People who like baseball call it "the thinking person’s game," but for the first 100 years, baseball was governed by a surprisingly limited range of critical thinking. Decisions were made by insiders, the current and former players who spent a lifetime around the diamond, and did things mostly one way: the way they've always been done. But in the last 3 or 4 years, that storehouse of common knowledge—much of which was kept guarded in a true "old boy's club"—has been cracked wide open. Now the game isn't driven by intuition, it's driven by data. And the math nerds who rode the bench in Little League—if they played at all—are now telling pro ballplayers what to do. Journalist Travis Sawchik tells Steve Paulson the story.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Tom Lutz tells Jim Fleming that human beings are great crybabies. Lutz is the author of “Crying: The Natural & Cultural History of Tears.”
Xinran hosted a call-in radio program in Beijing which for eight years told the heart-rending true stories of women’s lives in China.
Stephen Prothero tells Jim Fleming that Jesus has become an American icon like Mickey Mouse and that the commercial proliferation of Jesus kitsch indirectly spreads a religious message.
Will Russell and Scott Shuffitt are the founders of "Lebowski Fest," an annual event that celebrates Joel and Ethan Coen's 1998 film, "The Big Lebowski."
Sara Nelson tells Anne Strainchamps what publishers can do to make a book a best-seller and why the actual number of copies sold is a state secret.
American by birth, Vijay Iyer is trying to create a new kind of music, a synthesis of Western jazz and Indian music.
What turns you on?
Sure, there are the obvious answers: beauty, brains, braun. But human sexuality is a complicated business. Studying it is more complicated still. That was, until the internet came along.
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