Karen Russell talks about her new e-novella, "Sleep Donation."
Benjamin Percy's new novel"The Dead Lands" is a wilderness thriller set in a post-apocalyptic landscape. The descendants of Lewis and Clark reprise their ancestors' epic cross-country journey in search of a new beginning.
The common wisdom is that we’re getting more violent all the time. Witness the genocides and world wars of the last century. But cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker says we have it all wrong. And in his 800 page book “The Better Angels of Ourselves” he makes the case for how violence has declined.
Falling in love is easy. Staying in love for 30 or 40 years takes some skill. Social psychologist Arthur Aron identifies some of the techniques devoted couples use to keep the spark alive. Aron's the psychologist who figured out how to build intimacy in just 36 questions. He gives us some more lab-tested tips for keeping the love you find.
Yo-Yo Ma has founded the Silk Road Ensemble in an effort to bring together musicians from different backgrounds to use music as a cultural force for understanding and peace.
In Sacred Economics, Charles Eisenstein writes that we need to get our economic systems into alignment with our values. He says the indebtness, competition and scarcity leave us anxious and unhappy. In this extended conversation, he digs down to what he sees as the root of the problem with our financial system, and what we can do about it.
Stan Freberg visits Jim Fleming and explains how he got into advertising, and why his commercials always tell the truth.
Susannah Cahalan talks about her book, "Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness."