According to self-described "space dork" Andy Weir, he was just sitting around at home one day imagining a manned Mars mission — not with any goal in mind, but just as a thought experiment. Soon, he realized this would be a pretty good premise for a story. And boy was he right. His novel "The Martian" started as a series of blog posts and has become a blockbuster motion picture. In this interview, he reads excerpts from the novel and discusses the balance between pure fantasty and scientific accuracy in science fiction.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Woody Tasch is the author of "Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms and Fertility Mattered."
TTBOOK producer Charles Monroe-Kane is a great storyteller who's led an adventurous life. Here's a wild story from his memoir "Lithium Jesus" about smuggling mob money when he lived in Prague in the '90s.
Steven Kaplan is an American and an expert on bread. So expert, that he tells the French what they’re doing wrong and they love him for it!
Seymour Martin Lipset tells Judith Strasser that Americans never became revolutionaries because from the beginning, working people here were far better off than those in other countries.
Ruth Gendler re-tells the story of "The Mountain That Loved A Bird" by Alice McLerran and Eric Carle. Gendler is an artist and the author of "Notes on the Need for Beauty." She tells Anne Strainchamps that we need to learn to see the beauty in the world all around us.
Imagine a game the let's you blast imaginary cancer cells except they're from a real cancer patient, and your game you play may help save her life.
Peter Edelman says government policies can either help or hinder people on the road to economic stability. Edelman’s the longtime policy advisor who quit Bill Clinton’s administration when the President signed new welfare laws that – in Edelman’s opinion – destroyed the social safety net.
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