Ellen Ruppel Shell talks with Anne Strainchamps about the effects of our obsession with low prices.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
The celebrated Irish novelist Colm Toibin talks about his admiration for the poet Elizabeth Bishop and the kinship he feels for her.
Frank Rich tells Jim Fleming that the Broadway musicals of his childhood were all about dysfunctional families and helped him cope with his own difficult family situation.
Is there anything science won't tackle? The lastest question, "What is beauty?" We talk with two neuroscientists and an art historian about the new field of neuroaesthetics.
What does it mean to be free? And what does it mean to live a personally authentic, honest life with ourselves and with others? These are the questions that Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and their existential friends wrestled with in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Sarah Bakewell makes the case that their late-night conversations are especially relevant today. She's the author of "At the Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails."
Flash mobs: seemingly random gatherings of complete strangers doing something completely out of the ordinary. Bill Wasik started this craze.
A few weeks after Dan's funeral, his wife Judy talks about how she's dealing with his absence, and how she wants to remember him.
Augustin De la Pena is a psycho-physiologist who works at a sleep disorders center in South Texas, and a leading authority on boredom.
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