Steve Grand tells Jim Fleming about Norns – virtual pets that live and breed in desktop computers. He says the Norns give us a way to explore questions about what it means to be alive and what rights and responsibilities "living" creatures have.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Walter Moskowitz learned tattooing from his father William, who did tattoos from the basement of his barbershop called Willy’s. In bruising Bowery fashion, the shop offered a unique service.
A fantasy novel written by a Somali-American Mennonite raised in the US who wrote it while teaching English during a civil war in what is now South Sudan and then revised it in Egypt.
Have you ever heard that space is a vaccuum? That space is totally silent? Well, neither of those things is exactly true. Thanks to the research of physicist Don Gurnett, we now know there are thin layers of gas in space that produce all kinds of interesting waves — including sound waves. In this segment, we talk with Gurnett about his research and listen to some downright strange and wondrous sounds from both near and deep space.
J.R. Thornton was once a serious tennis player on the junior circuit. Then he moved to China and spent a year training with the Beijing National Team, where he discovered just how different the life of an aspiring champion could be. His novel "Beautiful Country" reveals the incredibly difficult demands on young athletes in China.
Sarah Lewis talks about her book, "The Rise: Creativity, The Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery."
Colson Whitehead’s novel The Underground Railroad just won the 2016 National Book Award.
Steve Paulson spoke with him about this powerful, sweeping epic.
In many cultures, people use pain as a means of coming closer to God.
Ariel Glucklich talks with Jim Fleming about the history and psychology behind the practices.
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