Astrobiologist Sara Seager, who just won a MacArthur "genius" award, says there's certainly life on other planets. Seager describes her search for bio-signatures - evidence of life in other solar systems.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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There was a time when others bagged your groceries, planned your trips and pumped your gas, but now they're just another part of our daily routines. Craig Lambert says these are a few examples of the "shadow work" we've unwittingly taken on in service of companies and other organizations. He warns that it's chipping away at our leisure time, and turning us all into middle class serfs.
Simon Worrall tells Anne Strainchamps about Mark Hoffman, possibly the greatest literary forger of all time.
Stewart Lee Allen explains why the ancient Greeks wouldn’t eat beans, how Spanish Christians began the tradition of eating ham for Easter, and what he’d serve at a dinner dedicated to the Seven Deadly Sins.
A darkly comic debut novel explores the secretive world of industrial flavor manufacturers. Stephan Eirik Clark skewers the food industry, flavor science, and the American way of life.
Piers Vitebsky is an anthropologist who studies the Eveny or Reindeer People of Siberia. They depend on the reindeer for their survival. They keep herds of them for meat - but their connection goes even deeper. Vitebsky says that they also have personal, consecrated reindeer animal doubles, which they believe will die for them.
Wendy Burden is the author of "Dead End Gene Pool," a memoir of her childhood among wealthy but highly dysfunctional remnants of the Vanderbilt fortune.
David Gessner discovered the American West as a young man, and the huge mountains and wide open spaces changed his life. He recently took a road trip through the West, following in the footsteps of two literary heroes, Edward Abbey and Wallace Stegner. Gessner says their books help us see the West in all its complexity.
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