Latest Stories

Lady Liberty
Interactive

Historian Carol Anderson walks us through the timeline of truly free and fair elections in the United States, a period she says lasted from the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 until a fateful Supreme Court decision in 2013.

Length: 
10:44
Voting Day
Articles

Could we make our elections more secure, more inclusive, or just more fun? Depends on who you ask, and we asked a lot of people.

"We Have Always Lived in the Castle" By Shirley Jackson (Penguin Classics)
Bookmarks

Laurence Jackson Hyman, son of the famed horror author Shirley Jackson, recommends her 1962 classic tale for its scares, suspense, and strangeness. 

striped floor
Articles

In collaboration with David Lynch, Mark Frost co-created one of the most enduring fictional universes of all time — Twin Peaks. Bookending the series' return to TV in 2017 after 25 years, Frost has written two innovative novels that take a deep dive into the history of the surreal logging town. 

Guy under stress
Articles

According to one estimate there may be as many as 50 million workers in the on demand economy, and they're not all Uber drivers or freelancers. Economist Guy Standing has a word for this new and very insecure economic class: "the precariat."

Robot boy
Articles

Alexander Weinstein’s “Children of the New World” is a collection of cautionary tales about extreme emotional attachment to software and silicon.  

Prince
Sonic Sidebar

Chuck Klosterman thinks the Internet has ruined a lot of things, including death.

Books on books on books
Dangerous Ideas

Why do we keep dividing the world of books into different genres — like romance novels, science fiction and literary fiction? Novelist Lauren Beukes says we should simply get rid of the whole idea of genre.

Length: 
1:46
Rashid Johnson, Antoine’s Organ, 2016.
Articles

Rashid Johnson is a rising star in the art world. Using signature materials like shea butter and black soap, he explores themes of race, yearning and escape, and grapples with what it means to come of age as a black artist and intellectual.

Length: 
8:55
Gavin and the Proud Boys
Articles

Investigative journalist Alexandra Hall examined the "Proud Boys," a men's organization whose founder preaches libertarian ideals, the rejection of feminism, and the "veneration of the housewife," which translates to the belief that most women belong at home.

Length: 
34:17
trains for the train sounds, Paris
Sonic Sidebar

Cities are full of music — but can cities also BE music? David Rothenberg gives us a tiny history of how composers have used cities to make music, beginning with Pierre Schaeffer’s “Musique concrète.”

Length: 
03:04
horoscope
Articles

Astrology, the Myers-Briggs test, and even Buzzfeed place you into the same archetype as thousands of other people. So why turn to them? It comes down to crafting a personal narrative using archetypes.

Length: 
10:05
Chloe Benjamin
Articles

Author Chloe Benjamin on how the magical worlds of her novels are rooted in her daily life.

Length: 
15:50
The midwives of "Call the Midwife" (BBC)
Audio

Anne Strainchamps joins a group of women, Laurie, Jane, Carol and Liz, to watch the premiere of Season 7 of "Call the Midwife" and talk about birth.  

Length: 
5:24
Cracked cover
Articles

Even this many years later, it’s hard to underestimate what a popular and controversial writer David Foster Wallace still is. There’s even an entire field of "David Foster Wallace Studies" — one of its leaders is Clare Hayes-Brady.

Length: 
12:05
Code
Audio

Machines that program themselves are all around us and they get smarter every day. But are you ready for the master algorithm that can tell a machine how to learn anything?

Length: 
10:15
Apps
Dangerous Ideas

App Intelligence? Santa Fe Institute president David Krakauer says we're on the verge of abdicating our free will to everyday apps.

Length: 
3:04
Right-wing provocateur Gavin McInnes
Articles

A men's club where "racist" is an insult but "chauvinist" is a mantra.

Niki poses with some of her staff. She makes accommodations for employees struggling with prior convictions or legal status.
Audio

A few years ago, Niki Okuk started a tire recycling company in Los Angeles. Run along the lines of a worker-owned cooperative, the employees are people who would ordinarily have a hard time finding any job. 

Length: 
11:01
Black hole
Articles

Researchers revisit the controversial but potentially life-changing treatment first explored in the 1960s.

#MeToo
Articles

For years, women in science have battled discrimination, old boys’ clubs and gendered stereotypes. Now they’re blowing the whistle on sexual harassment, and some eminent career scientists are being held to account.

Length: 
8:09
Adolph Hitler
Audio

If hate moved next door, would you recognize it? Edgar Feuchtwanger was a young Jewish boy living in Munich when Adolf Hitler moved into the building across the street. Edgar recalls the horror of watching Hitler's rise to power.

Length: 
6:57
Estee Lauder
Articles

What do Steve Jobs, Estee Lauder and Ted Williams have in common? They were driven by individual compulsions.

Length: 
13:13
Brother Ali
Audio

You can find powerful critiques of capitalism and inequality on political platforms — and also on music stages. Take Brother Ali: he’s a Midwestern, Muslim rapper and one of the most popular socially-conscious hip hop artists out there.

Length: 
12:35
Kshama Sawant, councilwoman in Seattle
Articles

Seattle councilwoman Kshama Sawant is the first socialist to win an election there in almost a century. Her platform included fighting for — and winning — a $15 minimum wage, and a tax on the wealthy.

Length: 
7:06
Demonstrators march for "Medicare for All" and other socialist-leaning policy goals.
Audio

University of Wisconsin sociologist Erik Olin Wright was one of the world's leading Marxist theorists. He died in early 2019. In 2018, he stopped by our studio to talk socialism with Steve Paulson.

Length: 
11:11
Norwegian memorial
Articles

In 2011, nearly 70 teenagers were shot and killed in Norway. The gunman was a white supremacist named Anders Breivik. Journalist Asne Seierstad spent years trying to figure out how someone could do something so evil. 

Length: 
10:59
Bullhorn
Audio

Cleve Jones was a young activist and Harvey Milk’s protege, the man who would later create the AIDS Memorial Quilt.  What he remembers about that time is how the gay community channeled anger and grief into a night he’ll never forget.

Length: 
8:25
Trapped in our bulb
Dangerous Ideas

Anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann's Dangerous Idea? To be better adjusted, change the way you think about thinking.

Length: 
02:44
Mubin Shaikh
Articles

Self-described former jihadist Mubin Shaikh believes many terrorists are drawn to political violence for very rational reasons. He recounts his journey into, and out of, extremism.

Length: 
11:11

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