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.
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Satish Kumar, a former Jain monk and follower of Ghandi, tells Steve Paulson that the secret to a stress-free life is to take it at a walking pace.
Filmmaker Marina Lutz had little privacy growing up, Her father captured every piece of her life, from the mundane to the intimate, on film. Later, she rediscovered the footage and assembled it into her award-winning documentary “The Marina Experiment."
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.
Susannah Cahalan talks about her book, "Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness."
Anthropologist Tom Boellstorff takes us on a tour through the virtual world of Second Life.
Piers Vitebsky is an anthropologist who studies the Eveny or Reindeer People of Siberia. They depend on the reindeer for their survival. They keep herds of them for meat - but their connection goes even deeper. Vitebsky says that they also have personal, consecrated reindeer animal doubles, which they believe will die for them.
Thomas Chatterton Williams is a young writer who grew up listening to hip hop, but lost touch with the culture upon entering college.
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