Bon Iver's Justin Vernon has created a nearly perfect summer music festival in Eau Claire, Wisconsin -- his hometown. 25,000 people spent two days camping by a river, throwing frisbees and listening to indie bands. Festival narrator and local writer Michael Perry shares the story behind the town, the festival, and the musical legend.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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I dunno, but it seems kind of extreme, not to mention risky, to bio-engineer a mass mosquito die-off. So Steve Paulson tracked down the world’s greatest living entomologist to see what he has to say. E. O Wilson is sometimes called “the ant man” – that’s the insect he studied most – but he’s best known as the evolutionary biologist and a champion of biodiversity. He’s 86 years old now, and has just finished what is probably his last book – called “Half Earth”. It’s a passionate plea to save humanity by dedicating half the planet to nature. You’d assume that Wilson would be happy to let mosquitos live in that half… but that’s not what he told Steve.
Elizabeth Little is a writer and editor who collects languages. She tells Jim Fleming about the perils of learning tonal languages.
Human and animal history is so intertwined it's hard to imagine one species without the other.
Eugene Mirman is an indie comic and the author of an outlandish self-help send-up called "The Will to Whatevs." He tells Jim Fleming that school was horrible for him and gave rise to his nerd humor.
Journalist Christopher Noxon explains what happened when he formed a personal posse of life coaches in Los Angeles.
Brad Warner is a Japanese monster movie marketer, a blogger, a Zen Buddhist Master and plays bass in a punk band. His book is "Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate."
Psychiatrist Charles Grob is studying how psilocybin — the psychoactive component of magic mushrooms - can reduce death anxiety for end-stage cancer patients. His results, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, show that giving psilocybin to terminally ill people may help patients anxiety and depression about the end of end of life.
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