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Broken body

Porochista Khakpour has been fighting a mystery illness for as long as she can remember. Eventually, she got a diagnosis — late-stage Lyme disease — but a diagnosis hasn't given her much resolution.

Missy's surgery, as the team work and producer Shannon Henry Kleiber listens in.

Missy Makinia donated her kidney to whoever might need it. Her transplant surgeon — Josh Mezrich — invited Shannon into his operating room to see firsthand what it takes to remove and transport a human kidney.

Left to right: mathematician Georg Cantor, mathematician, and philosopher Kurt Gödel, mathematician and political activist Evariste Galois, and  mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing.

There’s a well-documented link between exceptional creativity and mental illness. Philosopher Jim Holt recounts stories of some of the most beautiful minds in math and science. Were their achievements worth the personal costs? Absolutely.

Terese Mailhot

Author Terese Mailhot's best-selling debut book "Heart Berries" is a slim, devastating memoir of a childhood filled with abuse, set on the Seabird Island Band in British Columbia. She reads a passage to demonstrate the lyric quality of her prose.

Books on the shelf

David Treuer is Ojibwe from the Leech Lake Reservation. He’s a literature professor at the University of Southern California, as well as a writer and a novelist. And he does not believe in putting fiction into ethnic boxes.

Kevin Goodan with all his brothers and step-father this summer.

Do you have to be Native American to write Native American fiction? Kevin Goodan grew up among the Salish people. His brothers and stepfather are tribal members. But Kevin is white.

The IAIA campus

A new wave of Native writers is coming of age. And at the center of it is a one-of-a-kind MFA program at the IAIA, in Santa Fe. Director Jennifer Foerster told Charles that the goal is to rewrite the literary landscape.

Girl with phone

Jaron Lanier — the visionary computer scientist who helped build the internet and invent virtual reality — thinks the solution to our Facebook problems is clear.

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