Simon Winchester tells Jim Fleming about the life of William Smith and his struggle to create the world's first geological map.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Woody Tasch is the author of "Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms and Fertility Mattered."
Scientists are combing the universe for signs of exoplanets -- planets that orbit a star other than our sun. They're finding them in record numbers. Most believe it's only a matter of time before they find an exoplanet that can -- and perhaps does -- suppport life. Sara Seager is a planetary scientist at M.I.T. and one of the pioneers of the field.
Many of history's greatest scientists, from Newton to Maxwell to Einstein, have devoted significant study to the behavior of light, and, as a result, most physicists thought there was little left to say on the subject. But in April 2016, Paul Eastham, a physicist at Trinity College in Dublin, published a new paper proving that a fundamental assumption scientists had made about light was wrong.
Imagine the government has sealed off part of Florida after people start dying there and strange new life forms pop up. Just what is happening in Area X? That's the premise of Jeff Vandermeer's mind-bending Southern Reach Trilogy.
When blogger Jenny Lawson recently tweeted about an awkward exchange she had with a cashier at an airport, she couldn't have imagined the flood of responses she'd get from fans recounting their own mortifying moments. The tweet went viral and within a few days she'd received thousands of messages from fans recounting their own awkward stories. The whole affair was proof of something Jenny had long suspected -- that awkwardness can help bring people together.
Wangari Maathai triumphed over discrimination and tribalism in her native land and became an environmental activist, planting trees all over her country.
Steve Levin is the producer of a documentary film, "Jerabek," which follows the family of a young Marine killed in the ambush at ar-Ramadi on April 6, 2004.
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