Alice Walker

Hope Rises

Interactive

Hope is a complicated, even slippery, word. One that demands a poet’s voice. Here’s Alice Walker, reading her poem “Hope is a Woman Who Has Lost Her Fear.”More

Latest Stories

The Science Of Looking On The Bright Side

bright brain
Articles

How neuroscientist Tali Sharot accidentally stumbled on what’s known as “the optimism bias” — our hard-wired belief that our future will be better than our past or present.

Length: 
12:21

Yuval Noah Harari on 'Chimpanzee Politics'

Yuval Noah Harari
Bookmarks

Sometimes you stumble upon a book that sets you on a whole new path. For Israeli historian and philosopher Yuval Norah Harari — author of "Sapiens," "Homo Deus," and "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" — it wasn’t a novel, a memoir, or even a history book that changed his world. It was a book about chimpanzees.

Length: 
4:29

War is Beautiful?

"From War is Beautiful" by David Shields, published by powerHouse Books.
Photo Gallery

David Shields says the New York Times is complicit in romanticizing war through imagery.

In The Case Of Iran, Who Decides What Constitutes 'War'?

Airmen pose with an MQ-9 Reaper at Creech Air Force Base.
Articles

Was Qassem Soleimani 'assassinated'? 'Killed'? The legal differences are complicated, says Brookings Institution fellow Scott Anderson.

Length: 
10:04

Lidia Yuknavitch on 'Borne'

Lidia Yuknavitch
Bookmarks

The main character in Jeff VanderMeer’s other-worldly tale is a polymorphous bear who moves in magical and unexpected ways, and keeps secrets in his fur. It’s both a futuristic story and one with deep history, the kind of dystopian fiction that drew Yuknavitch in, again, and again.

Length: 
3:25

Reclaiming Time

Clock
Dangerous Ideas

He’s one of the most frenetically productive, wired guys on the planet, but digital media theorist Douglas Rushkoff is backing away from the clock.

Length: 
3:45

What It Looks Like To Live For 600K Years

Spruce Grain Picea #0909-11A07 (9,550; Sweden) Rachel Sussman
Articles

Photographer Rachel Sussman has documented 30 of the oldest living things in the world. Beautiful and romantic, her photos document both the adaptation and fragility inherent to surviving for tens of thousands of years. 

Length: 
9:25

George Saunders on 'I Will Bear Witness'

George Saunders
Bookmarks

The author of "Lincoln in the Bardo" recommends Victor Klemperer's two-volume diary that reads as a slow-motion picture of what the Holocaust looked like before it was known Holocaust.

Length: 
3:34

Human Cognition and the AI Revolution

robot brain
Video

Steve sat down with logician and mathematician Roger Antonsen and computer science pioneer Barbara J. Grosz to talk about how AI will challenge our own perception of intelligence in ways we might not expect.

A Little Grammy, A Little Bubbe: A Writer Embodies Family History Through Food

Michael Twitty
Articles

Michael Twitty can trace his family’s food history back to the slave cabins and Antebellum kitchens of the South. Honoring his diasporic heritage — he’s both black and Jewish — lead Twitty to the practice of identity cooking. He calls it Kosher/Soul.

Length: 
16:04