Ed Boyden, a researcher at MIT, is at the forefront of a new science that aims to map and even heal the brain with light. It’s called optogenetics, and the journal Science has called it one of the great insights of the 21st century. It’s in its early days, but the goal is to one day be able to take a disease like depression, PTSD, or epilepsy and, using bursts of light, just turn it off -- the same way you’d fix a software glitch in a computer.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Nicholson Baker's latest novel is called "The Anthologist." Baker tells Anne Strainchamps the book's about a writer who longs to be a poet.
What happens when you discover racial fear in yourself? Rachel Shadoan recently reached an uncomfortable conclusion: she was afraid of black men. Rachel was appalled and decided to do something about it. She tells her story in an article titled, "I am racist and so are you."
Ralph Knowles is one of the godfathers of the modern "green" design movement. His ninth book on the subject is "Ritual House: Drawing on Nature's Rhythms."
Richard Sennett makes the case that our definition of craft should be expanded to include any job a person commits to executing to the best of their abilities.
Paul Hegarty is a lecturer in Philosophy and Visual Culture at University College Cork in Ireland. He's also really into Noise/Music and is the author of "Noise/Music: A History."
Peter Kornbluh, directs the National Security Archive’s Chile Documentation Project. He’s just published “The Pinochet File,” which uses recently declassified documents to prove that there was American involvement at the highest levels of government in the efforts to foment chaos in Chile.
Can you actually see creativity in the brain? It turns out you can if you put a living, breathing human being inside a brain scan. IN this EXTENDED interview, neuroscientist Rex Jung describes his innovative research on the science of creativity.
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