Plant biologist Nicholas Harberd took a year off to study a common weed - the thalecress - that he found growing in a country churchyard.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Lupe Fiasco is a devout Muslim whose album "Food and Liquor" went to number one of the rap album charts and won three Grammy Nominations.
French chemist Pierre Laszlo tells Steve Paulson that our bodies need salt to prevent dehydration and that removing the salt from seawater isn’t that hard, but it’s very expensive.
So maybe you're not going to be the next Richard Pryor.
Even if you don't get many more laughs, you can laugh more. Katie West tells us how.
We hear a conversation between Steve Paulson and German historian Jessica Gienow-Hecht. They discuss why the huge casualties among German civilians have been taboo for discussion.
Mary Karr tells Steve Paulson that this volume begins at the time of her sexual awakening and that most female writers skip over those awkward adolescent years.
How will we react, the day we hear the news that scientists have found life on another planet? Science fiction writer Orson Scott Card has dreamed up many first contact scenarios. His classic science fiction novel, "Ender's Game" is all about the consequences of a first contact gone badly wrong. He's just published a long-awaited sequel.
Back in 1969, Marlantes was dropped in the middle of a jungle in Vietnam - at the age of 23, put in charge of the lives of 40 other young men. He was not psychologically or spiritually prepared for that or for what came after the war.
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