One of the founders of queer theory says his childhood in the Pentecostal church laid the ground for his evolution as a gay man and literary scholar. Michael Warner grew up around faith healing and speaking in tongues. He says it was an education in thinking beyond "normal".
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
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.
Scott Jennings provides an essay on Kurt Cobain, the effects of heroin on Cobain’s music, and his legacy for a whole generation.
If there is one song more than any other that shimmers with political and emotional resonance, it’s “We Shall Overcome.”
By now, it's almost commonplace to worry that the amount of time you spend on the Internet is actually rewiring your brain. But the first person to really put the issue on the cultural map was the writer Nicholas Carr -- in a book that's become a contemporary classic: "The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains."
Sherron Watkins is the whistle-blower who tried to tell Ken Lay what was going on at Enron. With co-author, journalist Mimi Schwartz, Watkins lays out the story in her book “Power Failure.”
We look back at the legacy of the sixties: Tom Hayden, one of the founders of Students for a Democratic Society and later a State Assemblyman and Senator in California, talks with Steve Paulson.
Imagine mixing and matching your senses. People with a neurological condition called synesthesia can see music or hear colors. A few decades ago, scientists thought it was a myth, but neuroscientist David Eagleman says artists and synesthesia go way back.
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