Michael Benson is a film-maker who’s compiled an extraordinary book of still photographs. Lawrence Weschler wrote the book’s Afterward.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Ed Boyden, a researcher at MIT, is at the forefront of a new science that aims to map and even heal the brain with light. It’s called optogenetics, and the journal Science has called it one of the great insights of the 21st century. It’s in its early days, but the goal is to one day be able to take a disease like depression, PTSD, or epilepsy and, using bursts of light, just turn it off -- the same way you’d fix a software glitch in a computer.
Neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor nearly died from a massive stroke at the age of 37. The experience taught her life lessons on how the mind perceives the world.
Michael Pollan tells Judith Strasser where the American front lawn came from, and what it has come to symbolize.
Can you learn to be more creative? You can if you go to Lynda Barry's workshop on "writing the unthinkable."
You can also listen to the EXTENDED interview, and read the extended transcript.
As Planned Parenthood looks ahead to its centennial in October 2016, Ellen Feldman's "Terrible Virtue" gives us a captivating portrait of the organization's resolute founder, Margaret Sanger.
Jonathan Lethem's new novel is "Chronic City." The book has been described as a cross between the famous borough-centric New Yorker cartoon and the darkest episode of "Seinfeld."
Feminist film critic Molly Haskell talks about how Hollywood has treated the subject of writer’s block, and we hear clips from “Adaptation” and “Barton Fink.”
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