The evidence is mounting... "we" are mostly who we think we are. Our identities are mental constructs, cobbled together from memory and stories. Jonathan Adler gives us a crash course in narrative identity and mental health.
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.
Travel writer Tony Perrotet has spent his career traveling all over the globe, but he skipped the Mediterranean tour, choosing Tierra del Fuego or the Amazon over Rome. But the discovery of an ancient guide book launched him on his most exotic journey yet, in the footsteps of the Ancients.
Novelist Mary Gordon used to bristle at the label "Catholic writer," but she's made peace with it now.
Musician Joe Jackson talks with Jim Fleming about his concept album “Heaven and Hell” which is based on the Seven Deadly Sins.
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.
Julia Alvarez talks about her novel for young adults, and how it mirrors her own experience reconciling a native Dominican background with the culture of her adopted home: a small town in rural Vermont.
Peter French tells Anne Strainchamps the ancient Greeks thought revenge was a good thing, and analyzes the vengeance scenario of Clint Eastwood’s film “Unforgiven.”
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