Nina Simone's powerful voice and turbulent life are the subjects of an Oscar-nominated documentary, a new biography and a forthcoming Hollywood biopic. But it's her politics that speaks most forcefully to a new generation of African American activists. Biographer Alan Light talks about the incandescent soul singer and Black Power icon.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Sy Montgomery talks about a very personable octopus, and the species's remarkable intelligence.
Jedediah Berry imagines a future where science can unlock buried thoughts.
A film from the point-of-view of the perpetrators, not the victims, of the 1965 killing of over 1,000,000 suspected Communists in Indonesia.
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.
Wu Man is a professional Chinese musician living in the West. Her instrument is the pipa, a stringed instrument plucked like a guitar.
Tom Lutz wrote "Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America." He tells Steve Paulson it was his way of dealing with his teen-age son, who never left the couch.
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