One hundred years ago, Fritz Haber invented the first chemical weapon and convinced the German army to use it. His wife Clara, also a chemist, fiercely opposed her husband's project. When she couldn't stop it, she committed suicide. Judith Claire Mitchell tells the story in her tragic and yet funny novel "A Reunion of Ghosts."
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Scott Jennings provides an essay on Kurt Cobain, the effects of heroin on Cobain’s music, and his legacy for a whole generation.
The demographics of the United States are changing: how does the latest wave of immigration fit into the historical pattern?
Tom Szaky tells Jim Fleming how his company turns candy wrappers and juice bottles into pencil cases and backpacks.
Howard Axelrod was accidentally blinded in one eye in a freak accident when he was in college. Disoriented and depressed, he retreated to an off-the-grid cabin in the Vermont wilderness. He stayed there, alone, for 2 years. Now he's published a memoir about his period of renunciation, "The Point of Vanishing."
Tariq Ramadan is a Swiss-born philosopher who travels throughout the Islamic world trying to build bridges between European Muslim and conservative clerics.
Anne Strainchamps asks Columbia College philosopher Stephen Asma what his colleagues make of the soul these days.
A short story by science fiction writer John Scalzi, read by Adam Hirsch.
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