While the presidency so far has appeared to be a man's game, there is now the suggestion that women have shaped the job and the men from the very beginning.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Harriet Tubman will soon be gracing our twenty dollar bill. Most of us know only one image of her. It's an iconic image taken later in her life in which her hair's covered in a dark cloth and she has a stern expression. But there are other images of Harriet Tubman as well, including a wood cut of her carrying a musket.
Law professor Nicholas Johnson says the image of Harriet Tubman carrying a rifle doesn’t fit with how most Americans view abolitionists and civil rights leaders. After all, weren’t they supposed to be peaceful? But as Johnson tells Steve Paulson, there's a rich tradition of Black Americans owning guns for self-defense.
Jim Fadiman is one of the original psychonauts – a friend of Richard Alpert and Ken Kesey in the Sixties – who went on to do pioneering research on psychedelics and creativity, and helped found the transpersonal psychology movement. In this EXTENDED interview, Steve Paulson talks with Fadiman about a lifetime of unconventional thinking.
Jeffrey Eugenides won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel “Middlesex.” He tells Steve Paulson why he chose to use a hermaphrodite as his narrator.
How did non-life become life? University of Wisconsin geochemist Nita Sahai talks with Anne Strainchamps about how life might have begun on Earth.
K.C. Cole is working on a book about her friend Frank Oppenheimer. Frank was barred from practicing physics during the McCarthy era, and was deeply troubled by the devastation of the bomb.
Jim Fleming reports how a new generation of American Buddhist teachers are adapting the Buddha's two thousand year old message for 21st century American audiences.
Patricia O’Connor tells Jim Fleming there’s nothing wrong with splitting an infinitive and that people should stop trying to make English behave like Latin.
Pages
