How do we mind our mortality without being overwhelmed with morbid thoughts?
Stoically, says philosopher William Irvine. But he says Stoicism doesn't require us to be unemotional about death and loss. Irvine says the Stoics used thoughts about mortality to make our lives more joyful.
Sudha Koul is a Kashmiri Hindu living in the United States. Koul says her homeland is the most beautiful place on Earth.
Sometimes a great movie forces you to see the world in a completely different way. That’s the case with Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentary, "The Act of Killing." The film follows a former Indonesian death squad leader as he remembers and even re-enacts the atrocities he committed.
Sherwin Nuland tells Steve Paulson that Leonardo’s driving passion was anatomy and that his painting aimed to capture a particular moment in time.
Sarah Winchester (born 1840) was the heiress to the Winchester Estate with a 50% holding of the Winchester Repeating Rifle Company. She used her vast fortune to construct a mansion for 38 consecutive years.
Popular legend held that she was cursed by all those who were killed by Winchester rifles. The only way to alleviate her suffering was to continue to add on to her mansion, filling it with strange sealed rooms and staircases and corridors leading nowhere. Pamela Haag tells her tale and gives it some meaning beyond a mere ghost story.
We need a green revolution, and our current crop initiatives are not adding up to such things.
When you talk about Japanese popular culture, there's one name that towers above all others. Literally. Godzilla. The giant green lizard recently became an official Japanese citizen. William Tsutsui knows all there is to know about this larger-than-life movie star; he's the author of "Godzilla on My Mind."
We hear a round-up of some of the latest research into happiness, from economist Richard Layard, and psychologists Robert Biswas-Diener and Sonja Lyubomirsky.
