Show Archives

Charles Monroe-Kane in Center of the World

Center of the World
October 14, 2017

Amidst economic devastation, producer Charles Monroe-Kane asks what it takes to survive in the Rust Belt.

  1. Center of the World, Ohio
  2. Exile: A Story of Being Korean in Japan
  3. Four Girls Growing Up In 'Another Brooklyn'
Crochet hyperbolic plane (by Anitra Menning), from the "Crochet Coral Reef" project by Christine and Margaret Wertheim and the Institute For Figuring.

Is the Universe a Number?
October 07, 2017

For centuries, mathematicians have been looking for the deep design, the mathematical code to explain everything from microorganisms to spacetime. But it’s a dangerous quest.

  1. Crocheting the Unknowable Geometry of Spacetime
  2. Going Deep Into the Kabbalah
  3. A Physicist Tries To Answer The "Beautiful Question"
A lone school desk

What is School For?
September 30, 2017

Why do we have schools? To build a workforce? To create democratic citizens? 

  1. Why America's Teachers Are Burning Out
  2. Is Teaching Mexican-American Studies Un-American?
  3. What Happens When Math And Science Rule The School?
  4. The Crankiest Student In Your Class? That's Your Dad.
Swirls

Could Psychedelic Drugs Save Your Life?
September 23, 2017

Psychedelic science is back — and they could help heal people with addictions, PTSD and end-of-life anxiety.

  1. Ayelet Waldman Talks about Depression, LSD, and Her Marriage With Michael Chabon
  2. How Psychedelic Drugs Will Revolutionize Psychiatry
  3. Lessons from a Psychedelic Guide
  4. On A Mountain Top, With Ayahuasca And Frog Poison
  5. Psychedelics and God
  6. Psychedelics: The Next Revolution in Psychiatry?
Making notes

Rethinking The Reviewer
September 16, 2017

If everyone’s a critic online, does it mean that cultural criticism doesn’t matter anymore?

  1. Talking About Sex Is Hard. Singing About It Is Easier.
  2. A.O. Scott Recommends "The Film Criticism of Otis Ferguson"
  3. What Turns A Man Against Everything?
  4. Chuck Klosterman Says You Will Be Defined By Your Greatest Failure
Photograph of Flag Raising on Iwo Jima, 02/23/1945, National Archives

Why We War
September 09, 2017

Armed conflicts. Insurgencies. Civil Wars. Invasions. Syria. Iraq. Afghanistan. Nigeria. Ukraine. South Sudan. Gaza. Yemen. The world is at war. Why?

  1. The Worth of War
  2. War is Beautiful?
  3. War is Revenge
  4. Is War Inevitable?
  5. 50th Anniversary of "A Love Supreme"
Your electronic best friend

Sentimentality for Silicon
September 02, 2017

Do you love your laptop? Feel affection for your phone? Some of us spend more time with our devices than our families. How deep do those attachments go?

  1. A Partial Glossary To A Horrifying Future
  2. The Internet Has Made Dying More Miserable
  3. How Can Digital Citizens Reclaim Their Voices Online?
  4. Why We're Alone Even When We're Together
  5. A Media Theorist On Our Bad Sort Of Time Travel
Seeing the universe

Striving To See In A Vast, Invisible Universe
August 19, 2017

The latest total solar eclipse will cross the US for the first time in a hundred years. But besides chasing eclipses, how else can we see what's out there, beyond our skies?

  1. How Eclipse Chasing Inspires Generations of Scientists
  2. How Do We Investigate The Invisible Parts of the Universe?
  3. Search For Life In All The Wrong Places
  4. What Can You Hear In Space?
  5. The Universe Is Under No Obligation To Make Sense To Us
ice

Imagining Climate Change
August 12, 2017

“The climate crisis is a crisis of culture and thus of imagination,” says writer Amitav Ghosh. So what changes in our conversation about global warming when we tap into the imaginative worlds of novelists and artists?

  1. How Bad Can Climate Change Really Get?
  2. Where’s the Great “Climate Change Novel”?
  3. Let’s Get Serious About the Anthropocene
  4. Zulu Time: Artist Kambui Olujimi Explores the Many Dimensions of Time
  5. Lidia Yuknavitch’s Dream World: How Dreams Shaped Her Dazzling Speculative Novel
Wolf in Yellowstone

In The Company Of Wolves
August 06, 2017

While their domesticated cousins sleep on our beds, Congress debates wild wolves’ survival. This hour, we’ll explore our complicated relationship with our canine cousins, and the feelings they evoke – fear, hatred, and also love.  

  1. What If Your Best Friend Is A Wolf?
  2. How Coyotes Won The War We've Waged On Them
  3. A Lesson in Resilience From Markoe's Best Friend
  4. How A Novel About “Monster Dogs” Can Help Us Rethink Our Relationship with Our Own Canine Companions
home

Making A Home
December 04, 2016

Anyone who’s moved knows how difficult it can be to settle into a new place. Whether it’s another country or an apartment just down the block, it takes time and work to get comfortable. We’re living through a period of mass human migration, with people on the move all over the planet. This hour...

  1. A Violinist Flees Syria and Discovers a New Home in the US
  2. How Coming Home Made Us Human
  3. For Some Veterans, the Return Home is the Hardest Part of Their Tour
  4. Jonathan Chait on “What Hath God Wrought”
  5. The Revolutionary War’s Impact on America
Saddam Hussein

Can An Evil Man Be A Decent Person?
July 30, 2017

How can someone be a monster — a brutal dictator, a mass murderer, a serial killer — and up close seem like a decent, caring person? What happens when you find yourself liking someone who’s done terrible things?

  1. The American Guards Who Kept Saddam Hussein Safe Until His Execution
  2. Paul Beatty on “The Nazi and the Barber”
  3. What Can Americans Learn from a Norwegian Massacre?
  4. Your Archenemy Turned Out To Be a Hero. Now What?
  5. Can Literature Make You More Empathetic?
  6. Michael Tisserand on “My Friend Dahmer”
Typewriter

Telling A Life
October 23, 2016

Psychologists say telling a good life story can make you happier. But do we also create an inauthentic version of ourselves if we turn everything into a narrative?

  1. How to Edit Your Life Story
  2. The Terminal Bar: A Tale of Smuggling Money to Post-Communist Prague
  3. The Problem with Life Stories
  4. Alissa Quart On "Days of Abandonment" and "Sleepless Nights"
  5. Patti Smith's Mind Train
shame statue

Shame
July 23, 2017

Social media has brought us all closer together.  Sometimes that's a good thing.  But when it comes to online shaming, it's a bad thing. 

  1. Public Shaming on the Internet
  2. Shame-Based Sentencing Instead of Jail Time
  3. The Upside of Shame Promoting Positive Change
  4. Dangerous Idea: Universal Recess!
  5. Sowing Your Wild Oats in Mid-Life
Sound and Color

The Art of Reinventing Yourself
July 16, 2017

Do you ever wish you could reinvent yourself? This hour, we hear from four noted artists who experienced pivotal turns in their own lives: artist Rashid Johnson, writer/photographer Teju Cole, singer Nikka Costa, and musician Michael Nesmith.

  1. Artist Rashid Johnson Explores Race, Yearning and Escape
  2. How Temporary Blindness Taught Teju Cole How to See
  3. Why Not Abolish Literary Genres?
  4. From Child Pop Star to Jazz Singer: Nikka Costa Performs America’s Songbook
  5. From the Monkees to Country Rock: The Remarkable Career of Michael Nesmith

Get Happy
January 11, 2016

Can science tell you how to "get happy?"  This hour,  the psychology and history behind the very idea of happiness. 

  1. Want to be Happier? Turn Everyday Tasks Into a Game
  2. A Little Less Feeling, A Lot More Action
  3. A History of Happiness
  4. How to Find Happiness in Everyday Life and Language
  5. David Morris Recommends "Solo Faces" by James Salter
  6. Why The Walden Pond Experiment In Self-Reliance Is More Relevant Than Ever
airport protest

Do Protests Still Matter?
June 26, 2016

When you don't have a voice, when you feel like lawmakers just won't listen to you, protest is one way of capturing the world's attention. But does it work? 

  1. Why Protest Is Broken
  2. Barney Frank On Why Protests Don't Work
  3. Taking It To the Streets
  4. A Lifelong Activist
  5. The Craft Of Protesting
  6. Overcoming Fear Through Protest
Feet out the window

When Is A Road Trip Something More?
July 09, 2017

We take road trips and endless highways for granted, but there are other countries where people can pay a heavy price just for getting behind a wheel.

  1. Put It In Boogie Gear On the Backslide
  2. Driving While Female
  3. What If We Forget How to Get Lost?
  4. A Guidebook to the 'Blackest Road Trip Ever'
  5. Traveling Between Worlds Apart
Twitterstorm of bots

The Real Ways That "Fake News" Shapes What We Believe
July 02, 2017

Everyone in your Facebook feed is falling for fake news–sharing it even when there's no way it can be true. But not you, right? You can tell the difference. Or can you?

  1. A Reporter's Journey to the Epicenter of Liberal Fake News
  2. Who Shares A Fake Story? Fake Users
  3. When Is It Prudent To Be Paranoid?
  4. Poison in the Soda Pop, and Other Conspiracies That Spring From A Grain of Truth
  5. How Does a Town Heal From Lying To Women Who Were Dying?
Prison bars

Locked Up
June 25, 2017

Most of us will never know what really happens behind bars. Prisons are generally off limits to the public and press, but several new investigations are drawing attention to the conditions in many of our nation's jails. This hour, what should a prison be?...

  1. How the Attica Prison Riot Fueled Mass Incarceration in America
  2. Working Undercover As a Private Prison Guard
  3. In Defense of Flogging
  4. Norway's Unusual Approach to Imprisonment
  5. How To Reduce Mass Incarceration
  6. Exploring the Emotional Roots of Justice
Alex Honnold

Peak Performance
June 18, 2017

Yosemite is climbing’s mecca. It’s where Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell stunned the world with their dazzling climbs.

  1. The Audacity of the World’s Most Daring Climber
  2. Hanging Out On Top of Cliffs Is My Happy Place
  3. Alex Honnold’s Most Dangerous Adventure
  4. The Science of Peak Performance
  5. The Myth of the “Dumb Jock”
  6. The Ultimate Long-Distance Race
Live in St. Louis

Gateway Moments: Live from St. Louis
June 11, 2017

We’ve all had them—the big, significant, transformations that take your life in a new direction. And even though those gateway moments present new and exciting opportunities, they are almost always by definition uncomfortable.

This hour, in partnership with St. Louis Public Radio, To The...

  1. A City of Gates That Do Not Swing Wide
  2. Adventures on the Woke Spectrum
  3. Shadowball
  4. The Last Game I Make Before I Die
  5. Beatboxing With My Dad
Syna So Pro

One Woman Who Sounds Like Twenty
June 09, 2017

Low-fi artist Syna So Pro loops with love.
art

This Will Shock You
June 04, 2017

The virtues of transgressive, subversive, rule-breaking art, both as an aesthetic and as a way of life.  

  1. A Matter Of (Bad) Taste
  2. Two Tape Recorders and Twenty Knives
  3. Classical Doesn't Have To Mean Dead
  4. Hiding Yourself Behind Characters
Joe at Catfish Bend

Changing A Place By Documenting It
June 01, 2017

Filmmaker Laura Stewart on how being filmed affects documentary subjects, and how that affects the truth you can tell.

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