David Kilcullen was a top military advisor to General Petraeus during the troop surge in Iraq. He tells Anne Strainchamps that most counter-insurgency efforts fail because foreign armies usually galvanize opposition from local people.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Ever heard of gold-farming? Cory Doctorow talks about some ways people get ahead in multi-player video games.
Benedict Le Vay tells Jim Fleming that many customs still exist in England and are extremely important to the community, even though the reason for them is long forgotten.
Journalist Elizabeth Kolbert's Dangerous Idea: human vices are just as important as human virtues in shaping evolution.
Canadian novelist Sheila Heti talks about her new novel, "How Should a Person Be?" It's fiction, but the characters are real people -- they seem to be Sheila herself and her friends. Some of the dialogue is from actual conversations she transcribed. So what is this thing?
When life gives you lemons, sometimes you make lemonade. And sometimes you write, and bake and play piano at three 3 am. That's what Dominique Browning did after she and her staff were let go when the magazine, "House and Garden" folded. She writes about getting to know herself in the book "Slow Love."
Ariel Glucklich tells Jim Fleming about ritual self-punishment in various religions and how the experience of self-inflicted pain can seem liberating.
Eben Alexander is a neurosurgeon who had a near death experience in 2008. In this NEW and UNCUT audio, he tells the story of his "NDE," and how it's changed his understanding of consciousness and life.
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