An algorithm might not be able to spit out a chart-topping song —at least not yet—but it might be able to help you write a best-selling novel.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Jessica Disu (FM Supreme) talks about using hiphop as a positive force to deliver messages of peace and non-violence.
Legal scholar Cass Sunstein believes humans are innately irrational.
Barack Obama talks with Steve Paulson about his self-image and success.
David Thorpe is a filmmaker who went in search of his voice. Specifically, he wanted to know why he and many other gay men ended up markers of a "gay voice"—one with precise enunciation and sibilant "s" sounds. He spoke with his family and several speech therapists to better understand, control, and inhabit his voice.
Angie da Silva is a historian of black cultural life in the United States, going back to the Civil War. She collects stories, both through oral history and archival research. But she's not merely a writer. She brings these stories to life through historical reenactment, often as a slave character she's created named Lila. She says that the stories she hears and tells are too often left out of our history books.
In this interview, she talks about her work and tells the story of Mary Meachum, a free black abolitionist who worked on the Mississippi in St. Louis.
Writer and journalist Christopher Hitchens tells Steve Paulson that Orwell got it right about imperialism, fascism and communism.
Psychologists John and Julie Gottman are famous for being able to predict with 94% accuracy whether a couple will break up, stay together unhappily, or stay together happily. In their Love Lab, they've identified hidden patterns of behavior that can strengthen or weaken relationships. If we'd known the secret to a good marriage was non-linear differential equations, we might have paid more attention in math class.
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