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.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
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.
Steve Paulson speaks with several scientists, religious scholars and atheists about Albert Einstein's religious beliefs.
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.
Will Birch talks to Doug Gordon about the musical movement in Britain that set the stage for punk rock.
Thomas Chatterton Williams is a young writer who grew up listening to hip hop, but lost touch with the culture upon entering college.
As the daughter of a child psychologist, writer Jessica Lamb-Shapiro grew weary of the simple solutions offered by popular self-help books. So maybe it was only natural that she wanted to understand why people liked them so much. To find out, she read hundreds of books and articles, journeyed to conferences headed by self-improvement icons, and even conquered her fear of flying along the way.
Novelist Tom Perrotta talks with Anne Strainchamps about life in the suburbs, where everything is nice, and nobody wants a pedophile to move into the neighborhood.
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