Summer festivals are a huge part of the American music scene -- and of the music marketplace. Why do millions of people risk sunburn and dehydration when they could hear the same music better with earbuds? Music critic Maura Johnston unpacks the economics and the atavistic lure of the summer music festival.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Thebe Medupe is an astrophysicist who grew up under apartheid. He talks about the stories he grew up hearing from his village elders and the astronomical legends of the Dogun people in Mali.
Terry Tempest Williams has spent much of her life trying to understand her mother - both a private woman and a trickster. Her memoir is also an exploration of silence and finding one's voice.
Toby Nunn was a Sergeant First Class who served two tours in Iraq. Home now, he's finding it hard to adjust to civilian life, but as he told Steve Paulson, he's still taking care of the men in his platoon.
Larry Brilliant is a doctor, co-founder of the digital social network the Well, and he was the first executive director of Google.org. But back in the Sixties, he was a hippie doctor who joined Wavy Gravy's traveling bus caravan and then landed in an Indian ashram in the Himalayas, where his guru told him his destiny was to help cure smallpox. Miraculously, his U.N. team of doctors eradicated the world's remaining cases of this terrible disease. He tells Steve Paulson about a remarkable moment in history when anything seemed possible.
In this look behind the scenes, producer Veronica Rueckert and Anne Strainchamps remember our interview with Amy Wallace-Havens, the sister of the late David Foster Wallace.
Steven Johnson talks about his new book, "Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age."
Film director Rodney Ascher recommends Paul Schrader's 1988 movie, "Patty Hearst."
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