Henry Jenkins tells Jim Fleming that "The Matrix" is a good example of what we can expect from a convergence culture – a story that is told in more than one medium.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Stories of ghosts and clairvoyants are everywhere, but can they stand up to scientific scrutiny? A hundred years ago, William James led an elite group of scientists to investigate the paranormal. Deborah Blum tells this remarkable story.
A lot of people dismiss fashion as frivolous, but Media Studies professor Minh-Ha Pham says it's a great lens through which to study race, gender and class politics. "Fashion and so many other kinds of culture and practices that are traditionally associated with women... are often seen as frivolous," she says, and "that dismissal of fashion is linked to a larger, a broader sexism in our culture."
Hanna Pylvainen's debut novel "We Sinners" is loosely based on her own history in a fundamentalist Lutheran community.
Charles Duhigg, a reporter for the New York Times, has been researching the scientific and social history of habits for his new book, The Power of Habit. In it, he discusses the unique ways that habits shape our lives, both neurologically and practically. He learned that habits are powerfully hardwired into your brain — and stored separately from your memories — making them rather easy to develop and very difficult to change.
Greg Critser says that most of the claims of the advocates of organic food have very little science behind them. He thinks chefs should concentrate on creating satisfying food and not saving the world.
Satirist George Saunders has been a Guggenheim Fellow and received a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant." For his essay on the dumbing down on American media, he created "Megaphone Guy."
Hendrik Hartog explodes the myth that the 19th century was the golden age of marriage. He tells Jim Fleming that separation, desertion, and bigamy were common long before divorce was legal.
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