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  1. Bionic Brains And What Science Can Foresee

    In case you don’t read The Journal of Neural Engineering, here’s the news: scientists have created a brain implant that restores lost memory function and strengthens recall.

    A brain implant. Now, it was in a rat. But it’s proven what can be done.

    And offered a glimpse of what’s coming for humans. There is lots of talk about the “bionic brain.” To repair injuries, like Gabby Giffords’.

    To supplement brains like yours and mine. Check out this headline: “Intel Wants Brain Implants in Customers Heads by 2020.”

    It’s exciting, and it’s scary.

    http://onpoint.wbur.org/2011/06/21/bionic-brains

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  2. The Science and Function of Dreams

    We close our eyes at night and dream. Sometimes beautifully, sometimes fitfully, sometimes frighteningly. But why?

    The ancients looked for omens. Sigmund Freud saw clues from our past. Some researchers now say dreams help us brace for the future. Ben Franklin advised a light supper, clean sheets, fresh air, and as little dreaming as possible — to avoid painful dreams.

    And what about nightmares? Can we, should we, rewrite them? We spend a lot of our lives dreaming. What’s it all about?

    http://www.onpointradio.org/2010/08/science-dreams

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  3. NPR On Point: The Best Books of 2009

    It’s the gift season. And the gift of a book is not just of a satisfying heft in a nice wrapping. It’s the hope and encouragement to slow down, get lost, step back and see another way. So, what to give? Or hope for? We’re looking at the best books of 2009 today, and the range is wide. From lost cities to an illustrated Old Testament. From "Love in Infant Monkeys," to "Wolf Hall" and "Little Bee." Michael Sandel makes my guests cut. So do Lorrie Moore, Jonathan Lethem, A.S. Byatt, Tania James. What about yours? This hour, On Point: for the holidays, the best books of ‘09.

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  4. Why We Need Architecture

    A year ago, with a giant economic stimulus package in the works, many Americans envisioned a rebuilt nation. Infrastructure. Bridges. Green cities.

    It hasn’t exactly happened. But the design of all that surrounds us — all that’s built, old and new — is a daily message to us about who we are and what we aspire to.

    Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Paul Goldberger wants to remind us of why architecture matters, in shaping lives and cultures. From ancient Rome to the next wave of American — or Asian — building.

    This hour, On Point: Paul Goldberger, on the power of the built world around us.

    http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/11/why-we-need-architecture

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  5. On Point: Claude Levi-Strauss

    At the imperial dawn of the 20th century, there was the “civilized” world and the “savage” or “primitive” world, and one felt free to judge the other.

    By the century’s end, the whole idea of primitive man as separate from civilized man was pretty well gone. And with it, the “savage mind.”

    Much of the banishing was the work of the towering anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. Levi-Strauss has died at 100 in his native France. We are all, he said, driven by deep myth and common structures of thinking — even to our own extinction.

    This hour, On Point: The mind and work of Claude Levi-Strauss.

    http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/11/claude-levi-strauss

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  6. Stewart Brand’s ‘Ecopragmatism’

    In the 1960s, Stewart Brand became one of the country’s first and most famous champions of a new ecological awareness. His Whole Earth Catalog spoke to a generation of hippies and back-to-nature commune dwellers.

    Now, at 70, Stewart Brand is calling on environmentalists to reframe their understanding of the problem — and solutions. It’s too late for back-to-nature, he says. Global warming is beyond that.

    To survive now, Brand says, we need nuclear power, genetic engineering, giant cities. We must manage nature or lose civilization.

    This hour, On Point: In the face of global warming, Stewart Brand redefines green.

    http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/10/stewart-brands-ecopragmatism

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  7. “Mad Men” Creator Matthew Weiner

    For the second year running, top honors at the Emmys for best dramatic series went to an AMC cable show set in a New York ad agency in the early 1960s.

    The visuals of AMC’s “Mad Men” are all skinny ties and bullet bras — buttoned-down corporate America smoking and drinking and dancing on the edge of what we know would be assassinations and war and 1960s cultural revolution to come.

    Its world is white, sexist, racist, homophobic, shadowed by fear of nuclear war — and compelling, right now, in 2009.

    This hour, On Point: A conversation with Matthew Weiner, creator of “Mad Men.”

    http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/09/mad-men-creator-matthew-weiner

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  8. On Point: E-Memory & Human Nature

    Human memory is a famously tricky thing. We remember some things. We forget a lot more. And we shape and sculpt the memories we do have with a vengeance. But more and more, the actual events of our lives are being recorded electronically. In Facebook albums and Twitter posts and smartphone files, yes, but also in thousands of digital transactions we don’t even think about. Now, two top Microsoft computer scientists are talking about an era of e-memory — "total recall" — as a revolution in what it means to be human. This hour, On Point: E-memory, total recall, and human nature.

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  9. On Point: Assessing the American Future (with Simon Schama and Niall Ferguson)

    The British know something about rise and fall. Their Edward Gibbon wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Their own empire came and went.

    Now, two big British historians and thinkers who live in the United States are thinking hard about the American future.

    Simon Schama says he’s in love with America, and sees the makings of potential renewal emerging right now. Niall Ferguson admires America too, and sees — even so — the makings of disaster around us.

    http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/05/assessing-the-american-future

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  10. On Point: The Great Disruption

    The U.S. stock market took a big jump yesterday, and everyone cheered.

    Almost everyone.

    There is a big school of thought out there that says we must not just bounce back from this downturn. We must come back changed. This isn’t just a great recession we’re in, they say. It’s “The Great Disruption” — nature and the economy hitting the wall, collapsing, at the same time.

    Australian environmentalist Paul Gilding invented the phrase. American climate expert Joseph Romm says the free ride is over.

    http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2009/03/creative-disruption/

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