Constitutional scholar and law professor Kim Wehle says democracy itself is on the ballot this year. What can you do about it? Vote.More
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Interviews By Topic
Kenyan literary scholar James Ogude believes "ubuntu" — a concept in which your sense of self is shaped by your relationships with other people — serves as a counterweight to the rampant individualism that’s so pervasive in contemporary cities.More
As a black, gay poet, Jericho Brown considers it “hilarious” that he discovered sex through one of the whitest writers in American history — John Updike. More
Tommy Orange says he wasn't much of a reader in his early years. But a chance encounter with an absurd, experimental novel by John Kennedy Toole showed him a path to writing a novel that was truly his own.More
Who says reading has to be a solitary experience? Producer Shannon Henry Kleiber brings us along to her yearly reading ritual: a gathering of super smart, funny women who make an entire reading plan for the next 12 months — together.More
Writer Anne Lamott says that the children’s classic made her feel like there was room in the world for imaginative, adventurous girls who just might wear mismatched knee socks. More
You could say that the work of nation-building is never really done. Haleema Shah has been thinking about that after a recent trip to a country close to her heart — Pakistan.More
Half the reason we buy so much new stuff is that our old stuff keeps breaking. Author Giles Slade says there's a reason for that — planned obsolescence.More
Do you ever have trouble sleeping? Steve Paulson does. And maybe you do too. How can something so simple be so hard — for so many people?More
There is nothing fun about lying awake at 3 a.m. But in her book "Insomnia," writer Marina Benjamin argues for embracing it.More
The anthropologist David Graeber says “BS jobs” are an epidemic. Especially in that circle of hell known as middle management.More
"Before there was money, there was debt" says David Graeber in his book “Debt: The First 5,000 Years."More
In interviewing hundreds of women, writer and journalist Ada Calhoun learned something startling: that her insomnia, which felt so personal and private, might actually be generational and gendered.More
Guy Leschziner is a sleep physician, running one of the largest sleep clinics in Europe, with a specialty in bizarre conditions. He told Steve about the moment he first realized how much sleep matters.More
Poet Shira Erlichman say overcoming the shame of your diagnosis goes a long way toward treating it. Naming the illness — even naming the meds used to treat it — can make all the difference.More
Tania Munz recently wrote a biography of Karl von Frisch — the German scientist who cracked the mystery of the honeybee’s waggle dance, which shows the rest of the hive precisely where to find a new food source miles away.More
In many parts of Detroit, there are blighted, abandoned patches of land. Instead of looking the other way, Timothy Paule and Nicole Lindsey started buying up vacant lots and building bee hives as an act of urban renewal.More
Christof Koch, a leading neuroscientist in the field of consciousness, says bees are smarter than we ever imagined.More