Daniel Tammet has memorized the number pi into the tens of thousands of digits. He's learned new languages in a few weeks. He describes the gift - and the burden - of being an autistic savant.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
What he learned from Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr and Richard Feynman.
David Ferris is the director of the Asian Elephant Art and Conservation Project. He tells Anne Strainchamps the project began as a conceptual art project that provided gainful employment to the animals put out of work by the collapse of Thailand's timber industry.
Eric Lax has had regular conversations with Woody Allen over the past 36 years which he's turned into a book called "Conversations with Woody Allen: His Films, the Movies and Moviemaking."
Anne here. My conversation with Turkish writer Elif Şafak back in April still sticks with me as the year comes to a close. In many parts of the world, 2016 was the year of the populist leader—especially in Turkey, where Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan launched a crackdown on free speech and all forms of opposition. 120 journalists have been jailed, more than 2,000 academics have been dismissed from universities, and more than 100,000 public workers have been fired. How did Turkey—once a model of new democratic nations—become such a different place? Not only did Şafak see this coming, she warned that the West should not consider itself immune.
If you had to pick one writer, one poet, who has persistently reminded us of the connection between inner and outer landscapes it would be Terry Tempest Williams. She's advocated again and again for the preservation of wild places and the importance of national wilderness through books like “Refuge,” “Desert Quartet,” “Finding Beauty in a Broken World” and “When Women Were Birds.” She'll soon be releasing a new book -- “The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks.”
Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard recommends a chilling read: "The Flame Alphabet" by Ben Marcus.
Christopher Phillips tells Jim Fleming what happens at Socrates Café, and explains how he reveals the deep philosophical implications of everyday events.
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