Ed Boyden, a researcher at MIT, is at the forefront of a new science that aims to map and even heal the brain with light. It’s called optogenetics, and the journal Science has called it one of the great insights of the 21st century. It’s in its early days, but the goal is to one day be able to take a disease like depression, PTSD, or epilepsy and, using bursts of light, just turn it off -- the same way you’d fix a software glitch in a computer.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Michael Pollan tells Judith Strasser where the American front lawn came from, and what it has come to symbolize.
Singer and pianist Marcia Ball talks about the various kinds of Blues and how they differ from what she usually plays.
Jonathan Harris created the website wefeelfine.org. He tells Steve Paulson how it works, and we hear a montage of postings from the site.
Feminist film critic Molly Haskell talks about how Hollywood has treated the subject of writer’s block, and we hear clips from “Adaptation” and “Barton Fink.”
Robert Bruggeman has a positive outlook on sprawl. He says societies have always grown and ours looks the way it does because suburbs represent the way Americans like to live.
Mark Kurlansky, author of “1968: The Year That Rocked the World” talks about why that year was so significant.
Julia Alvarez talks about her novel for young adults, and how it mirrors her own experience reconciling a native Dominican background with the culture of her adopted home: a small town in rural Vermont.
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