Ahhh, the sound of grizzly bears fighting over salmon in a tidal pool. Incredible! When you listen to those grizzly bears you are listening to one of the greatest, if not thee greatest, resource American has. It’s land. William Cronon says our land IS who we are. So it makes since, that in the 19th century a bold and visionary invention was created: the National Park. Cronon told Steve Paulson that National Parks are America's greatest invention.
K.C. Cole is working on a book about her friend Frank Oppenheimer. Frank was barred from practicing physics during the McCarthy era, and was deeply troubled by the devastation of the bomb.
Jim Fleming reports how a new generation of American Buddhist teachers are adapting the Buddha's two thousand year old message for 21st century American audiences.
Piers Vitebsky studies the Eveny or Reindeer People of Siberia. They keep herds of reindeer for meat, but also have personal, consecrated reindeer animal doubles, which they believe will die for them.
Michele Norris, former co-host of NPR's All Things Considered, talks with Anne Strainchamps about her family's hidden racial past.
Ballet is performed all over the world, but in Russia ballet is the route to stardom.
Author and playwright Michael Frayn talks with Steve Paulson about his play “Copenhagen” and the dramatic meeting between physicists Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in 1941. At issue is the degree to which Heisenberg was spying for the Nazis and his role in the development of a German atom bomb.
For centuries, the oddities of nature - like two-headed cats and conjoined twins - fascinated people. Science historian Lorraine Daston says a history of wonders is to some degree a history of pre-modern science.
