Salman Rushdie tells Steve Paulson that he loved the movie, “The Wizard of Oz” and that he sees it as a parable about home and homelessness.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Tom Lessl conducted a study of the Darwin fish emblem some people slap on their cars. He says that it seems to have little to do with evolution but represents a rejection of fundamentalist Christianity.
According to one estimate, the average young person spends about 8 hours a week playing video games. While many parents are worried about all that screen time, there's an emerging body of research that suggests some social and psychological benefits to gaming. And now there's a new generation of educators who want to bring video games into the classroom, not only to make it more fun, but also more effective. Journalist Greg Toppo writes about their efforts in "The Game Believes in You: How Digital Play Can Make Our Kids Smarter."
“Patchwork Flight” – a story written by TTBOOK listener Rebecca Demarest. Performed by Sara Nics and Nigel O’Shea, with sound design by Britny True.
Zach Helm wrote the screenplay for "Stranger than Fiction," in which Will Ferrell hears the voice of Emma Thompson apparently narrating his life.
Biologist Stephen Palumbi tells Anne Strainchamps that insects and microbes are benefitting from human interventions.
One of the most horrific episodes in American history occurred on December 29, 1890. The U.S. Cavalry surrounded an encampment of Lakota on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and massacred some 300 people. The details of the carnage of the Wounded Knee Massacre are almost unbearable. As Black Elk, the Lakota medicine man who witnessed the massacre, put it, “Something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died." This tragedy is the bleak backdrop for Jonis Agee's new novel, "The Bones of Paradise." Set 10 years after the Wounded Knee Massacre, all the characters in her novel - from white cattle ranchers to the Lakota - are wrestling with the ghosts of the massacre. Agee tells Steve Paulson about the origins of her novel.
Television is rife with shows about female spies, whether it's Nikita, Covert Affairs, the Americans, or Homeland. It really seems like spy girls are having a moment on TV, but how true to life are these popular depictions? We turned to former CIA operations officer Valerie Plame Wilson to find out.
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