Journalist Dan Slater shows how online dating is changing society in more profound ways than we imagine. In Love in the Time of Algorithms: What Technology Does to Meeting and Mating, he explores how these new technologies are reconditioning our feelings about commitment and challenging the traditional notions of adult life. He goes behind the scenes to see how dating sites capitalize on our quest for love.

Author James Lasdun chronicles his harrowing ordeal of being stalked by former student, who began trying, in her words, to “ruin him” with hate mail, online postings, and public accusations of plagiarism and sexual misconduct. He gives an account of his ordeal in Give Me Everything You Have.

William Harvey, the American conductor of the Afghan Youth Orchestra, and Milad Yousoufi, a pianist with the orchestra, discuss the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) bringing its Afghan Youth Orchestra to the United States for the first time. The orchestra was started after the fall of the Taliban to rebuild the musical culture of Afghanistan. The orchestra provide a trade and skill for children (both boys and girls) to help get them off the streets of Kabul.

Leading field biologist George Schaller talks about his 30 years spent exploring in the most remote stretches of Tibet: the wide, sweeping rangelands of the Chang Tang and the canyons and ravines of the southeastern forests. In Tibet Wild he tells how more roads, homes, and grazing livestock, and are increasingly causing clashes between the wildlife and people. He works with local communities, regional leaders, and national governments to protect the unique ecological richness and culture of the Tibetan Plateau.