Paul Stoller is an anthropologist who studied sorcery with the Songhay people in Niger. Years later he developed lymphoma and only then did he understand some of what his teacher had been trying to teach him.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Michelle Paver has had a lifelong fascination with the Stone Age. She's studied anthropology, and she's lived with the Inuit in Alaska and the Sami in Lapland. She used these experiences to write her series of novels, Chronicles of Ancient Darkness.
Neuroscientist Richard Davidson is a leading expert on the science of mindfulness. He's teamed up with the Dalai Lama to put Buddhist monks in brain scanners, and he's developing a new scientific model for studying emotion.
You can also listen to the EXTENDED interview, and read the extended transcript.
Author John D'Agata and fact-checker Jim Fingal talk about the boundaries of literary nonfiction as chronicled in their book, "The Lifespan of a Fact."
"The Passage" has been described as "an engrossingly horrific account of a post-apocalyptic America." The author says the idea came out of a discussion with his nine-year-old daughter.
Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work as a visionary economist who founded the micro-credit movement and India's Grameen Bank.
Keith Donohue's novel is "The Stolen Child." He tells Jim Fleming the book's about a boy who's stolen by fairies and the boy who replaces him in the human world.
Matthijs van Boxsel is the author of “The Encyclopedia of Stupidity.” He tells Steve Paulson it started with shame at his own stupidity, but he’s come finally to praise it.
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