Historian Michael Oren talks with Steve Paulson about how the Barbary Pirates brought the Marines to the shores of Tripoli and why they went into the Middle East six times during the 19th century.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Lars Svendsen talks with Anne Strainchamps about boredom's long, long history. Or maybe it just seems that way.
Kate Lebo is The Pie Poet. She runs a pastry academy and writer's studio called The Pie School, She's published poetry about pies and a pie cookbook.
Luke Rhinehart published a novel in the 70s that became a cult classic. “The Dice Man” involves a psychiatrist who opens his life to new possibilities by basing his actions on a throw of the diced
Afghan-American author Nadia Hashimi talks about her book, “The Pearl That Broke Its Shell,” as well as the Afghan custom of Bacha Posh – in which a girl is allowed to dress as a boy.
The clay tablets found at the Greek palace of Knossos had one of the strangest languages ever discovered. Margalit Fox tells the story of Linear B - and the obsessed, tragic lives of the two people who devoted their lives to cracking the code.
Mitch Horowitz tells Anne Strainchamps that belief in the occult is as old as the colonies and that spiritualism was America's first great religious export.
There's a nagging question at major sporting events: Are the athletes cheating? Steroids, human growth hormones and blood doping techniques are extending the outer limits of performance, and athletes can use them if they want -- unless they're professionals or Olympic athletes. But is doping really a problem? Australian philosopher and bioethicist Julian Savulescu has a simple litmus test: What contribution is coming from the technology and what is coming from the athlete?
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