How do modern societies compare to hunter gatherer cultures? In "The World Until Yesterday," Jared Diamond, explores our radically different values - on everything from childrearing to what we think about strangers. Here's Steve's EXTENDED interview with Diamond.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Marian Salzman is director of strategic content for J. Walter Thompson, America's largest advertising firm. She comments on the rising economic importance of China and India.
If there’s one writer who’s identified with the Mississippi River, it’s Mark Twain. He grew up in Hannibal, Missouri — on the river’s edge — and as a young man, he worked as a steamboat pilot. And then he wrote the “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” the novel that turned the Mississippi into myth. But it also created one of the most enduring controversies in American literary history: how to depict race relations in America's past. In this interview, Andrew Levy says that "Huckleberry Finn" is actually anti-racist — and when it was first published, the big controversy was about Twain’s depiction of wild children.
Rebecca Goldstein explains how Spinoza envisioned God and why his conception appealed to later scientists like Einstein.
Ballet is performed all over the world, but in Russia ballet is the route to stardom.
Maurice Sendak's new book, “Brundibar” is a collaboration with playwright Tony Kushner. It’s a story about confronting evil, based on events from the Holocaust.
For centuries, the oddities of nature - like two-headed cats and conjoined twins - fascinated people. Science historian Lorraine Daston says a history of wonders is to some degree a history of pre-modern science.
Kumail Nanjiani is a Pakistani standup comedian living in Chicago and performing a one-man show called "Unpronounceable."
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