Producer Sara Nics on the story behind this show... how she's tried to come to terms with our narrative selves.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Elizabeth Little is a writer and editor who collects languages. She tells Jim Fleming about the perils of learning tonal languages.
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.
Arika Okrent is a linguist and the author of "In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Logian Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build A Perfect Language."
Eugene Mirman is an indie comic and the author of an outlandish self-help send-up called "The Will to Whatevs." He tells Jim Fleming that school was horrible for him and gave rise to his nerd humor.
Daphne Merkin responds to Hilary Clinton as a cultural symbol and public personality.
Human and animal history is so intertwined it's hard to imagine one species without the other.
David Gessner wants to change the way people write about nature. Instead of the traditional stories about wild animals in pristine landscapes, he calls for a style of nature writing that's messy, even raucous.
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