“I learned virtually nothing about mortality when I was in medical school,” Dr. Atul Gawande says. “I was terrible at knowing how to have a successful conversation with people facing terminal illness.” Gawande, author of the bestselling “Being Mortal,” is now trying to get people talking about better ways to live out the final chapter.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Edward P. Jones won the Pulitzer Prize for his first novel, "The Known World." His short story collection is called "All Aunt Hagar's Children."
Eric Kandel has spent a lifetime studying the science of memory and picked up a Nobel Prize while he was at it.
Mary Pauline Lowry has been obsessed with fire since she was a child. And she's pursued this obsession throughout her life -- by working as a member of a hotshot crew fighting wildland fires and writing a novel called "Wildfire" based on her experience.
Frederic Spotts is the author of “Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics.” Spotts says that Hitler saw himself as a painter and was forever wounded by his failure to impress the artistic establishment.
In Connie Willis' world, historians can actually go to the past to study.
Ben Buchanan found his way out of dyslexia by reading Harry Potter. Then he invented a board game and wrote a book about it - “My Year with Harry Potter.”
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.
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