Stephen Greenblatt tells Steve Paulson he thinks Shakespeare’s father was a drunk, leaving Will with complex feelings about alcohol.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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William Aylward is an archaeologist at the University of Wisconsin who’s done extensive field work at the site of Troy in modern day Turkey.
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.
Steve Paulson filed this report on his experience at Cambridge University with comments from Ken Wilber, E.O. Wilson, Karen Armstrong, and Richard Dawkins.
Are political beliefs predetermined at birth? Encoded in our genes? Political scientist John Hibbing does fMRI studies of liberal and conserative brains and says there are significant biological differences. His message: stop yelling at the other party. They can't help what they think.
Tom Szaky tells Jim Fleming how his company turns candy wrappers and juice bottles into pencil cases and backpacks.
Scientists are on the cusp of developing new technologies that could radically change how we’re born and how we die. But just because we can do it, should we? For lots of people, it’s just plain wrong for humans to play God.
But Oxford University bioethicist Julian Savulescu has a different view. He says we have a moral obligation to use new technology to create the best possible children.
Sarah Bakewell is the author of “How to Live” an unorthodox biography of the great French philosopher and essayist Montaigne.
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