David Foster Wallace gave the commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005. It was popular enough to eventually be published in a thin little book called “This Is Water.”

David Foster Wallace's essays have their own unique cult following. There’s one, “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” which is a hilarious diatribe about cruise ships, which convinced many of us we should never, ever go on a cruise.

Rodrigo Toscano is a serious poet. He’s also a longtime OSHA outreach trainer of workers and the national projects director of The Labor Institute, a non-profit focusing on the contracts and workplace safety of telecommunications workers.

Geologist Marcia Bjornerud has a profound understanding of Earth's deep history. The author of "Timefulness," she says geologic literacy would give us a much healthier sense of time. 

Gül Dölen is a pioneering neuroscientist who's investigating the “critical periods” of psychedelics, including studies where she's given MDMA — also known as “Molly” — to octopuses.

Sitting together to reflect on Barbara's years of work to shine a light on the experiences of middle and lower class Americans, her friend and colleague Alissa Quart recorded this interview with her in 2021. Ehrenreich died in September of 2022.

Hunting for rocks at the beach seems like a harmless pastime, right? For Katie Prout, it’s been a coping mechanism, a sense of control. But when she decided it was time to get help with her mental health struggles, she was met with endless obstacles.

Stephen Alvarez — a National Geographic photographer and founder of the Ancient Art Archive — has spent years documenting ancient rock art around the world. He takes Steve Paulson on a long hike in the Cumberland Plateau, where they find an "unnamed cave" with 2,000-year old engravings.

Aside from acting and woodworking, Nick Offerman has another obsession — the Kentucky writer Wendell Berry. Offerman told Steve Paulson that his admiration of Berry is rooted in their shared belief in the enduring value of craftsmanship and hard work.

Naturalist Dick Proenneke led a legendary life alone in the Alaskan wilderness. After Proenneke's death in 2003, master craftsman Monroe Robinson painstakingly reproduced everything Dick made to preserve a piece of that life for future generations.

Behavioral neurologist Michael Trimble takes us on an evolutionary journey to unpack one of the few things that make Homo sapiens unique — we cry emotional tears. 

When the "Free Britney" movement started, it was initially treated as a joke. But the fan movement has drawn attention to exploitative conservatorship arrangements that celebrities like Britney Spears have been subjected to. Filmmaker Samantha Stark tells us the story of how the fans saved Britney's life.

Back in 1995, Goose Island created one of the most iconic craft beers of all time — Bourbon County Stout. Which — as Chicago Tribune beer writer Josh Noel explains — was why it was such a shock when they sold the brewery to Anheuser-Busch.