In Siberia, for centuries, people have lived in cooperation with reindeer. Anthropologist Piers Vitebsky tells some tales of the Reindeer People.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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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.
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.
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.
Roberta Gregory writes and draws the comic strip featuring the mis-adventures of Midge McCracken, AKA "Bitchy Bitch."
Steven Johnson talks with Steve Paulson about new research in neuroscience that helps us understand human personality and how the brain shapes it.
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.
What have the recent leaks about the NSA's surveillance program have revealed? In this EXTENDED interview, computer scientist and independent scholar Susan Landau gives us her perspective, and weighs in on the questions of inquiries, and checks and balances.
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