Book of the Day

Katherine Rundell says it's a mistake for adults to discard children's literature

If you turn to children's fiction, you can, I think, find what endures of us when all our adult compromises and poses are stripped away. You can, I think, find the very meat of the human heart.

Hidden Brain

You Are Not Ordinary

Most of us know that we're similar to others in many ways, and different from others in many ways. What psychologist Brian Little has found is that there is something that makes each of us truly unique — not just different from others in degree, but different from everyone else who has ever lived. That something is the particular combination of all our traits.

Daily Stoic

Fighting Modern Corruption With Ancient Stoic Wisdom

Corruption begets corruption. When other people are lying, when other people are cheating, when you see it happening all around you, people shrug their shoulders. They they say, "What the hell?" Right? We join in because we see other people doing it.

EconTalk

Savage Landscapes (with Cal Flyn)

Flyn rejects the myth of pristine, unpeopled wilderness, revealing that the wildest-looking landscapes have been shaped by humans for centuries.

It's Been a Minute

Feeling aggrieved? You're not alone. | It's Been a Minute

I think people just like to fight. Honestly, we love to bicker. We love a little um tension, you know, cuz what are we without it, right?

Fresh Air

Best Of: ‘The Invite’ screenwriters / Guitarist Lenny Kaye

We are never above a laugh. There's nothing that's grave enough for us not to laugh about because that's how we process our pain. It's like we laugh through death and sickness and sadness.

Radiolab

This is Your Brain on Hormones

each one of us is at the mercy of a crashing sea of chemicals inside of us – those things we call hormones

Daily Stoic

14 Stoic Lessons Marcus Aurelius Learned From His Father

Let the boy be human for once. Says empire doesn't take away natural feeling. And so here is a moment of grace.

Book of the Day

Ann Patchett’s 'Whistler' and 'Tom Lake' are novels written with love in mind

Yes, there there are bad people in the world, but they are so outnumbered by the good people. The people who will want to help you are are so hugely present out there once you leave this car.

EconTalk

Facing Death (with Sebastian Junger)

Most soldiers who die in combat aren't thinking about their country or their family or God — they're thinking about the other soldiers in their unit. They die for each other, and that is the most powerful form of loyalty that humans are capable of.

Book of the Day

Two new books approach running from different angles | NPR's Book of the Day

I think we're wired to do hard things. And that's kind of perverse, but you know, the marathon has become one of the great bucket list items. I think people get something real out of pushing limits they didn't know that they had.

Radiolab

The Bad Show

91% of men, and 84% of women, have fantasized about killing someone...what this shadow world might tell us about ourselves and our neighbors.

Radiolab

The Bad Show

91% of men, and 84% of women, have fantasized about killing someone. We take a look at one particular fantasy lurking behind these numbers, and wonder what this shadow world might tell us about ourselves and our neighbors.

Radiolab

The Bad Show

With all of the black-and-white moralizing in our world today, we decided to bring back an old show from 2011 about the little bit of bad that's in all of us...and the little bit of really, really bad that's in some of us.

Daily Stoic

How a Stoic Deals with Obnoxious People

We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural.

Book of the Day

Katrina Manson on 'Project Maven' and how the U.S. is using AI in warfare

The problem with war has always been the humans. We humans are inefficient. We get tired. We get killed.

Fresh Air

Comic Jeff Ross on roasting, loss and his epic bar mitzvah

I would ride my moped on the turning lane of this highway 12 months a year to go to my family-owned catering hall where these lavish affairs would happen. So I saw human nature, people at their most nervous, brides, grooms, mother of the bride, father of the groom, like you saw people at their most intense.

TED Radio Hour

Curious stories of coexistence

Every day we hear about nations, different groups of people struggling to get along. Humanity seems unable to overcome its differences. But what can we learn from more unusual examples of strange bedfellows?

EconTalk

How We Tamed Ourselves and Invented Good and Evil (with Hanno Sauer)

in a Darwinian world of selfish genes, how did humans become so extraordinarily cooperative?