Think airs Monday to Thursday from 12:00 noon to 2:00 p.m. on KERA 90.1 FM. Encore airings of Think can be heard Monday to Thursday nights on KERA FM beginning at 9:00 p.m. Podcasts and streamed video are available online at www.kera.org/think.

Monday, 2/11

Hour 1:  How did our particular branch of the human family tree manage to last this long when many others didn’t? We’ll talk this hour with journalist Chip Walter, whose new book is “Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived” (Walker & Company, 2013).

Hour 2:  What makes a character actor good at his or her job and what’s it like to play ordinary people in the movies? We’ll find out this hour with screen veteran Stephen Tobolowsky, whose new memoir is “The Dangerous Animals Club” (Simon & Schuster, 2012). He’ll read tonight as part of Arts & Letters Live’s Texas Bound at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Tuesday, 2/12

Hour 1:  Could our democracy work better if we viewed the Constitution as merely a set of guidelines rather than the supreme law of the land? We’ll talk this hour with Louis Michael Seidman, the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University and author of the new book “On Constitutional Disobedience” (Oxford University Press, 2013).

Hour 2:  How do you see Dallas and Fort Worth? Long lumped together as DFW, we’ll examine the similarities, identities, and insecurities of the two distinctly different towns this hour with Bud Kennedy of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Sarah Hepola of Salon.com, and Tim Rogers of D Magazine. They’ve all contributed to the current 40^th Anniversary Special Edition of Texas Monthly Magazine.

Wednesday, 2/13

Hour 1:  What can we learn from 140-year-old photographs of a place and way of life that just doesn’t exist anymore? This hour, we’ll explore “China: Through the Lens of John Thomson 1868 – 1872” with Betty Yao, MBE of Credential International Arts Management in London and Amy Hofland, Executive Director at the Crow Collection of Asian Art. The exhibit opens this weekend at the Crow Collection.

Hour 2:  How did the War of 1812 impact the future of slavery and the roles African Americans would play in the U.S. Military and in future conflicts? We’ll spend this hour with Gene Allen Smith, history professor and director of the Center for Texas Studies at TCU, curator of History at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, and author of “The Slaves’ Gamble: Choosing Sides in the War of 1812” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

Thursday, 2/14

Hour 1:  What drives a writer to tell important stories and do the hard work to tell them well? We’ll talk this hour with Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Tracy Kidder. His new book, co-written with Richard Todd, is “Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction” (Random House, 2013).

Hour 2:  What will it take to preserve the remaining few pristine marine ecosystems on the planet? We’ll talk this hour with Gregory Stone, Ph.D., executive vice president and chief ocean scientist of Conservation International and senior vice president of exploration and conservation at the New England Aquarium. His new book, co-written with David Obura, is “Underwater Eden: Saving the Last Coral Wilderness on Earth” (University Of Chicago Press, 2012)

Friday, 2/15 – Anything You Ever Wanted to Know

Noon: Anything is on holiday today. Instead we hope you’ll enjoy a special airing of Song Travels with Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis, Jr.