Latest Stories

give the gift of a clean kitchen
Articles

Psychologist Elizabeth Dunn on how to spend money on ourselves and others in a way that maximizes happiness.

Length: 
08:54
Werner Herzog
Bookmarks

Filmmaker Werner Herzog, whose films include "Grizzly Man" and "Cave of the Forgotten Dreams," recommends a nonfiction collection of J.A. Baker's observations of peregrine falcons, recorded in the early 1960s.

Length: 
3:18
Martin Amis
Bookmarks

Martin Amis has written his fair share of novels and essay collections. For a writer, you expect their favorite books to be a source of inspiration. For Amis, Saul Bellow's 1953 novel is a source of writer's block.

Length: 
3:58
desks
Articles

Young people seem to be feeling the pressure to be perfect more than anyone else. Social psychologist Tom Curran tells us how neoliberalism and the digital age created a generation that feels guilty about falling short of flawlessness.

Length: 
6:54
Kim on screen
Articles

Author Lucas Mann writes that calling reality TV a guilty pleasure is "the dumbest cultural cliche." "To The Best Of Our Knowledge" producer Haleema Shah asked him about his relationship with reality TV and the person he watches it with — his wife.

Length: 
9:58
Alice Walker
Bookmarks

Alice Walker recommends Richard Yates' novel following an advertising executive whose seemingly successful life quietly fractures under the pressure of mundanity, alcoholism, anger, and recklessness. She says she was drawn to the book because Yates' world was so different from hers.

Length: 
2:54
Circe
Articles

Circe, the all-powerful goddess from Homer’s “The Odyssey,” is known for turning men into swine, and for her mastery of potions. The artwork “Circe,” imagined by Romare Bearden, is a black woman surrounded by mystical animals and a skull, wearing West African garb with a calm but defiant look on her face.

That Tree in April 2017
Photo Gallery

Mark Hirsch took 365 photos — one a day for a year — of a single Bur oak tree. The project changed his life.

Ghosts
Articles

Steve Paulson's family has lots of stories of the paranormal, but Steve is the family skeptic. So he did his own investigation, talking with skeptic Michael Shermer, religion scholars Tanya Luhrmann and Jeff Kripal, channeler Paul Selig, and his Aunt Marge Bradley.

Length: 
29:40
satan
Articles

Former Church of Satan High Priestess Blanche Barton says that worshipping the devil is "ridiculous." She calls Satanic worship less an act of evil, and more an act of subversion and questioning norms.

Length: 
06:66
Horror
Dangerous Ideas

Writer Gemma Files' Dangerous Idea? There are upsides to embracing horror — spending time playing out negative scenarios in fiction can lead to a more positive life.

Length: 
3:11
A house in Savannah, Georgia — one of America's most haunted cities.
Articles

The Sorrel-Weed House has been called the “most haunted house” in Savannah, Georgia, and its “ghost tour” is a big tourist attraction. But historian Tiya Miles found another story of slavery and racial stereotypes buried in this history.

Length: 
7:06
NYAS panel on wonder
Video

Steve asked a panel of experts— social psychologist Michelle Shiota, writer Caspar Henderson, and astrophysicist Alex Filippenko — to unpack the emerging science behind the emotions of awe and wonder, including their role in our ongoing quest for understanding and knowledge.

haunted burger
Articles

Listener Jonathan Blyth sent us a ghost story that might make you think twice about what — or whom — is on your plate.

Length: 
2:29
Monster Dogs
Articles

Kirsten Bakis first wrote her story of biomechanically-enhanced, hyper-intelligent dogs 20 years ago, and it’s been a cult favorite ever since. So why create a post-modern Frankenstein story with dogs at the heart of the tale?

Anne Strainchamps and Susan Orlean at the National Writers Series
Articles

Anne recently interviewed author Susan Orlean on stage at the National Writers Series in Traverse City, Michigan.

Ma Dukes and J Dilla
Articles

James Dewitt Yancey – also known as J Dilla — was a hip hop super-producer and pioneering beat-maker. J Dilla died at just 32 years old, and worked right up until the end, making music and creating beats from his hospital bed. His mother was there for every bit of it.

Length: 
11:38
Articles

British writer Martin Amis is 68 years old. He’s written 14 novels, hundreds of essays, memoirs, even a screen play. But he has strong feelings about writers who work past their prime. So he feels the clock ticking — is it time to pack it in? When will he know?

Length: 
10:15
Audio

Before John Muir and Charles Darwin, there was Alexander von Humboldt, the German scientist who shaped our understanding of nature. Now, he’s largely forgotten, but biographer Andrea Wulf says he was once the world's most famous scientist. 

Length: 
13:27
bamboo graffitt
Articles

If climate change is the most urgent problem facing humanity, why are there so few novels about it? Acclaimed novelist Amitav Ghosh believes that’s a big problem. He says climate change is less a science problem than a crisis of imagination.

Length: 
12:31
Studs Terkel in studio
Interactive

Studs Terkel talked with people from of all walks of life about their work, from firefighters, to steel workers, to labor activist Cesar Chavez. As part of a whole radio hour examining work, we hear snippets of Terkel's wisdom on how life for blue collar workers has changed over the years.

Data streams
Articles

Yuval Noah Harari is the big-thinking historian who warns that whoever owns the data owns the future. He told Steve Paulson that it’s become the most important resource in the world.

Length: 
12:42
flee or stay our social media platforms?
Articles

A pioneering computer scientist thinks we should delete our accounts, while an internet ethicist argues we should fix the system rather than abandon it entirely.

internet of nonsense
Articles

Viral videos and memes are good for a laugh — but how often do you think about where they came from? Digital culture scholar Whitney Phillips says the internet is both playful and mean. And we’re not good at telling the difference.

Length: 
12:31
Thomas Page McBee
Articles

Thomas Page McBee achieved a first recently – he became the first transgender man ever to box at Madison Square Garden. He talked to Angelo Bautista about what he learned about male violence and why men fight.

Length: 
9:06
boxer
Articles

Producer Charles Monroe-Kane on how the boxing world has sidestepped brain injury in the ring.

Start of an amateur boxing match, Rayne, Louisiana. 1938. Photographer Lee Russell
Audio

In light of recent boxing tragedies, Charles and Steve are grappling with the ethics of boxing. It’s a debate that’s probably going on in a lot of places and will – unfortunately – continue.

Length: 
11:48
Toni Morrison, via Penguin Randomhouse (Michael Lionheart)
Articles

In a conversation from 2003, Toni Morrison reflected on how the civil rights movement had the unintended consequence of magnifying class differences.

Articles

Francis Halzen, the lead scientist of the IceCube Neutrino Detector, explains how light sensors buried deep in the ice at the South Pole detected a neutrino that traveled four billion light-years.

Length: 
11:40
Articles

Throughout history, there’s been a general, unspoken agreement that getting angry, especially for women, is something to be avoided. But author Rebecca Traister tells us that we should value anger as a catalyst for societal change.

Length: 
16:51

Pages