Latest Stories

a band performs on stage
Articles

Music critic and author Kalefa Sanneh says "pop music" is no longer a pejorative label. He traces the rise of "Poptimism" and discusses the challenges of being a pop music critic.

Length: 
12:54
hands raised in worship
Articles

Beth Allison Barr is a Southern Baptist from Texas who was raised evangelical, married a pastor and had two children. She’s also a feminist professor of medieval history at Baylor University, and the author of a book that isn’t winning her many friends in the evangelical world: “The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth.”

Length: 
14:49
John Onwuchekwa
Audio

Five years after opening its doors, the pastor of Atlanta’s Cornerstone Church, Reverend John Onwuchekwa, led the entire congregation of more than 400 people to officially leave the Southern Baptist Convention. His reason for leaving was tied to their long history of oppression and racism toward Black people.

Length: 
14:27
God and country
Articles

Donald Trump won 84% of the white evangelical vote in 2020. To shore up that base, he’s now moving beyond conservative Christian values, to Christian nationalism. That nationalism, journalist Jeff Sharlet argues, represents a real and present threat of "simmering violence."

Length: 
18:56
Ngugi wa Thiong’o
Articles

Ngugi wa Thiong’o — the renowned Kenyan author — believes African writers should write in their native language, not the colonial language of English or French. He says the best way to decolonize the mind is to reclaim native languages.

Length: 
15:09
Cecil Rhodes cartoons and statues.
Audio

Questions about identity, history, language, what should or should not be taught in school — these are all debates about confronting our past. Political theorist Adom Getachew says many of these issues were debated in Africa more than 60 years ago.

Length: 
14:31
house at night
Articles

Psychologist Rubin Naiman says we’re not only sleep deprived, we are — perhaps more importantly — dream deprived. He tells us why we should get back to our dream states and stop living in such a wake-centric world.

Length: 
12:29
Video

Annabel Abbs-Streets found a way to creatively and spiritually embrace her sleepless hours. She writes about what she discovered in a book called “Sleepless: Unleashing the Subversive Power of the Night Self.”

Length: 
12:24
A woman flies
Articles

Dreams are funny, confusing and surprising in the world of cartoonist Roz Chast. And they are occasionally disturbing and maybe necessary to process both our everyday and most bizarre thoughts, she tells Shannon Henry Kleiber.

Length: 
15:09
Anthony Bossis
Audio

Tony Bossis was one of the lead investigators on the 2016 study that found stress reduction in cancer patients after a single dose of psilocybin. He's fascinated by how the mystical experiences of the great religions map onto psychedelic experiences.

Length: 
14:08
an older woman with her hands folded.
Articles

A decade ago, Lou Lukas took part in one of the first trials of psilocybin-assisted therapy. Today, she's a palliative medicine physician and an advocate for psychedelic-assisted therapy – especially for people living in fear near the end of life.

Length: 
15:06
Roland Griffiths
Articles

Roland Griffiths helped pioneer the use of psychedelics to treat people with cancer who are scared of dying. Then he got his own terminal diagnosis. He talked with Steve Paulson in January 2023 about his personal LSD journey when he "talked" with his cancer.

Length: 
18:43
person and dog
Articles

Ecofeminist philosopher Donna Haraway has a reputation for tackling the big intellectual questions of our time. She’s also obsessed with dogs — their biological, cultural, political and personal history.

Length: 
10:58
Stained glass in the chapel on Dog Mountain
Photo Gallery

If you are now or have ever been a dog lover, there’s a place you need to go — Dog Mountain in Northern Vermont. 150 acres of hills, trails, and ponds just for pups, plus a dog chapel for memorializing lost pets and an annual summer dog party.

Length: 
7:58
a dog on the trail howls
Articles

Dogsledders Blair Braverman and Quince Mountain have built an outdoor adventure life in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, where they train teams of dogs to race. But for the husband-and-wife team, the pack is also part of their family.

Length: 
17:27
the looming monster of american myth
Audio

Social critic Alissa Quart says the American ideal of the self-made, rugged individual is built on a lie. In her book "Bootstrapped," she argues that even the people who preached the gospel of self-reliance, like Laura Ingalls Wilder and Henry David Thoreau, didn’t live up to it themselves. 

Length: 
8:21
an online number going up
Audio

When producer Angelo Bautista was growing up, he dreamed of being in the internet. Not on the internet, but inside of it. Now, he's torn about social media. He's still addicted to scrolling, but posting about his own life — that's another story. But if nobody sees you on the internet, do you exist? 

Length: 
6:30
a woman looking in a mirror
Articles

When you look online, you might think the most important pursuit in life is self-creation — optimizing, curating, branding yourself. Social critic Tara Isabella Burton says our current obsession with personal identity has deeply religious roots, which then got co-opted by advertisers and the self-help movement.

Length: 
14:08
The Sandman. Writer Neil Gaiman on the set of The Sandman.
Audio

Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" graphic novel is now a Netflix series. Gaiman has made a career out of tapping into our unconscious dreams and fears. In 2003, Steve Paulson traveled to Gaiman's home in Wisconsin to talk about where his story ideas come from.

Length: 
10:58
The American carnival
Audio

Kurt Andersen says there’s something quintessentially American about fantasy — from Hollywood to our homegrown religions. The message is that you can create your own reality. But what happens when political leaders believe their own fantasies?

Length: 
16:05
two adults near a portal to Disneyland
Audio

Disney theme parks aren't just for kids. Plenty of adults say they're happy places. But a lot of people love to hate on "Disney adults." So what happens to our childhood love of fantasy when we grow older? Producer Angelo Bautista has the story.

Length: 
21:26
Robert (left) and Kofi (right) together in 2008. (Robert Hanserd)
Audio

Two friends of 20 years — Robert Hanserd and Emmanuel Kofi Bempong — show what a relationship between African Americans and Ghanaians can be.

Length: 
10:39
American plane in Africa
Audio

Just as thousands of African Americans are moving to Ghana, some Ghanaians are migrating to the West. Literature professor Ato Quayson explains that it raises a difficult question: should they stay in Africa or pursue a high-profile career in North America or Europe?

Length: 
9:16
L to: Yeleyeni Songsore and her husband; Mawiyah Kambon and Kamal Kambon; Kwaku Asantu Maroon Asare
Articles

At least 1,500 Black Americans have moved to Ghana since 2019, when the government declared its "Year of Return" initiative, calling on Africans in the diaspora to return to Africa. As the US continues to confront its history of racism and police brutality against Black people, many are heeding Ghana's call.  

Length: 
20:36
fireflies
Articles

As a documentary poet, Camille Dungy writes not just about headline-making news, but about news on a more intimate scale — about motherhood, marriage, and her garden. It’s an approach she says was very much inspired by the "godmother" of documentary poetry, Muriel Rukeyeser. 

Length: 
16:13
Boots at right angles.
Articles

Kaia Sand is a journalist whose day job is executive director of the community newspaper Street Roots in Portland, Oregon. She’s also a poet and she uses both lenses – journalism and poetry – to write about the people she knows and things she sees firsthand in her city. 

Length: 
10:16
Articles

We asked Arab-American poet Philip Metres to write an original poem in the style he’s known for — documentary poetry — a genre that blends techniques from journalism and poetry to offer a fresh way of hearing today’s news.

Length: 
23:04
David Rooney.
Audio

Clocks control us – but who controls clocks? David Rooney gives us a brief political history of clocks. And a look at their future.

Length: 
30:27
Jenny Odell
Articles

Lately it’s been feeling like time is speeding up.  Whether it’s the news cycle, social media, the information economy or global warming, the pace of life is accelerating beyond what many of us can handle. Jenny Odell blames the clock. 

Length: 
18:02
Natalie Merchant
Audio

Singer Natalie Merchant rediscovered poetry in the company of her young daughter. Why does she love the poems by Victorian and early 20th century poets?

Length: 
14:18

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