Persi Diaconis was a stage magician before he discovered probability theory and became one of the world's leading mathematicians. He tells us about some very powerful formulas derived from card shuffles and magic tricks.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Music writer Peter Guralnick tells us how the legendary Sam Phillips created rock and roll as a musical protest.
Computer paswords are on on our minds this week. "The New York Times" reporter Ian Urbina talks about his feature story, "The Secret Life of Passwords."
The former mayor of Madison, Wisconsin, take us on a walking tour of the neighborhood of one of his big heroes, the late urban thinker, Jane Jacobs.
Literary critic William Gass talks with Steve Paulson about the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, and explicates a poem of Rilke’s about a bowl of roses.
Stephen Mitchell has composed a new translation of “Gilgamesh,” the epic poem of ancient Mesopotamia.
The "connectome" is one of the most audacious science projects ever conceived: a detailed map of the human brain, neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse. In this EXTENDED interview, MIT computational neuroscientist Sebastian Seung explains what we can learn.
The Pacific Gyre is a region in the middle of the Pacific Ocean around which all the major currents swirl. As a result, debris that floats into the gyre gets stuck there.
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