Kim Stanley Robinson is renowned for his futuristic science fiction, so he surprised lots of people by writing a novel set in the Paleolithic era. He says recent archeological discoveries, as well as his backpacking in the Sierra Nevada, inspired him to write about our ancient ancestors.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Do you think your memory is like a video camera, storing every experience you've ever had? Historian Alison Winter says we tend to use technology metaphors to think about memory.
Getting a good night's sleep is hard for a lot of people, but imagine trying to drift off when you have terrifying hallucinations. Filmmaker Rodney Ascher documents the unsettling world of sleep paralysis - a strange condition where you can't move or speak and often have visions of demonic "shadow men."
What would it be like to spend two days a month in complete silence?
A.M. Homes was adopted as a newborn. When she was 31, her biological mother made contact, launching the writer on a years-long quest into her identity.
Steve Paulson talks with philosopher Alva Noe, author of "Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness."
One of the largely unknown stories about Camus was his friendship with the scientist Jacques Monod. Both later won Nobel prizes - Camus for literature, Monod for biology - and both were heroes of the French Resistance.
Economists at the University of Warwick in England have calculated the price of happiness. Andrew Oswald tells Steve Paulson that money can buy happiness, but it takes a lot.
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