or spiritually prepared for that, or for what came after the war.
"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.
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.
Tim Flannery tells Steve Paulson about the asteroid crashes and vanished fauna in our continent’s past.
The firey debate over schooling has flared up again. The newest dialogue? Astra Taylor’s "Unschooling” essay in n+1, and Dana Goldstein’s response in Slate. In this NEW and UNCUT interview, Taylor and Goldstein join Steve Paulson for their first joint interview on schools.
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