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Steve Paulson
Steve Paulson was born in Rome, Italy, where his
father worked with the United Nations. His family eventually settled
in Milwaukee, where Steve spent endless hours hanging out on tennis
courts. In high school, he won Milwaukees City Championship,
but dreams of a tennis career quickly faded.
Steve went on to study European literature at Earlham
College in Richmond, Indiana, then freelanced for several Milwaukee
newspapers. After earning a masters degree in journalism at
the University of Wisconsin, he stumbled into public radio. He worked
as a reporter and talk show producer and host at Wisconsin Public
Radio and then helped create To the Best of Our Knowledge in 1990.
Over the years, he has also done cultural reporting for NPRs
Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition.
One of the pleasures of working on To the Best
of Our Knowledge is the chance to indulge certain intellectual passions
- even ones that dont seem terribly high-minded. In
the early 90s I went through my early Elvis phase. And I talked
to lots of young scholars who were deconstructing pop culture,
Steve says. He then switched gears and got hooked on field biologists
like Jane Goodall, George Schaller and Roger Payne.
In 2006 Steves interests took another turn
when he became a Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellow in Science
& Religion. His in-depth study of the relationship between science
and religion led to TTBOOKs 5-hour series Electrons
to Enlightenment. In addition to his radio work, Steve writes
for Salon.com, which has run many of his interviews with leading
figures in the science and religion debate, including E.O. Wilson,
Francis Collins, Richard Dawkins, Karen Armstrong, Sam Harris, Elaine
Pagels, Steven Pinker, Paul Davies and Stuart Kauffman. Hes
now working on a book, which will be an edited collection of interviews
about the relationship between religion and science.
In 2008 Steve traveled to Turkey with a dozen journalists
as part of the International Reporting Project, where they talked
with religious leaders, filmmakers, journalists, Kurdish activists,
and politicians, including Prime Minister Erdogan In 2009 he joined
another group of journalists to attend seminars on evolution and
the brain in Cambridge, England.
To the Best of Our Knowledge is a great radio
show for people who are intellectually curious, Steve says.
I feel very lucky to work on this program.
paulson@wpr.org
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