Nicholas Carr believes the Internet is rewiring the human brain with its instant access to all sorts of information. Are we losing our ability to focus on one thing for any length of time?
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Joan Didion, who died last week at the age of 87, helped shape a highly personal brand of nonfiction that came to be known as the New Journalism. Her early essay collections "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" (1968) and "The White Album" (1979) influenced generations of writers. Her later memoirs, "The Year of Magical Thinking" and "Blue Nights," chronicled the deaths of her husband and daughter. In 2011 Didion talked with Steve Paulson about illness and growing old in the wake of the death of her daughter, Quintana.
Lucy Kaylin tells Steve Paulson that the average age of American nuns is seventy, and that many orders are folding.
Food is certainly the most palatable expression of culture, and the most easily shared.
LA Times food critic Jonathan Gold has spent his career seeking out the best plates of authentic – or reinterpreted - culture. In this UNCUT interview, he talks with Anne Strainchamps about food in translation.
It'll get your stomach growling, so have some snacks handy!
Meg Graham is the co-author (with Alec Shuldiner) of “Corning and the Craft of Innovation.” She says that Corning has a long tradition of nurturing innovation and accommodating eccentricity.
Mead McCormick is one of 100 finalists for the Mars One program, a private venture that hopes to start a colony on Mars by 2027. She talks to Anne Strainchamps about what attracted her to the project, what she imagines it will look like, and her fears about the blackness of space.
Celtic historian John Matthews tells Steve Paulson that Merlin probably was a real person and that wizards are related to our ancient shamans.
Judy Pascoe tells Steve Paulson about her novel “Our Father Who Art in a Tree.” A young girl’s father dies unexpectedly, but she finds his spirit lives in the backyard tree.
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