Many of history's greatest scientists, from Newton to Maxwell to Einstein, have devoted significant study to the behavior of light, and, as a result, most physicists thought there was little left to say on the subject. But in April 2016, Paul Eastham, a physicist at Trinity College in Dublin, published a new paper proving that a fundamental assumption scientists had made about light was wrong.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Tim Richardson tells Anne Strainchamps about his favorite candies from around the world.
When blogger Jenny Lawson recently tweeted about an awkward exchange she had with a cashier at an airport, she couldn't have imagined the flood of responses she'd get from fans recounting their own mortifying moments. The tweet went viral and within a few days she'd received thousands of messages from fans recounting their own awkward stories. The whole affair was proof of something Jenny had long suspected -- that awkwardness can help bring people together.
Writer Stephen Kuusisto is blind and he says that among the many advantages —he gets eavesdrop on the rest of us, because most of the time, we don’t even notice he’s listening.
Scott Weidensaul talks with Jim Fleming about several animals that have turned up after their species was thought to be extinct.
One of the founders of queer theory says his childhood in the Pentecostal church laid the ground for his evolution as a gay man and literary scholar. Michael Warner grew up around faith healing and speaking in tongues. He says it was an education in thinking beyond "normal".
Stephen Greenblatt tells Steve Paulson he thinks Shakespeare’s father was a drunk, leaving Will with complex feelings about alcohol.
Novelist T. Coraghessan Boyle talks with Jim Fleming about his latest. “Drop City” is set in a California commune in the 1970s, and concerns the activities at one of America’s many private little Utopias.
Pages
