Historian and president of Harvard University, Drew Gilpin Faust tells Steve Paulson that Civil War deaths consumed the entire nation with grief and transformed America in many ways.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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We hate mosquitoes.
But why? I mean, yes --- West Nile, dengue, malaria, Zika…not to mention ruined picnics, sleepless nights, and bites you scratch until they bleed … Those are logical reasons to dislike mosquitoes. But admit it – they also just creep you out.
Jeffrey Lockwood gets at the psychology in his book “The Infested Mind.” He’s an entomologist who once had a truly horrific encounter with a swarm of grasshoppers. He was left traumatized. Afterwards he wondered why we all fear and loathe insects so much.
Lockwood told Rehman Tungekar the answer is deep deep in our psyches.
This six minute short film sets a typical frat house scene with heightened visual intensity: beer pong, drunk girls, guys with their shirts off doing shots, hazing rituals, fights. The twist is that the guy at the center of the film is clearly attracted to one of his frat brothers.
Billy Collins has stepped down as America’s Poet Laureate, but he hasn’t stopped trying to make poetry more accessible and more widely read.
The invention of mechanical clocks created a kind of artificial time which permits greater efficiency, but cuts human beings off from the rest of nature.
Doug Peacock is a legend in wilderness circles. A friend of Edward Abbey, Peacock was a Vietnam vet so traumatized by the war that he escaped into the wilderness once he returned to America. He says grizzlies saved his life.
Biologist and science writer David Bainbridge tells Steve Paulson that a prolonged adolescence is unique to humans and one of our greatest evolutionary advantages.
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