For decades, urbanists have been thinking about cities as organisms. They take in resources, eject waste, spread and grow. Theoretical physicist Geoffrey West decided to put the idea through the mathematical ringer. So, are cities like organisms? Yes. And no.
You can also hear the uncut interview with West.
Elaine Pagels won the National Book Award for her book on the Gnostic Gospels. Now she’s back with “Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas.”
Bill Ayers was a member of the Weather Underground, which set off a series of bombs around the country in protest against the Vietnam War. Ayers insists he was not a terrorist, since his objective was never to kill people. He believes his own actions showed restraint in comparison with the enormity of the harm he believed the Vietnam War was causing.
NPR's Eric Nuzum reveals his lifelong fear of ghosts in a haunting new memoir, “Giving Up The Ghost” – the story of his troubled teenage years, suicidal fantasies and conviction that he was being stalked by the ghost of a little girl. In this EXTENDED interview, he talks with Anne Strainchamps about depression, friendship, and what it means to be haunted.
Author of "Waiting for Snow in Havana" started to worry about death as a child, growing up in Cuba during an era of public executions ...
David John is a chess Life Master. He went to college on a chess scholarship, but now makes his living as a professional poker player in Las Vegas.
Contemplating the multiverse is mind-blowing, but if you want a truly earth-shattering controversy in physics, you have to go back 500 years to Copernicus' radical theory. Dava Sobel tells his story.
Social networking takes a dark turn in this story by J.M. Perkins.
