Today, thanks to Black History Month, legendary jazz saxophonist and composer Charlie "Bird" Parker is on our minds.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Michael Dirda won the Pulitzer Prize for his literary criticism in the Washington Post Book World. Among his collections of essays is Classics for Pleasure.
Michael Thelwell was a life-long friend of Stokely Carmichael and collaborated with him on his autobiography, “Ready for Revolution.”
M.G. Lord is the author of “Astro Turf: The Private Life of Rocket Science.” Her father worked for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena in the early days of the space program.
Over the last year or so, Russell Brand has increasingly used his celebrity status to advocate for changing our political systems. His new, best-selling book puts these ideas on paper, drawing on political theorists and his own personal experiences to reimagine society itself.
Robert Kull chose to live completely alone off the coast of Chile for a year. He tells Anne Strainchamps the hardest part was the mental challenges he faced, not the weather or coping with his prosthetic leg.
So, there’s a serious proposal on the table. Should we genetically engineer disease-carrying species of mosquitoes out of existence? The technology exists and some pretty prominent scientists think we should.
Let’s check in with Sonia Shah. She’s a science journalist who writes about pandemics and pathogens and the social history of disease. She wrote one of the best histories of malaria – a book called “The Fever”, and she has a pretty different perspective on the kill or be killed debate.
Janey Buchan founded the Centre for Political Song at Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland. She plays several examples from the collection for Jim Fleming.
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