These days beauty’s got a complicated reputation. One professor of literature and aesthetics at Harvard is giving beauty a makeover.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Ilse Blansert says that the community that's grown up around ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) has helped her overcome insomnia, anxiety and an eating disorder. In this extended conversation, she talks about how she discovered that there was a name of the tingles she experiences, and the book she's working on about the phenomenon.
People have gathered together to dance for centuries. Barbara Ehrenreich says we've become so obsessed with personal happiness, we often neglect the pleasures of collective joy.
Bill Welden, an expert on Tolkien’s Elvish languages, talks about Elvish derivations and vocabulary and remembers his visit to the set of the “The Lord of the Rings” movie.
Brian Smith tells Jim about his family’s “Recycled Christmas.” None of the gifts could be new, and the only gift wrap allowed was old newspaper. He says that Christmas was one of his best ever.
Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman is fascinated by the way memory shapes our sense of self. In this EXTENDED interview, he says our memories can be quite different from what we actually experience.
Doug Gordon profiles Cole’s notes, the Canadian inspiration for America’s CliffsNotes.
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