Anthropologist Scott Atran has spent a decade interviewing jailed suicide bombers and jihadist military leaders. He says religious terrorists are motivated by the many of the same human values celebrated in every culture: brotherhood, loyalty, and the dream of a better world.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Historian Theodore Zeldin, author of “Conversation: How Talk Can Change Our Lives,” tells Steve Paulson that the old model of conversation was about hierarchy — one person laying down the law while others listened.
Jason Padgett was a hard-partying guy until a traumatic brain injury turned him into a math genius. Now, he sees complex geometric designs everywhere he looks.
How does something as wet and gooshy as the brain produce consciousness, which is immaterial? Steve Paulson reports on the debate among scientists and philosophers.
Film critic Roger Ebert talks with Steve Paulson about why chess doesn’t seem to work on the silver screen.
"There is nothing romantic about death," Christian Wiman says.
The poet and editor of Poetry Magazine has been battling blood cancer for years. In his most recent book of poems he breathes life into writing about mortality.
Rosalind Wiseman and Rachael Simmons say that girls’ popularity with other girls is influenced by the politics of the social pecking order and that the effects of being ostracized can be devastating.
Tom Matthews' first novel, “Like We Care,” tells what happens when some teenagers simply stop spending money on all the stuff that’s marketed to them.
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