Stephen Prothero tells Steve Paulson about the first American cremation, which didn’t really go very well, and the current craze for going out in a blaze of glory.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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We know a lot about how slaves looked at books because of the hundreds of slave narratives they wrote. Scholar Cherene Sherrard-Johnson says a fundamental trope in those narratives is what’s called “the Talking Book.”
Steven Kaplan is a historian of bread. He’s famous in France as the American who told them their bread wasn’t good enough.
Susan Mello, the 2003 Build A Better Burger Grand Prize winner, tells Anne about “My Big Fat Greco-Inspired Burger,” and why it deserved to win.
Teddy Atlas is famous in boxing circles as a coach. Atlas tells Steve Paulson about his journey from a violent and criminal youth to self-respect and maturity.
Sarah Flannery is an Irish mathematician and former child prodigy. She won the EU Young Scientist of the Year award when she was 16 for her work on the Cayley-Purser algorithm. She challenges us to the Russian Postal System puzzle.
Maybe people 30,000 years ago weren't so different from us. That's one of Werner Herzog's takeaways from seeing the ancient paintings in Chauvet Cave. The renowned filmmaker describes his own experience of awe when he encountered this prehistoric art.
Daniel Wolff is the author of "How Lincoln Learned to Read: 12 Great Americans and the Education That Made Them." He tells Anne Strainchamps that most Americans learn what they really need to know outside of school and that, as a society, we believe contradictory things about the value of public education.
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