Plenty of men are obsessed with body image, too. Eric Chaline traces the cult of the male body beautiful back to ancient Greece, in "The Temple of Perfection" -- his new history of the gym.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Steve Paulson reports on the new genre of Scandinavian crime fiction and we hear a reading from Karin Fossum's "He Who Fears the Wolf."
Tom Lutz tells Jim Fleming that human beings are great crybabies. Lutz is the author of “Crying: The Natural & Cultural History of Tears.”
Scott Turow has made a career writing hugely successful legal thrillers, but then he turned to a World War II novel.
Did you know that 7 Up was originally called Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda? Good thing they changed the name. That's one of the fascinating facts from Tristan Donovan's book, "Fizz: How Soda Shook Up the World." Donovan takes us on a guided tour of the secret history of fizzy water.
For others, football is sacred. In fact, William Dean says the game is part of "American spiritual culture." He talks with Jim Fleming about the way religious beliefs crop up in American popular culture.
American by birth, Vijay Iyer is trying to create a new kind of music, a synthesis of Western jazz and Indian music.
Did you know plants see, smell and communicate with neighboring plants? And have both long and short term memory? Plant geneticist Daniel Chamovitz describes the complex world of plant life.
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