Apostolos Doxiadis tells Judith Strasser about his novel “Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Conjecture,” in which a man becomes obsessed with solving a mathematical proof.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Karen Armstrong is the author of nearly 20 books on religion. She tells Steve Paulson that traditions from Confucianism to Judaism emerged as responses to the rampant violence of their time. And she says our own time has a lot in common with that age.
Poet Billy Collins bookmarks "The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst."
We hate mosquitoes.
But why? I mean, yes --- West Nile, dengue, malaria, Zika…not to mention ruined picnics, sleepless nights, and bites you scratch until they bleed … Those are logical reasons to dislike mosquitoes. But admit it – they also just creep you out.
Jeffrey Lockwood gets at the psychology in his book “The Infested Mind.” He’s an entomologist who once had a truly horrific encounter with a swarm of grasshoppers. He was left traumatized. Afterwards he wondered why we all fear and loathe insects so much.
Lockwood told Rehman Tungekar the answer is deep deep in our psyches.
Canadian novelist Sheila Heti talks about her new novel, "How Should a Person Be?" It's fiction, but the characters are real people -- they seem to be Sheila herself and her friends. Some of the dialogue is from actual conversations she transcribed. So what is this thing?
Azby Brown talks with Jim Fleming about the Japanese ideal of the very small house – sometimes 500 square feet for a family of four.
Bryan Palmer tells Steve Paulson how some population groups, from enslaved Africans to religious heretics, jazz musicians, and homosexuals have found refuge and freedom in the night.
The 13th century Sufi mystic is one of America’s bestselling poets, thanks largely to the translations of Coleman Barks. A Muslim born in Afghanistan, he celebrated the underlying unity of all religions
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