Why you should listen to Leonard Cohen music when you eat toffee

Jun 20, 2017
Restaurants and food companies can change the way you think their food tastes, and it has nothing to do with the recipe.
Brian Ach/Getty Images for New York Magazine

You can stop saying 'iconic' now

Jun 15, 2017
Humorist and language fussbudget Jenny Allen wants to squash these overused words and phrases.
KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images

Looking back at the birth of the iPhone, 10 years later

Jun 15, 2017
Brian Merchant has the backstory on the iPhone's creation in his new book, "The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone"
Steve Jobs unveils the iPhone at the Macworld Conference in January 2007 in San Francisco.
TONY AVELAR/AFP/Getty Images

Heard on Make Me Smart

May 18, 2017
That book, that link, that recommendation you heard while walking the dog or riding the bike.

Publisher Cassava Republic is changing the way we read about Nigeria

May 8, 2017
Co-founder Bibi Bakare-Yusuf wants you to see 'the complex, gorgeous realities of the continent' in African books.
“I wanted a brand that was very confident, that still incorporate the colors of Africa on one level, but also branding that suggests a certain cosmopolitanism,” said Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, co-founder of Cassava Republic.
Yves Salmon/Flickr

How the Panic of 1837 predicted the Great Recession

Apr 26, 2017
Going into the Panic of 1837 the market was booming and credit was flowing from banks. Sound familiar?
“We haven't sorted out whether we want to be a country based primarily for the individual or for the society as a whole, and that really does stem back at least to the 19th century and probably even earlier than that,” said Philip Gura, author of the book, “Man’s Better Angels.”
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Textbook publishers in a bind as students go digital

Feb 27, 2017
Pearson, the global education publisher, announced a nearly $3.3 billion loss for 2016. It’s struggling, as many traditional publishers are, with big shifts in the way college kids buy (or don’t buy) textbooks. According to the National Association of College Stores, spending on course materials has fallen 14 percent in the last 10 years. Students […]

How rock 'n' roll doctor Larry Brilliant helped eradicate smallpox

Dec 21, 2016
Larry Brilliant joined us to talk about his new memoir, "Sometimes Brilliant."
Larry Brilliant speaks onstage at an event in New York City.
Paul Zimmerman/Getty Images for HBO