The invention of mechanical clocks created a kind of artificial time which permits greater efficiency, but cuts human beings off from the rest of nature.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Ever heard of gold-farming? Cory Doctorow talks about some ways people get ahead in multi-player video games.
Benedict Le Vay tells Jim Fleming that many customs still exist in England and are extremely important to the community, even though the reason for them is long forgotten.
Christine Gallagher tells Steve Paulson that revenge can be a healthier response than stewing over grievances, and shares some of her favorite examples of payback.
Journalist Elizabeth Kolbert's Dangerous Idea: human vices are just as important as human virtues in shaping evolution.
Apostolos Doxiadis tells Judith Strasser about his novel “Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Conjecture,” in which a man becomes obsessed with solving a mathematical proof.
Canadian novelist Sheila Heti talks about her new novel, "How Should a Person Be?" It's fiction, but the characters are real people -- they seem to be Sheila herself and her friends. Some of the dialogue is from actual conversations she transcribed. So what is this thing?
Novelist Elinor Lipman has written an essay for the New York Times on the fine art of blurbing – writing short, pithy quotes to appear on fellow authors’ dust jackets.
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