French chemist Pierre Laszlo tells Steve Paulson that our bodies need salt to prevent dehydration and that removing the salt from seawater isn’t that hard, but it’s very expensive.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
How will we react, the day we hear the news that scientists have found life on another planet? Science fiction writer Orson Scott Card has dreamed up many first contact scenarios. His classic science fiction novel, "Ender's Game" is all about the consequences of a first contact gone badly wrong. He's just published a long-awaited sequel.
Poet Anja Sieger, who often writes under the pen name Notanja, is the current Narrator-in-Residence at the storied Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee. Her writing implement of choice? A vintage typewriter.Hear the interview as well as the bonus reading of a poem that she wrote on-site for producer Seth Jovaag's daughter, Lydia.
Olga Nunes records voicemail memories of smell.
WANT TO SHARE YOUR MEMORY TOO? Just call 415-857-0589 (it is a Google voicemail box).
Want to hear more memories from others?
Paul Feig is the creator of the critically acclaimed TV series “Freaks and Geeks.” He says that the show (which is no longer on the air) was based on his real-life adolescence.
Author Jonathan Lethem talks to Jim Fleming about his "Harper's" Magazine essay, "The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism."
Michael Reilly recorded an extraordinary CD called "Como Now: The Voices of Panola County, Mississippi."
Novelist Nicholson Baker exposed what he called libraries’ assault on paper in a book called “Double Fold.”
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