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.
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Michael Benson is a film-maker who’s compiled an extraordinary book of still photographs. Lawrence Weschler wrote the book’s Afterward.
Jedediah Purdy is the author of “For Common Things: Irony, Trust and Commitment in America Today” and “Being America: Liberty, Commerce, and Violence in an American World.”
Feminist film critic Molly Haskell talks about how Hollywood has treated the subject of writer’s block, and we hear clips from “Adaptation” and “Barton Fink.”
Would you prefer to die in your sleep? Turns out, more people who weighed in on our three deaths question chose that option. Many of the people who shared their choices also took the time to write about why they were making their choice. You can read a selection of their responses here, and get some analysis of who wrote and - perhaps - why.
For years, Paul Ewald's been trying to convince people that cancer is caused by germs, not genes.
In this UNCUT interview, M.E. Thomas talks with Anne about her book, "Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight."
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