Is humanity getting better or worse?
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Novelist Arthur Phillips is the author of "The Tragedy of Arthur." The book tells the story of a fictional character, also named Arthur Phillips, whose family finds a lost Shakespeare play.
Don Gurnett has been working with NASA, recording audio from space for years. He plays some of his favorite space sounds for Jim Fleming and explains where they come from.
Blogger Mark Manson on embracing our negativity as a means of consciously choosing what we really care about.
Ellen Ruppel Shell talks with Anne Strainchamps about the effects of our obsession with low prices.
Cultural historian Ed Linenthal has written a book called “The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory.” He tells Anne Strainchamps that the emotional impact of acts of terrorism is immense, widespread and enduring.
What does it mean to be free? And what does it mean to live a personally authentic, honest life with ourselves and with others? These are the questions that Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and their existential friends wrestled with in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Sarah Bakewell makes the case that their late-night conversations are especially relevant today. She's the author of "At the Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails."
In her new memoir, "Ongoingness," Sarah Manguso talks about how keeping a diary—so often considered a virture—for her became a vice. But her obsessive diary keeping changed with the birth of her first child.
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