Latest Stories

Karl Marx
Articles

Is it time to reassess the revolutionary ideas of Karl Marx? May 5th marks the 200th birthday of the thinker, and to mark the bicentennial, we dug into our archives to feature my 2014 interview with Terry Eagleton, who says we never really understood Marx.

Articles

We have hands that can do things like knit, draw, throw pots, and build houses. In fact, there’s a philosopher, Colin McGinn, who thinks hands are what made us human.

Typewriter
Articles

A few years ago, Tyler Knott Gregson challenged himself to write a poem a day on a vintage typewriter. Today, he's a daily Instagram poet.

Audio

Betsan Corkhill founded Britain's therapeutic knitting movement — the clinical application of knitting to treat a variety of mental and physical ailments. 

water
Articles

WisContext — a reporting collaboration between Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television and the University of Wisconsin's Cooperative Extension —has done some exceptional reporting on water rights and the economics of water diversion in our home state of Wisconsin. We're sharing some of it here.

Kerepunu women at the marketplace of Kalo, British New Guinea, 1885
Articles

A conversation with renowned biologist Jared Diamond, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Guns, Germs and Steel.” His new book is “The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?”

Length: 
11:00
Gorilla
Articles

Elena Passarello created “Koko” from the one-thousand word vocabulary of a gorilla who uses sign language. Her book is "Animals Strike Curious Poses."

Man alone in a tunnel
Audio

David Morris spent three years reporting in Iraq before an improvised explosive device forced him to return home. The attack haunted him, and kicked off a bout with PTSD that would take years to recover from. 

vinyl player
Articles

Novelist Hari Kunzru talks about listening through the scratch and hiss of old 78’s for the voice of the past.

Books and books
Articles

The complexity of mental health makes it challenging to boil down to a single hour of radio. So here's a reading list to open up a bigger conversation.

sleeping woman having manic episode
Audio

It can be difficult for those who've never experienced a manic episode to know what it feels like. What can set one off. For Jaime Lowe, it was a fire that triggered a manic episode so severe completely lost touch with reality.

Angie Jiang goes to Washington
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Have you ever tried to lobby a US Senator? How about when you were 17? Angie Jiang did. She’s a high school senior. She’s on the swim team. She loves Beyonce. And she’s an advisor to the UN.

Length: 
7:11
Audio

Ben Marcus talks about another one of the stories he chose for the "New American Stories" anthology — "Going for a Beer" by Robert Coover.

“Refugees didn’t live in town. The overwhelming majority were stuck in a camp with layers of razor-wire-topped fences that evoked comparisons to Guantánamo from some of its residents. Meant for 600, its population had, during my late-October visit, swelle
Video

Molly Crabapple's art — her drawings, paintings and posters — have ignited various political causes, from the Occupy Movement to protests against the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo. She tells Anne how art can be a political tool.

Craig Taborn
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In the pantheon of contemporary jazz pianists — from Keith Jarrett to Herbie Hancock — Craig Taborn is not widely known.  But among fellow jazz musicians, he’s revered. Vijay Iyer calls him “one of the greatest living pianists.

Vera Sung, Jill Sung, and Thomas Sung from ABACUS.
Video

Only one bank faced criminal charges in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Somewhat surprisingly, it was a small, family-owned bank run by Chinese immigrants. Documentary filmmaker Steve James tells the story in his new film "Abacus: Small Enough to Jail," now nominated for an Academy Award.

Length: 
10:37
Arches National Park landscape. NPS Photo by Jacob W. Frank
Photo Gallery

Steve presents a profile of Edward Abbey, whose book "Desert Solitaire" changed the way people thought about the desert. Abbey inspired many of today's environmental activists. We hear excerpts from Abbey's work and his admirers.

Length: 
11:20
Bruno Latour
Articles

Bruno Latour straddles disciplines, from sociology to philosophy, and for the last four decades has been a formidable intellectual presence around the world. His new book digs deeply into debates about nature, culture, and the Anthropocene.

ignored on the phone
Sonic Sidebar

For three decades, MIT professor Sherry Turkle's been looking at the ways we interact with machines. She believes our digital devices are taking a toll on our personal relationships.

The original 1947 cover of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Articles

In 2018, we have a lot more to be anxious about than just nuclear weapons.

Time
Articles

James Gleick, a science writer with a special interest in the cultural impact of technology, recently sat down with Steve Paulson to talk about the cultural history of time travel and its enduring appeal.

Coyote in Yellowstone
Articles

Unlike their canine relatives, coyotes have thrived in the U.S. Despite having been hunted just as intensely as wolves, coyotes have survived.  Somehow, coyotes just spread, everywhere. Dan Flores told Steve Paulson how.  

Ursula K. Le Guin
Articles

The trailblazing author passed away this week at the age of 88. She was known for marrying the tropes of science fiction and fantasy to big ideas drawn from spirituality, economics, sociology and beyond. That eclectic mix made for impactful and relevant stories that transcended genre.

Length: 
7:59
Still from "My Friend Dahmer"
Articles

So can we empathize with people who become monsters? Derf Backderf — whose teenage self appears in Meyers' film — certainly thinks so.

Length: 
8:40
basketball rivals
Sonic Sidebar

During basketball camp in Fargo, North Dakota, cultural critic Chuck Klosterman made an enemy — for life. And maybe that was a bad idea.

Length: 
3:37
Still from trailer for "Voyeur" (Netflix)
Audio

A couple of years ago, journalist Gay Talese published “The Voyeur’s Motel,” the true story of a motel owner who spent more than 30 years spying on his guests while they had sex. The case is now the subject of a Netflix documentary called “Voyeur.”

Eyes everywhere
Articles

The personal devices we live with and depend on — our computers, tablets, smartphones and more— all share information about us. Randolph Lewis tells more stories about how we’re being watched in a book called “Under Surveillance.”

The Trial of Saddam
Articles

The young American soldiers who protected Saddam Hussein during his trial spent hours alone with the “Butcher of Baghdad” and unexpectedly grew to like him. They were devastated by his execution and its violent aftermath. 

Length: 
20:53
A portal to the future
Articles

Science journalist Claudia Hammond unlocks the weirdness of how we experience time — including our fixation on the future — in a book called "Time Warped."

Length: 
12:58
Gazing into the future, forever
Audio

Canadian cultural critic Hal Niedzviecki makes the case that as a culture, we may for the first time in history be more focused on what is going to happen in the future than on what is happening right now.

Length: 
10:19

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