According to historian Thomas Laqueur, neither sanitation nor the soul fully explain the rang of rituals we've developed for caring for dead bodies. For him, there is a deeper anthropological truth at work: caring for the dead marks the human transition from nature into culture.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Daniel Dennett is one of the leading advocates of evolutionary theory and a fierce critic of creationism.
After writer Olivia Laing relocated to New York from England, she quickly discovered how lonely you can feel in crowd. Still reeling after a breakup and struggling to adapt to a new country, she turned to artists like Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, and David Wojnarowicz to better understand how you can still feel isolated in a city teeming with millions of people.
Chuck Klosterman tells Steve Paulson that interviewing celebrities is a tricky business because there really isn't any up side in it for the star.
I dunno, but it seems kind of extreme, not to mention risky, to bio-engineer a mass mosquito die-off. So Steve Paulson tracked down the world’s greatest living entomologist to see what he has to say. E. O Wilson is sometimes called “the ant man” – that’s the insect he studied most – but he’s best known as the evolutionary biologist and a champion of biodiversity. He’s 86 years old now, and has just finished what is probably his last book – called “Half Earth”. It’s a passionate plea to save humanity by dedicating half the planet to nature. You’d assume that Wilson would be happy to let mosquitos live in that half… but that’s not what he told Steve.
Biologist Bill Streever is a cryophile – someone who loves the cold.
The marriage of David and Kristen Finch was falling apart when Kristen asked Dave to take the "Aspie quiz." It turns out Dave has Asperger Syndrome. They talk about how the diagnosis changed their lives.
Aubrey Ralph explains his enthusiasm for the Society for Creative Anachronism, or SCA.
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