Simon Winchester talks about the enormous volcanic eruption of Krakatoa in Indonesia in 1883. The tidal waves killed almost forty thousand people, and the resulting social chaos gave rise to the first incidents of Muslim clerics fomenting violent uprisings against Westerners.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Toni Morrison may be a Nobel Laureate, but she still gets labeled a “Black woman writer.” She talks about her childhood and how the Civil Rights Movement magnified class differences.
Biologist Steven Austad is so confident human beings will soon live to be 150 years old that he’s bet on it with a colleague: Jay Olshansky, who says we’re already living way past our expiration date!
Stephen Prothero tells Steve Paulson about the first American cremation, which didn’t really go very well, and the current craze for going out in a blaze of glory.
Two experts talk about Vastu, a Hindu philosophy for designing buildings in harmony with the universe.
Tariq Ramadan tells Steve Paulson that Islam should be viewed as a religion in its own right and not compared to the history of Christianity.
Susan Friedman tells Anne Strainchamps about her friendship, initiated and maintained via e-mail over the internet, with a young woman scholar in Iraq.
Reinhold Messner is arguably the world’s greatest living mountaineer. He’s climbed 14 of the world’s tallest peaks, and if that isn’t impressive enough, he was the first to climb Mt. Everest alone and without supplemental oxygen. He recounts some of these adventures in a new book called “Reinhold Messner: My Life at the Limit.” Steve Paulson caught up with him and asked how he got hooked on climbing.
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