Pre-Modern hunter and gatherer cultures believed that dying was a kind of trial which didn't begin until you left your physical body and entered the supernatural world, according to sociologist Allan Kellehear. In these cultures, death is not the destruction of the body, but the annihilation of the personality and its transformation into something new.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Dilshad Ali talks about reading the Christian-influenced Narnia tales to her children.
Canadian novelist Sheila Heti talks about her new novel, "How Should a Person Be?" It's fiction, but the characters are real people -- they seem to be Sheila herself and her friends. Some of the dialogue is from actual conversations she transcribed. So what is this thing?
Historian and president of Harvard University, Drew Gilpin Faust tells Steve Paulson that Civil War deaths consumed the entire nation with grief and transformed America in many ways.
Novelist Elinor Lipman has written an essay for the New York Times on the fine art of blurbing – writing short, pithy quotes to appear on fellow authors’ dust jackets.
Acclaimed cartoonist Alison Bechdel has written two brutally honest memoirs about her parents. She tells Steve Paulson about her complicated relationship with her mother and how it inspired her as an artist.
Daniel Tammet may be the most remarkable mind on the planet.
Errol Morris talks with Steve Paulson about Robert McNamera who is the subject of his latest film, “The Fog of War.”
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