The renowned atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has just written a book for children: “The Magic of Reality.” In this NEW AND UNCUT interview, Steve Paulson talks with Dawkins about the difference between supernatural magic and poetic magic, and why atheists no longer need to hide in the closet.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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If there’s one writer who’s identified with the Mississippi River, it’s Mark Twain. He grew up in Hannibal, Missouri — on the river’s edge — and as a young man, he worked as a steamboat pilot. And then he wrote the “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” the novel that turned the Mississippi into myth. But it also created one of the most enduring controversies in American literary history: how to depict race relations in America's past. In this interview, Andrew Levy says that "Huckleberry Finn" is actually anti-racist — and when it was first published, the big controversy was about Twain’s depiction of wild children.
K.C. Cole is working on a book about her friend Frank Oppenheimer. Frank was barred from practicing physics during the McCarthy era, and was deeply troubled by the devastation of the bomb.
Fed Reserve Chairman Ben Bernake may wield more power over the economy than anyone else, even though he was never elected. Washington Post journalist Neil Irwin takes us inside the elite club of the world's leading central bankers.
Poet Robert Wrigley is sometimes called a nature poet. His books include “Reign of Snakes” and “Lives of the Animals.”
Patricia O’Connor tells Jim Fleming there’s nothing wrong with splitting an infinitive and that people should stop trying to make English behave like Latin.
Jason Goodwin won the Edgar Award for "The Janissary Tree," his first novel featuring Yashim Togalu, a eunuch who lives in 19th century Istanbul. Yashim is back in "The Snake Stone."
For centuries, the oddities of nature - like two-headed cats and conjoined twins - fascinated people. Science historian Lorraine Daston says a history of wonders is to some degree a history of pre-modern science.
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