Is humanity getting better or worse?
Blogger Mark Manson on embracing our negativity as a means of consciously choosing what we really care about.
Ellen Ruppel Shell talks with Anne Strainchamps about the effects of our obsession with low prices.
What does it mean to be free? And what does it mean to live a personally authentic, honest life with ourselves and with others? These are the questions that Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and their existential friends wrestled with in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Sarah Bakewell makes the case that their late-night conversations are especially relevant today. She's the author of "At the Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails."
In her new memoir, "Ongoingness," Sarah Manguso talks about how keeping a diary—so often considered a virture—for her became a vice. But her obsessive diary keeping changed with the birth of her first child.
A few weeks after Dan's funeral, his wife Judy talks about how she's dealing with his absence, and how she wants to remember him.
Dave Soldier is a neurologist with an unusual hobby. He teaches elephants to play musical instruments.
Nalini Nadkarni has been called “the queen of canopy research,” in part because of her personal philosophy to bring together two groups - the trees and the general public. She does this by collaborating with dancers, rappers, artists, and prisoners, just to name only a few. She created the Big Canopy Database to help researchers around the world to store the rich trove of data she and others are uncovering.