Jack El-Hai talks about Walter Freeman, the man who invented and promoted the surgical technique called the lobotomy.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
James Watson, one of the discoverers of DNA's double-helix structure, talks with Steve Paulson about making the discovery and what sort of environment produces scientific breakthroughs.
Candi Cann studies death and how people remember the dead. Her latest book is "Virtual Afterlives: Grieving the Dead in the Twenty-First Century." Here, she shares some resources on how to craft a digital legacy.
James Gleick's biography of the man who invented gravity, calculus and celestial mechanics, also reveals that Newton was the pre-eminent alchemist of his age.
J.G. Ballard’s futuristic 1975 novel, “High Rise, is about a group of people living in a luxury high-rise apartment building where neighbors organize themselves according to their respective social classes. Literally. The lower class lives on the lower floors, the middle class in the middle and the upper class occupies the most luxurious apartments on the highest floors. Tribal-class warfare ensues. Here’s an excerpt.
If you’re looking for the model of a compassionate doctor, you could start with James Orbinski. As a former member – and president – of Doctors Without Borders, also known as MSF, he’s served in some of the world’s desperate places. He writes about his experiences in the book “An Imperfect Offering.”
If you really want to get a feel for Isaac Newton - perhaps history's greatest scientist - the best way is to see his original manuscripts at Cambridge University Library. But they're so valuable, it's hard to get permission to look at them. They did let Steve Paulson in, but only in the company of 4 archivists, plus Newton historian Sarah Dry.
James Bradley tells what happened on the next island over from Iwo Jima, where eight American airmen were captured and beheaded.
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