"Gifts make slaves like whips make dogs" is an anthropologist's tale of inter-cultural difference in gift exchanges.
David Graeber takes us on a tour of gift giving, and gift economies. He also takes a swing at the question of whether it's possible to give a truly selfless gift.
Megabyte, terabyte, gigabyte... web-watcher David Siegel says the web's just too data heavy. The answer is to stop duplicating and make all that data - particularly our personal data - more meaningful.
Frank Drake says SETI gets lots of false alarms and they’re all caused by signals that originate on earth, and that the situation will only get worse. But he’s still optimistic.
After writer Olivia Laing relocated to New York from England, she quickly discovered how lonely you can feel in crowd. Still reeling after a breakup and struggling to adapt to a new country, she turned to artists like Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, and David Wojnarowicz to better understand how you can still feel isolated in a city teeming with millions of people.
Candace Pert's latest project is a CD of therapeutic words and music called “Psychosomatic Wellness.”
If human beings are part neanderthal, Brian Fagan tells Jim Fleming the rest of us is something else - Cro-Magnon.
Biologist Bill Streever is a cryophile – someone who loves the cold.
