Les Blank is a much admired documentary film-maker. His subjects have included Polka music, gap-toothed women, and bluesman Lightning Hopkins.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Author of "Farm City" faces a drawback to her urban farm dream in Oakland, then called "the murder capital of the world."
Michael Palma is the translator of the new Norton edition of Dante's "Inferno." He reads passages from it and talks with Jim Fleming about this literary classic.
Novelist Mary Gordon used to bristle at the label "Catholic writer," but she's made peace with it now.
Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom offers a cautionary take on artificial intelligence in his new book, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. In it, he imagines what could happen if computers were to ever become smarter than humans. He tells Steve Paulson that it could have catastrophic effects, unless we start thinking about it now.
Producer Rehman Tungekar talks with Anne Strainchamps about growing up in a multi-ethnic family.
Physicist Joel Primack and Nancy Abrams tell Steve Paulson how humanity has moved back into the center of our myth-making.
Michael Benson is a film-maker who’s compiled an extraordinary book of still photographs. Lawrence Weschler wrote the book’s Afterward.
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