Lucy Kaylin tells Steve Paulson that the average age of American nuns is seventy, and that many orders are folding.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Len Fisher talks with Anne Strainchamps about "swarm intelligence" and how it differs from "group think."
Shocking acts of violence are committed in the name of religion, but Karen Armstrong says we're too quick to blame faith for violence and intolerance around the world.
Rebecca and Robert Bluestone tell Judith Strasser what their art forms have in common and how they both use color and a sense of place in their work.
Mikael Niemi is the author of “Popular Music from Vittula,” the single best-selling book in Swedish history.
We present two takes on the question of whether or not the world's supply of oil is drying up. Princeton's Ken Deffeyes says production has peaked. Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg says that's just crying wolf.
Filmmaker Astra Taylor believes our digital life is undemocratic -- that we're concentrating power into the hands of giant tech companies, who make money off our posts and tweet. She tells Anne Strainchamps why she believes there should be greater regulation of the Internet.
Joan Didion, who died last week at the age of 87, helped shape a highly personal brand of nonfiction that came to be known as the New Journalism. Her early essay collections "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" (1968) and "The White Album" (1979) influenced generations of writers. Her later memoirs, "The Year of Magical Thinking" and "Blue Nights," chronicled the deaths of her husband and daughter. In 2011 Didion talked with Steve Paulson about illness and growing old in the wake of the death of her daughter, Quintana.
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