At Length with Steve Scher

Cancer has been part of life since the origins of evolution.

Baseball inspires poets and scribes to wax on about some essential baseball-ness that reflects larger values. Maybe baseball is not simply a game, but something grander, a philosophy that might help people order the broader human experience?

Alva Noë is a writer and a philosopher who thinks about baseball. His latest book is Infinite Baseball: Notes from a Philosopher at the Ballpark

We think of the astronauts, those brave people who took a ride on a giant rocket ship into the unknown on their way to the moon. Charles Fishman got to thinking about the more than four hundred thousand working people who actually invented the space program, switch by switch, stitch by stitch, making the dream a reality.

What will the digital world of the future be like? Will humans, or our eternally humming digital simulacra, live in heaven or hell?

Journalist Rachel Louise Snyder has looked at domestic violence around the world in her new book “ No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us.”

health, according to Dr. Sandro Galea, isn’t going to actually occur, for individuals or societies, if we stay focused at that level of attention and care.

Health should be considered how everyone lives in their neighborhoods, the opportunities that exist in education and employment.

Sandro Galea is an innovator in epidemiology. He is Dean and Professor at Boston University School of Public Health .

After a career of carefully editing so many accomplished writers, language and punctuation remain a joy to Marry Norris, renowned New Yorker Copy Editor. Her first book, “Between You and Me: Confessions of AComma Queen,” was nominated for a Thurber Prize for American Humor.

In her follow up, “Greek To Me: Adventures of The Comma Queen ,” Norris shares her love for the Greek language, culture and land.

A broken democracy, perhaps like a broken clock, can be right sometimes. Journalist Hedrick Smith’s new film, “Winning Back Our Democracy,” profiles citizen activists around the United States who are making a difference. As one Florida activist put it, if it can happen in their state, maybe community by community, an end to gerrymandering and a commitment to one person one vote can become a reality.

A broken democracy, perhaps like a broken clock, can be right sometimes. Journalist Hedrick Smith’s new film, “Winning Back Our Democracy,” profiles citizen activists around the United States who are making a difference. As one Florida activist put it, if it can happen in their state, maybe community by community, an end to gerrymandering and a commitment to one person one vote can become a reality.

Siri Hustvedt talks about scholarship, teaching story to psychiatry residents and her new book about memory and time in her new novel, “Memories of the Future.”