There’s another place where food and death go together, but it’s a place we don’t like to talk about: the last meal. Brian Price has prepared the last meals for some 200 inmates on Death Row in Texas prisons.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Famous for its hot tubs and its yoga and massage workshops, Esalen Institute actually began as a place to explore the underlying philosophy of spiritual experience, and then popularized America's particular brand of "spirituality without religion." Sitting on the deck of Murphy House at Esalen, Steve Paulson talks with co-founder Michael Murphy and comparative religion scholar Jeffrey Kripal, author of the definitive history of Esalen.
MIT Professor Sherry Turkle is fascinated by our interactions with machines. She's just released the third book in a trilogy of books on the subject.
Award-winning novelist Jane Hamilton's new novel has a setting that's close to home. "The Excellent Lombards" is a story of generational tension set on a family apple farm. Steve Paulson talks about writing, farming and apples with Jane while walking through her own family orchard.
Stephen Batchelor wants contemporary Buddhists to re-think the life of the Buddha.
T.C. Boyle's new novel features a face-off between an animals rights activist and a biologist.
Thomas Dumm tells Anne Strainchamps why he thinks a lonely society can be a dangerous one and he's worried about America. His book is "Loneliness As a Way of Life."
Novelist Wesley Stace (AKA musician John Wesley Harding) tells Jim what the original novel, "Tristram Shandy," is all about.
Pages
