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
In 1969, Frederic Whitehurst was in Viet Nam, burning captured enemy documents. He saved the diary of a young woman, and many years later returned it to her mother.
Could the Internet feel happy or depressed? That's a distinct possibility, according to Christof Koch. In this EXTENDED interview, he talks about computer consciousness, God, and just what it means that our brains have a hundred billion neurons and trillions of synapses. Koch wonders whether all matter might have consciousness.
Dean Sluyter is a film critic and meditation teacher who combined his interests to write "Cinema Nirvana: Enlightenment Lessons from the Movies."
We re-examine the myth of Robert Johnson. The most famous blues singer of them all died at the age of 27 after recording only 29 songs. Today he's idolized, but Elijah Wald says that may be for the wrong reasons.
Bill Streever is an Alaskan biologist and a "cryophile" - someone who loves the cold. He describes what it's like to jump into freezing water as hypothermia starts to set in.
Ernie Cline talks to Anne Strainchamps about his novel, "Ready Player One," which revolves around a massively multi-player online game and '80s pop culture.
Pages
