Politics and History

Women Who Rule

It's common in literary and historical accounts of powerful women to make them out to be villains — witches, demons, succubi, changelings — or erase them entirely. Historian Kara Cooney, author Madeline Miller, Religious scholar Serenity Young, and classics scholar Emily Wilson talk about why that might be.More

blurred man

College campuses have long been hotbeds of political activity, fervent debate and occasionally violence stemming from a war of words, but today, in this era of call outs and cancel culture, there is a renewed and controversial argument over free speech playing out at universities and colleges around the country.More

In 2010, then-LAPD Chief William Bratton asked civil rights attorney Connie Rice to investigate the biggest police corruption scandal in Los Angeles history, and to train 50 LAPD officers in what she calls "public trust policing."More

The high profile deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner have raised all sorts of questions about racial profiling and the use of force by law enforcement. For writer Emily Bazelon, the debate has also raised an ethical question: When do you call the cops on an African American man?More

Twitterstorm

Journalist Alissa Quart thinks it's unfair when people's reputations are torn to shreds on Twitter for saying the wrong thing. She even wrote a poem about it.More

Famed novelist Kazuo Ishiguro recommends “Prayers for the Stolen,” by Jennifer Clement —a harrowing tale about young children who are abducted in the midst of Mexican drug wars.More

Singer/songwriter Tori Amos tells Steve Paulson that her new album, "The Beekeeper," is all about reclaiming representatives of the sacred feminine tradition who weren't afraid of their own sexuality.More

child getting vaccinated

Producer Charles Monroe-Kane's son goes to a school with a 13.8% non-vaccination rate. So why aren't his neighbors vaccinating their kids? Charles went out searching for the answer.More

Stanley Crouch

Cultural critic Stanley Crouch tells Steve Paulson that Americans have some pretty messed up ideas about what it means to be authentic.More

Created in 1976, this historic photograph showed an adult female receiving a vaccination that was administered by a public health clinician, by way of a jet injector, also known as a “Ped-O-Jet®”, during the nationwide Swine Flu vaccination campaign

Why have some parents started second guessing their pediatrician’s advice, to the point that measles is showing up in Disneyland? Historian Arthur Allen explains how we got here.More

flower

Tucker Malarkey has written a novel called "Resurrection" about the discovery of the Gnostic Gospels in Egypt in 1945.More

Is the American criminal justice system perpetuating racial castes? Civil rights attorney and activist Michelle Alexander breaks down the systemic racism inherent to our justice system.More

TTBOOK

Everyone's afraid of something. Here's a small sampling of fears from Question Bridge: Black Males, a transmedia project that fosters dialogue between African American men of diverse backgrounds.More

snow-capped trees

Laura Waterman is the author of a memoir called "Losing the Garden: The Story of A Marriage." The book explores how Laura could have permitted her beloved husband of thirty years to kill himself while suffering a profound depression.More

TTBOOK

Listener Bill Lowman's Dangerous Idea?  Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) need to be one of the lead agencies to define and defend African humanity.More

man reading paper

How do you plan for retirement?  Parker Palmer talks with Jim Fleming about the challenges of forging a new identity once you've given up your career.More

"Stop the killing" on mortuary van

Tyrone Muhammad is tired of seeing so many young black men die from street violence. So the Newark mortician is using an in-your-face strategy to show people the effects of that violence: taking his work into the streets.More

jesus stained glass window

Karen King tells Anne Strainchamps that there are many early Christian texts that didn't make it into the Bible.More

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