Tom Shippey, author of “Tolkien: Author of the Century,” talks with Steve Paulson about the great fantasy writer’s life, the origins of hobbits, and Tolkien’s motivation for writing fantasy.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
What compels someone to commit acts of terror? Anthropologist Scott Atran has spent a decade talking with jailed suicide bombers and jihadist leaders. He says they're motivated by core human values: brotherhood, loyalty and the dream of a better world.
The whole idea of American Exceptionalism has lost currency in recent years. But in this Dangerous Idea, cultural historian Andrew Warnes asks, What if American is exceptional after all?
Rupert Isaacson made a journey with his family to seek out shamans in horse-centered cultures to treat his autistic son.
William Gibson talks about his first collection of nonfiction, "Distrust That Particular Flavor."
Steven Kaplan is an American and an expert on bread. So expert, that he tells the French what they’re doing wrong and they love him for it!
Seymour Martin Lipset tells Judith Strasser that Americans never became revolutionaries because from the beginning, working people here were far better off than those in other countries.
Many of history's greatest scientists, from Newton to Maxwell to Einstein, have devoted significant study to the behavior of light, and, as a result, most physicists thought there was little left to say on the subject. But in April 2016, Paul Eastham, a physicist at Trinity College in Dublin, published a new paper proving that a fundamental assumption scientists had made about light was wrong.
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