Los Angeles comic and humor columnist Alan Olifson reads an essay on the dangers of enjoying irony.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Anne Strainchamps goes looking for hope about the world's environmental problems among the children of Randall Elementary School in Madison, Wisconsin.
Before there was iTunes, Spotify, or Pandora, there was the mixtape. Jason Bittner is nostalgic for those days, when sweethearts would spend days crafting the perfect playlist. He's the editor of a book and former website called "Cassette From My Ex". He shares some songs from his collection, and explains why the mixtape is such a powerful medium.
Amir Aczel tells Jim Fleming that your odds on a coin toss are always 50/50, no matter how many times you do it.
Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno are The Yes Men. They pose as the World Trade Organization or major corporate entities to pull off pranks as political action.
When evangelical Christians say they talk to God, what do they mean? Anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann wanted to find out, so she spent two years as a participant observer in a Charismatic church, talking to the congregation and even praying herself. She says prayer involves cultivating the imagination. Luhrmann also describes her cross-cultural study of schizophrenics who hear voices.
The celebrated poet Edward Hirsch says the history of poetry is the history of poetic forms. And to prove it he wrote a 700-page compendium about all things poetry.
Ana Castillo talks with Jim Fleming about her own Mexican-American heritage and how she uses it in her novel about a flamenco dancer with polio.
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