Is mathematics what's most real in the universe? MIT physicist Max Tegmark thinks so, and he says it's likely we live in one of many parallel universes.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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With mounting concerns over student debt, we're thinking about higher education this week. Christopher Newfield teaches literature and American Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He believes rising tuition and reduced state funding are threatening the nation's public universities.
John Balaban performed alternative service in Vietnam during the war there. While helping children injured in the fighting, he grew to love the traditional sung poetry of rural Vietnam.
Paul Krugman won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics and teaches at Princeton. His latest book is "The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008."
Children’s author Katherine Paterson tells Steve Paulson that too many people deny the emotional reality of childhood. Her books are popular because she recognizes the fears children face.
Michael Dirda tells Anne Strainchamps that modern readers of Beowulf owe a great deal to J.R.R. Tolkien.
Historian Jonathan Rose tells Steve Paulson that some members of the British working class in Victorian England and the early 20th century read the classics and used them as a means of intellectual emancipation.
Laurie King has written a series of novels featuring Mary Russell, a young woman who becomes Sherlock Holmes' partner and later his wife.
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