Steven Kaplan is a historian of bread. He’s famous in France as the American who told them their bread wasn’t good enough.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
What do the NSA disclosures really tell us? Ben Wizner should know. When he's not directing the ACLU's Speech Privacy and Technology Project, he doubles as Edward Snowden's legal adviser. He explains why we should be worried about the agency's push to expand its surveillance programs.
In the U.S., copyright originally lasted only 14 years. These days, creative works could be protected for as long as the author's alive, plus an additional 70 years. Cultural historian Siva Vaidhyanathan explains the evolution of copyright law, and how it's affected artists.
Jesse Ball's new novel is called "How to Set a Fire and Why." The protagonist is a teenage girl who joins a secret Arson Club at her new school.
Novelist and journalist William Vollmann has written a seven volume study of the moral calculus of violence. Vollmann talks with Steve Paulson about when violence is justified and when it isn’t.
Saadi Simawe spent six years in an Iraqi prison for publishing verse opposed to Saddam Husssein’s Bath party. Now he’s an exile and teaches at Grinnell College in Iowa.
Alena Graedon's debut novel is an intellectual thriller set in the near future. Print is dead, words have been monetized, and a "word flu" is running rampant. The book is called "The Word Exchange."
Scott Gelfand tells Jim Fleming about the latest in reproductive technology: the artificial womb. He worries that the device will be upon us before we’ve settled all the social and ethical issues it raises.
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