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
Carole Case wrote a history of New York’s Jockey Club, the elite cartel that controls the thoroughbred stud book.
When you keep hearing bad news about the earth's rising temperatures, it's hard to hold onto any hope. But maybe we're telling the wrong story. Sustainability pioneer Frances Moore Lappe says there are plenty of positive stories that offer hope.
Ever heard of gold-farming? Cory Doctorow talks about some ways people get ahead in multi-player video games.
Apostolos Doxiadis tells Judith Strasser about his novel “Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Conjecture,” in which a man becomes obsessed with solving a mathematical proof.
Karen Armstrong is the author of nearly 20 books on religion. She tells Steve Paulson that traditions from Confucianism to Judaism emerged as responses to the rampant violence of their time. And she says our own time has a lot in common with that age.
Journalist Elizabeth Kolbert's Dangerous Idea: human vices are just as important as human virtues in shaping evolution.
Azby Brown talks with Jim Fleming about the Japanese ideal of the very small house – sometimes 500 square feet for a family of four.
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