Latest Stories

The plants Brooke keeps on hand.
Sonic Sidebar

As a plant ecologist, Brooke Hecht knows plants. But then a few years ago, while at a professional conference, her young daughter who'd tagged along got sick. And that's when the healing powers of plants came to the rescue.

Length: 
8:03
Robin Wall Kimmerer (left) and Anne Strainchamps (right)
Articles

Emerging science in everything from forest ecology to the microbiome is confirming that our relationship with plants and animals is deep. Ecologist Robin Wall Kimmerer also draws on Native knowledge to explain our intimate relationships with plants.

Length: 
14:02
Alissa Waters in her shop.
Photo Gallery

In Madison, Wisconsin, there’s a place a lot of women with scars go. It’s a studio run by a tattoo artist — Alissa Waters — who specializes in the scars left from breast cancer surgery. Her tattoos help women reclaim their bodies.

Length: 
10:29
earth from space
Audio

Lidia Yuknavitch’s apocalyptic novel “The Book of Joan” is one of the most stunning examples of climate fiction. It’s the story of a near-future where Earth is decimated and the last few survivors are stranded out in space.

Length: 
16:36
Products for skin
Audio

Living through a global pandemic is giving us all a whole new awareness of skin. Producer Angelo Bautista has been thinking a lot about his own skin — how to claim it, care for it, and all the ways he lives in it.

Length: 
17:44
sea wall on a cliff
Audio

British journalist John Lanchester’s recent novel “The Wall” paints a very chilly picture of climate catastrophe. It begins in the future, when rising sea levels and an immigration crisis pit children against parents.

Length: 
12:34
a barren tree in Nambia
Audio

Lydia Millet mined Bible stories and parables to write her very contemporary novel about climate change, "A Children’s Bible.” She says that fiction can help us sort through hard feelings about climate change in a way daily news stories can't.

Length: 
13:17
Greenland ocean sunset
Articles

In "Our Biggest Experiment," climate advocate Alice Bell traces the history of the scientists who have been studying the impact of humanity on the climate since 1856. She tells Anne Strainchamps that science has been critical for spurring the world to act. 

Length: 
16:16
crystal meth
Audio

When anthropologist Jason Pine traveled to rural Missouri, he wound up spending a lot of time observing underground meth labs. And he came to a startling conclusion: that the meth cooks of the Ozarks are today’s alchemists.

Length: 
12:31
Isaac Newton
Articles

Isaac Newton wrote more than a million words on alchemy over his lifetime, conducting decades of alchemical experiments. But he did it all in secret. Why? The question fascinates historian Bill Newman.

Length: 
10:58
alchemical recipes
Articles

Pamela Smith's science history students spend a semester taking medieval alchemical recipes and re-creating them in a lab.

Length: 
11:02
pyramid
Audio

Alchemists believed that if they could transform matter, why not also the spirit, or the self? That last part is what’s attracting new followers today, like Sara Durn.

Length: 
8:41
Antigone
Articles

Writer, classicist, and stand-up comic Natalie Haynes makes a strong case for reading ancient Greek and Roman literature in the modern age.

Length: 
7:23
Video

During their visit to Addis Ababa, Anne and Steve caught a show put on by a household name in Ethiopia — the boundary-crossing, border-hopping jazz virtuoso Meklit Hadero.

Length: 
16:27
trumpet
Articles

Political repression and censorship forced a generation of Black jazz musicians out of South Africa and into clubs in Europe and the US. But jazz critic Gwen Ansell says some musicians remained, and they left a legacy of unforgettable music.

Length: 
9:33
(Left to Right) Venice Williams gives Anne a tour.
Audio

Venice Williams, an ordained minister, runs Alice's Garden Urban Farm in Milwaukee. She finds connection and spirituality on this land, which was once a location of the Underground Railroad.

Length: 
5:03
A woman behind screens
Articles

Anne Helen Petersen has been writing about burnout long before the pandemic. Now she says we’re really starting to run on empty.

Length: 
14:26
A french bulldog doing a snooze.
Dangerous Ideas

Philosopher Lars Svendson thinks we shouldn't be stressing about learning to bake sourdough or memorize TikTok dances in quarantine. He thinks we need to learn to be lazy again.

Length: 
4:05
mcdonalds sign
Articles

Historian Marcia Chatelain found a surprising connection between McDonald's and civil rights history when researching her book "Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America." She writes about the intersection of race, capitalism and fast food.

Length: 
13:56
Farmers work the fields on Soul Fire Farm as part of their workshop series.
Articles

Farmer Leah Penniman, co-director of Soul Fire Farm in New York state, and author of "Farming While Black," is digging deep into the soil and her African history to change the story for a new generation.

Length: 
15:06
cooked greens
Audio

John Givens invites us into his kitchen where he cooks his family's traditional greens.

Length: 
3:34
land
Audio

The promise of 40 acres and a mule didn't materialize for most Black Americans. But attorney Savi Horne, executive director of the Land Loss Prevention Project, is fighting for Black farmers to get their land back, now.

Length: 
9:51
meditation
Audio

Andrew Newberg is a pioneer in neurotheology. He says brain scans can show the neural signature of spiritual experience.

Length: 
11:48
Experience the divine
Audio

Jeff Schloss is an evolutionary biologist. He’s also Christian. As a scientist, he’s trying to develop an evolutionary theory for the origins of religion. But he says science can’t explain everything about religion.

Length: 
9:47
lightning
Audio

Ancient humans lived as hunter-gatherers, with animistic religions. So why did people start to believe in Big Gods? University of British Columbia psychologist Ara Norenzayan has a theory.

Length: 
11:04
Articles

The Center for Humans and Nature provides a forum for wider discussion on the link between our evolution as a species and the emergence of religious thought and morality, including several essays by evolutionary biologists David Sloan Wilson and Jeff Schloss.

Chimpanzee
Audio

African chimps store caches of big rocks to throw at certain trees. And some scientists wonder, are those trees sacred to them?

Length: 
16:03
Barren wastes
Articles

Journalist and essayist Roy Scranton has been called "our Jeremiah of the Anthropocene." His book "We’re Doomed. Now What?" is a hard-headed — often terrifying — look at how climate change could transform our planet, and how that impact might shape our daily thoughts and experiences.

Length: 
13:35
man on mars
Articles

Fear about the future of the planet keeping you up at night? Aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin has a solution: it’s time to settle Mars. 

Length: 
8:25
A man and woman share a plate of bacon.
Audio

There’s a popular joke on the internet whenever a gender reveal party goes awry or a wife complains about babysitting her husband: Are straight people okay? Author Jane Ward investigates.

Length: 
11:39

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