Interviews By Topic

a dog on the trail howls

Dogsledders Blair Braverman and Quince Mountain have built an outdoor adventure life in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, where they train teams of dogs to race. But for the husband-and-wife team, the pack is also part of their family.More

Flourishing is a skill, and with a few basic mindfulness practices, we can feel better. Now, neuroscientist Richie Davidson wants to scale up human flourishing to boost the well-being of entire cities.More

Dalal Abu Amneh is a Palestinian singer and neuroscientist. She says music has the capacity to heal and engage the entire brain, and the power to bring people together in the midst of political conflicts.More

Talking with a therapist is a proven path to wholeness, but psychotherapy can often drag on too long. Diana Fosha explains why Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy can have quick results for treating trauma.More

Writer Lowry Pressly argues that privacy is more than just about protecting the personal information you generate; it’s also choosing what to generate at all. It’s a fundamental tool for living our best possible lives.More

Before the era of data mining, scientists in the 1960s began a first-of-its kind study of personality — by secretly studying a group of preschoolers. Former test subject Susannah Breslin uncovers the buried secrets of that study.More

There are approximately 1.4 billion iPhone users worldwide and more than 3 billion Facebook users. In the next few decades, many of those users will die, leaving behind vast amounts of precious data. What happens to all of it?More

Ruthie

Merle was smart, obedient, and always up for an adventure — the kind of dog you can take anywhere. But even the most cherished dogs grow old. A friend suggested that essayist Sarah Miller get a “bridge dog" — a young dog who might make Merle’s impending loss easier to bear.More

Stained glass in the chapel on Dog Mountain

If you are now or have ever been a dog lover, there’s a place you need to go — Dog Mountain in Northern Vermont. 150 acres of hills, trails, and ponds just for pups, plus a dog chapel for memorializing lost pets and an annual summer dog party.More

person and dog

Ecofeminist philosopher Donna Haraway has a reputation for tackling the big intellectual questions of our time. She’s also obsessed with dogs — their biological, cultural, political and personal history.More

Michael Twitty

Michael Twitty can trace his family’s food history back to the slave cabins and Antebellum kitchens of the South. Honoring his diasporic heritage — he’s both black and Jewish — lead Twitty to the practice of identity cooking. He calls it Kosher/Soul.More

Salt, fat, acid, heat

Chef, author, and Netflix star Samin Nosrat developed her own philosophy of cooking, based on a few universal principles: salt, fat, acid and heat. She says it allows us to cook by following our taste buds, rather than a recipe book.More

Lots of choices

153 flavors of ice cream. An acre of cold cereals. Why do supermarkets have so many choices? Or do they? Where we might see hundreds of flavors, varieties and brands of food, food journalist Simran Sethi sees a scary kind of sameness.More

Puzzle constructors like Anna Shechtman are pushing to make crosswords more socially and linguistically inclusive. She writes about gender and puzzles in her memoir “The Riddles of the Sphinx: Inheriting the Feminist History of the Crossword Puzzle.”More

A.J. Jacobs' latest research project turned obsession is puzzles. He goes deep into puzzle history and lore in a new book “The Puzzler: One Man’s Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, from Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life.”More

Greenland ocean sunset

In "Our Biggest Experiment," climate advocate Alice Bell traces the history of the scientists who have been studying the impact of humanity on the climate since 1856. She tells Anne Strainchamps that science has been critical for spurring the world to act. More

a barren tree in Nambia

Lydia Millet mined Bible stories and parables to write her very contemporary novel about climate change, "A Children’s Bible.” She says that fiction can help us sort through hard feelings about climate change in a way daily news stories can't.More

earth from space

Lidia Yuknavitch’s apocalyptic novel “The Book of Joan” is one of the most stunning examples of climate fiction. It’s the story of a near-future where Earth is decimated and the last few survivors are stranded out in space.More

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