British novelist Jim Crace is an atheist. He doesn't believe in an afterlife, and tells Jim Fleming that he intended his novel "Being Dead" to be a comfort to readers.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Paleontologist Peter Ward tells Steve Paulson that big carnivores are unlikely to survive outside zoos but creatures that can survive around humans - like rats and coyotes - will thrive in the future.
Author John D'Agata and fact-checker Jim Fingal talk about the boundaries of literary nonfiction as chronicled in their book, "The Lifespan of a Fact."
Michelle Paver has had a lifelong fascination with the Stone Age. She's studied anthropology, and she's lived with the Inuit in Alaska and the Sami in Lapland. She used these experiences to write her series of novels, Chronicles of Ancient Darkness.
Today we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Punk. For 40 years, punk has influenced not just music, but fashion, film, art… not to mention hairstyles. So what makes punk… punk? Music journalist Legs McNeil is the guy who named it. And chronicled it. Along with Gillian McCain wrote THEE book on the history of punk. It’s an oral history called “Please Kill Me.”
Near-death researcher Dr. Raymond Moody looks back on his career investigating near-death experiences.
Matthijs van Boxsel is the author of “The Encyclopedia of Stupidity.” He tells Steve Paulson it started with shame at his own stupidity, but he’s come finally to praise it.
Cosmology is on our minds, with the remarkable new discovery confirming the Big Bang. To get a better sense of what it all means – and how creation stories like the Big Bang have shaped our sense of ourselves – Steve Paulson turned to Adam Frank, an astrophysicist who writes for NPR’s science blog 13.7. He’s the author of the book “About Time: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang.”
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