Richard Davidson is a neuro-psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a longtime friend of the Dalai Lama. He tells Steve Paulson about observing contemplatives with a brain scanner.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Thomas Louis Hardin is an internationally known and respected composer known for decades to New Yorkers as an eccentric street performer who dressed as a Viking and called himself "Moondog." Robert Scotto wrote his biography.
Author and playwright Michael Frayn talks with Steve Paulson about his play “Copenhagen” and the dramatic meeting between physicists Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in 1941. At issue is the degree to which Heisenberg was spying for the Nazis and his role in the development of a German atom bomb.
Lynn Hershman Leeson is a pioneering artist and film-maker. Hershman Leeson talks to Anne Strainchamps about how she explores the theme of identity in her art.
Harriet Tubman will soon be gracing our twenty dollar bill. Most of us know only one image of her. It's an iconic image taken later in her life in which her hair's covered in a dark cloth and she has a stern expression. But there are other images of Harriet Tubman as well, including a wood cut of her carrying a musket.
Law professor Nicholas Johnson says the image of Harriet Tubman carrying a rifle doesn’t fit with how most Americans view abolitionists and civil rights leaders. After all, weren’t they supposed to be peaceful? But as Johnson tells Steve Paulson, there's a rich tradition of Black Americans owning guns for self-defense.
Why are most Danes and Swedes happy to get along without religion?
Pat Willard is the author of “Secrets of Saffron.” She tells Steve Paulson how you harvest saffron and why it’s more than a flavoring.
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