There's a nagging question at major sporting events: Are the athletes cheating? Steroids, human growth hormones and blood doping techniques are extending the outer limits of performance, and athletes can use them if they want -- unless they're professionals or Olympic athletes. But is doping really a problem? Australian philosopher and bioethicist Julian Savulescu has a simple litmus test: What contribution is coming from the technology and what is coming from the athlete?
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Writer Michael Pollan tells Steve Paulson that a lot of what's on supermarket shelves isn't food and that Americans have many options if they want to improve the quality of their diet.
Mohsin Hamid is having a big year. His last novel, “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” just opened as a film by Mira Nair. He's got a new novel out too, called “How To Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia.” In this EXTENDED interview, Anne talks with him about that get-rich scheme...
Katha Pollitt is a celebrated feminist writer and columnist for The Nation magazine. Her new book is "Learning to Drive."
What's the best piece of reporting you encountered this year? TTBOOK listeners recommend these stories. We'll add new suggestions as they come in.
The clay tablets found at the Greek palace of Knossos had one of the strangest languages ever discovered. Margalit Fox tells the story of Linear B - and the obsessed, tragic lives of the two people who devoted their lives to cracking the code.
"See them before they're gone" is the Lanza family's motto. Michael Lanza describes his quest to take his two young kids -- ages 7 and 9 -- to as many wilderness locations as possible, to see glaciers and icebergs and coral reefs, before climate change destroys them.
Sports Illustrated writer Jeff MacGregor spent a year on the NASCAR circuit and writes about it in "Sunday Money: Speed! Lust! Madness! Death!"
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