With the Carolina Panthers facing off against the Denver Broncos in Superbowl 50, football is on our minds this week. And for many of the millions of fans who tune in every Sunday to watch their favorite teams compete, football is little more than a weekly ritual. For English professor Mark Edmundson, the football field is a staging ground for some of life's most important lessons. In his book "Why Football Matters," Edmundson looks back to his own high school years playing the sport and reflects on how it taught him courage, resilience, determination, and other values he'd draw on as an adult.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Scott Turow has made a career writing hugely successful legal thrillers, but then he turned to a World War II novel.
Jill Fredston has rowed more than 20,000 miles of Arctic water, along the coastlines of Alaska and Greenland and alongside whales and polar bears.
Simon Critchley is the author of "The Book of Dead Philosophers," a quirky account of how various philosophers thought about death and died themselves.
Samuel R. Delany has been described as "American science fiction's most consistently brilliant and inventive writer." Delany's non-fiction includes the essay collection, "The Jewel-Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction." He talked to Steve Paulson about his love of language.
Tyler Cowan is an economics professor and author of "Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity In A Disordered World."
Stephen Greenblatt tells the remarkable story of how the discovery of an ancient poem helped launch the Scientific Revolution. Also, an excerpt from Lucretius' poem "On the Nature of Things."
Sandor Katz is the guru of the fermentation revival. He explores the roots of our culture in all things cultured.
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