Dan Chaon's short story collection, "Stay Awake," is set in post-recession America, where dreamers, losers and troubled souls feel like ghosts in their own lives.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
What's the perfect drug for a culture of distraction? Adderall. Sales of the prescription drug have increased exponentially and not always legally, especially to young adults. Casey Schwartz spent her twenties gulping down prescription stimulants to help her get through school and start her career. She wrote about her experience in a story for "The New York Times Magazine" called "Generation Adderall."
Ali Allawi is a visiting fellow at Harvard and the former Minister of Defense and Minister of Finance in Iraq. He talks with Steve Paulson about Islam and modernism.
It’s no secret that Hollywood has a diversity problem. Take for instance the fact that women only hold about 1 in 6 leadership roles in the film industry. And despite facing greater dangers, female stuntwomen typically receive less pay than their male counterparts. In her documentary “Double Dare,” Amanda Micheli follows two high profile women stunt-doubles: Jeannie Epper and Zoe Bell. Michaeli says women stunt doubles appear all the time in movies, and not always where you’d expect.
Zen Buddhist Abbot Joan Halifax has been sitting with dying people since 1970. She says the experience has been a profound gift. She says that she has no idea what happens after we die, and that she's comfortable with that mystery.
Annalee Newitz is optimistic that humans are not necessarily an endangered species. In this EXTENDED interview, she talks with Anne about "Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction."
A’Lelia Bundles tells Steve Paulson about her great-great-grandmother’s life and how she was able to build an economic empire out of hair care products for Black women.
Alan Lee’s illustrations for an early edition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” landed him a job as a conceptual artist on the Peter Jackson film production crew.
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