If traditional religion has lost its luster, where do you find sacred experiences? Anthropologist Erik Davis goes looking around the edges of contemporary culture - from Burning Man and trance music to psychedelics.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Robert Kull chose to live completely alone off the coast of Chile for a year. He tells Anne Strainchamps the hardest part was the mental challenges he faced, not the weather or coping with his prosthetic leg.
Julia Hansen chained herself to the radiator in her dining room for a week in an effort to quit smoking cigarettes.
Joe Nick Patoski has been writing about his friend Willie Nelson for thirty five years. He talks about Nelson's first claim to fame in Nashville was as a songwriter.
Marco Iacoboni talks about mirror neurons - neurons hard-wired into us and explain how we feel empathy and compassion and why we feel the need to connect with one another.
Kevin Smokler tells Steve Paulson that the Internet is changing the world of letters but he thinks it’s progress. Smokler sees a welcome democratization of literature.
Nick Abadzis is the author of a graphic novel called "Laika." She was the little dog the Russians sent up into space aboard Sputnik II.
Philosopher John Searle talks with Steve Paulson about the most exciting problem in modern philosophy: explaining human consciousness.
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