Ed Boyden, a researcher at MIT, is at the forefront of a new science that aims to map and even heal the brain with light. It’s called optogenetics, and the journal Science has called it one of the great insights of the 21st century. It’s in its early days, but the goal is to one day be able to take a disease like depression, PTSD, or epilepsy and, using bursts of light, just turn it off -- the same way you’d fix a software glitch in a computer.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Julia Alvarez talks about her novel for young adults, and how it mirrors her own experience reconciling a native Dominican background with the culture of her adopted home: a small town in rural Vermont.
Producer Rehman Tungekar talks with Anne Strainchamps about growing up in a multi-ethnic family.
Jedediah Purdy is the author of “For Common Things: Irony, Trust and Commitment in America Today” and “Being America: Liberty, Commerce, and Violence in an American World.”
Singer and pianist Marcia Ball talks about the various kinds of Blues and how they differ from what she usually plays.
Rob Walker writes the weekly column "Consumed," for the New York Times Magazine...
Mark Kurlansky, author of “1968: The Year That Rocked the World” talks about why that year was so significant.
Physicist Joel Primack and Nancy Abrams tell Steve Paulson how humanity has moved back into the center of our myth-making.
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