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.
Audio
Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff's Dangerous Idea? Open source currency as the next money model.
Daniel Wolff tells Anne Strainchamps that most Americans learn what they really need to know outside of school and that, as a society, we believe contradictory things about the value of public education.
Human and animal history is so intertwined it's hard to imagine one species without the other.
Deborah Madison talks with Anne Strainchamps about the growing popularity of farmers’ markets.
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.
Franz Lidz is the author of "Ghosty Men: The Strange but True Story of the Collyer Brothers, New York's Greatest Hoarders."
Journalist Christopher Noxon explains what happened when he formed a personal posse of life coaches in Los Angeles.
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