The common wisdom is that we’re getting more violent all the time. Witness the genocides and world wars of the last century. But cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker says we have it all wrong. And in his 800 page book “The Better Angels of Ourselves” he makes the case for how violence has declined.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Terry Ryan tells Jim Fleming that her mother loved crafting contest entries and matched her efforts to the tastes of specific judges. And we hear some of her winning verses.
How do you get an atheist neuroscientist interested in spirituality? For Sam Harris, it started with LSD and other psychedelic drugs. They got him interested in mindfulness, meditation and consciousness. With a new book out called Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, he talked with TTBOOK about atheism and mystery. Here are some of the interview highlights, and the audio of the complete conversation.
In John Hunter's 4th grade classroom, kids don't just do arithmetic and spelling. They save the world. John's epic "World Peace Game" is the subject of a book and documentary.
Astrobiologist Sara Seager, who just won a MacArthur "genius" award, says there's certainly life on other planets. Seager describes her search for bio-signatures - evidence of life in other solar systems.
Sapphire performs several of her poems and tells Judith Strasser why she enjoys working in some very old poetic forms such as the villanelle.
Susannah Cahalan talks about her book, "Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness."
There was a time when others bagged your groceries, planned your trips and pumped your gas, but now they're just another part of our daily routines. Craig Lambert says these are a few examples of the "shadow work" we've unwittingly taken on in service of companies and other organizations. He warns that it's chipping away at our leisure time, and turning us all into middle class serfs.
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