Are political beliefs predetermined at birth? Encoded in our genes? Political scientist John Hibbing does fMRI studies of liberal and conserative brains and says there are significant biological differences. His message: stop yelling at the other party. They can't help what they think.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Charles R. Cross talks about Kurt Cobain's influence on hip-hop.
Acclaimed fiction writer - and guest producer of this hour - Nathan Englander talks about creative problem solving. He invited musicologist and composer Freddy Knop to create a soundscape of how it feels when the muse descends.
Novelist and journalist William Vollmann has written a seven volume study of the moral calculus of violence. Vollmann talks with Steve Paulson about when violence is justified and when it isn’t.
Many of history's greatest scientists, from Newton to Maxwell to Einstein, have devoted significant study to the behavior of light, and, as a result, most physicists thought there was little left to say on the subject. But in April 2016, Paul Eastham, a physicist at Trinity College in Dublin, published a new paper proving that a fundamental assumption scientists had made about light was wrong.
Steven Kaplan is an American and an expert on bread. So expert, that he tells the French what they’re doing wrong and they love him for it!
When blogger Jenny Lawson recently tweeted about an awkward exchange she had with a cashier at an airport, she couldn't have imagined the flood of responses she'd get from fans recounting their own mortifying moments. The tweet went viral and within a few days she'd received thousands of messages from fans recounting their own awkward stories. The whole affair was proof of something Jenny had long suspected -- that awkwardness can help bring people together.
Is hip hop strictly for the under-30 crowd? Todd Boyd tells Anne Strainchamps it’s a message of empowerment for Black Americans.
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