Neuroscientist Richard Davidson is a leading expert on the science of mindfulness. He's teamed up with the Dalai Lama to put Buddhist monks in brain scanners, and he's developing a new scientific model for studying emotion.
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Author John D'Agata and fact-checker Jim Fingal talk about the boundaries of literary nonfiction as chronicled in their book, "The Lifespan of a Fact."
Michelle Paver has had a lifelong fascination with the Stone Age. She's studied anthropology, and she's lived with the Inuit in Alaska and the Sami in Lapland. She used these experiences to write her series of novels, Chronicles of Ancient Darkness.
Quaker writer, educator and activist Parker Palmer believes people need to listen to their inner voice in order to make the right life choices.
Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work as a visionary economist who founded the micro-credit movement and India's Grameen Bank.
Paul Stoller is an anthropologist who studied sorcery with the Songhay people in Niger. Years later he developed lymphoma and only then did he understand some of what his teacher had been trying to teach him.
Cosmology is on our minds, with the remarkable new discovery confirming the Big Bang. To get a better sense of what it all means – and how creation stories like the Big Bang have shaped our sense of ourselves – Steve Paulson turned to Adam Frank, an astrophysicist who writes for NPR’s science blog 13.7. He’s the author of the book “About Time: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang.”
How did religion ever get started in the first place? We talked to renowned sociologist Robert Bellah shortly before he died. He said religion isn't about belief in God. Its origins go back to the rituals of our ancient ancestors, and ultimately to play.
