The spiritual component of water is hard to ignore. That's part of why Venice Williams refers to Alice's Garden as her parish.More
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Science and Technology
Journalist Dan Egan and political economist Jenny Kehl talk Steve Paulson through the finer points of the politics of water - from debates over water diversion to the struggle to keep the Great Lakes uncontaminated.More
Getting a good night's sleep is hard for a lot of people, but imagine trying to drift off when you have terrifying hallucinations.More
You'd never think a book about chopping and burning wood would turn into a runaway bestseller, but Lars Mytting's "Norwegian Wood" is a publishing sensation in Scandinavia. More
Botanist Robin Kimmerer describes her field experiments as like interviewing a plant. As both a Ph.D biologist and a member of the Potawatomi Nation, she's trying to reconcile modern science with the wisdom of her Native elders.More
Africa needs to reclaim its history and its technology, says Clapperton Mavhunga, a native of Zimbabwe who's a professor in MIT's Program in Science, Technology and Society. He says the traditional hunt is a great example of how Africans have passed on generations of knowledge.More
Finding the horns of a saola — a large ox-like mammal on the Laos-Vietnam border — was one of the great biological discoveries of the...More
What's it like to be a badger? British naturalist Charles Foster wanted to know, so he dug a burrow and lived in the darkness, eating worms. Yup, it was kind of disgusting, but he says the experience brought him closer to the wildness within himself.More
In her memoir “Blue Dreams,” Lauren Slater reflects on the 30 years she has spent on Prozac, since the drug was brand new. Anne and Lauren compare notes on the relief antidepressants can bring, along with the downsides.More
The dream of SSRIs was based on an idea that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. And that you could fix it, with a pill. But psychiatrist Charles Raison believes it’s a mistake to separate the mind from the body.More
It can be difficult for those who've never experienced a manic episode to know what it feels like. What can set one off. For Jaime Lowe, it was a fire that triggered a manic episode so severe completely lost touch with reality.More
We all think about time but probably not as deeply as the groundbreaking theoretical physicist Lee Smolin. Smolin has created a radical new view of the nature of time and the cosmos. He lays it out in a book called "Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe."More
Do you ever get the feeling that your digital devices are eavesdropping on you?
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In a world filled with devices that could be used to listen in on our daily lives, how do you take back control of your privacy? Steve Paulson asked security reporter Lily Hay Newman.More
There's no shortage of forecasts about the future these days. But did you know that ordinary people can out-predict the pros? More
About a year ago, a group of progressive activists started a campaign to buy Twitter. Give the public shares in everyone’s favorite social media platform and turn it into a co-op. How's that working out?More
When Jane Willenbring was a young scientist working in Antarctica, she was the target of constant hazing by her team leader. Years later, she filed a complaint. David Marchant was recently found guilty of sexual harassment by Boston University.More
Women are underrepresented on Wikipedia. So Emily Temple-Wood recruited people to write more articles about notable women. In return, she got rape and death threats. Now, every time she's trolled, she writes a new Wikipedia bio of a female scientist.More