Latest Stories

Sam Coster
Video

How a brush with cancer inspired three brothers — Sam, Seth and Adam Coster — to build a bigger game.

Length: 
9:51
Historical photo of the St. Louis Arch
Video

Edward McPherson on the legacy of the St. Louis Arch.

Length: 
5:11
Articles

Religious historian Jeffrey Kripal believes that anomalous experiences — near-death experiences, telepathic dreams and other primal spiritual encounters — are the deep roots of religion. You might call it "religion before it becomes religion."

Length: 
13:11
Articles

How painting radium on watches and instrument dials killed more than 50 young women working in Ottawa, Illinois.

Video

Marina Lutz grew up with a father who was obsessed with watching her. She discovered the full extent of his obsession as an adult, and made an award-winning short documentary about it called “The Marina Experiment.”
 

Articles

Greg Cootsona was born again on February 8, 1981. And this is his “testimony.”

Length: 
12:50
Articles

If you think of your life as a series of births, what changes? Why does the birth metaphor matter?

Photo Gallery

How does it work out over time for people who have made the transition to a new gender? Steve Paulson reached out to a transgender man — Benn Marine — to hear his experience.

Length: 
06:01
Articles

Wendy Kline says the history of birth in America is the story of the medical establishment’s deliberate suppression of midwives. For her as for most mothers, it’s a story that’s political and personal.  

Length: 
15:05
Students testing their DNA
Articles

What's it like to discover that your own genetic ancestry is both black and white? At West Chester University in Pennsylvania, Anita Foeman leads the DNA Discussion Project, where students use DNA testing to learn about their mixed bloodlines.

Length: 
14.22
Philip Glass
Audio

Philip Glass the avant-garde composer has composed operas, symphonies, film scores. He also wrote a memoir called “Words Without Music.”

Length: 
12:27
Audio

Caryn McKechnie didn’t like high school, but now she’s a college senior working on her teaching certificate. She went back to her high school to interview her favorite teacher. And that teacher? He left the public schools altogether.

Length: 
12:33
Evelyn Glennie (Caroline Purday)
Deep Tracks

Evelyn Glennie is an award winning solo percussionist and composer who performs with great orchestras and popular artists. She's also deaf. She talks with Steve Paulson about touching sound.

Length: 
13:33
Toni Blackman
Deep Tracks

When it comes to crossing musical borders, hip hop artist Toni Blackman has crossed so many and traveled so far, she ended up at the US State Department as its first ever Hip Hop Ambassador. Here’s what she sounded like live in our studio.

Length: 
15:30
Articles

Jazz pianist Robert Glasper started messing around with hip hop. What emerged was a casserole of R&B, jazz, hip hop, and even rock and roll.

Length: 
14:23
Fighter jets
Articles

From the European Union to the United States, analysts have claimed that the Western world is seeing a resurgence of populism. Dutch philosopher Rob Riemen disagrees though, he says it's time to call the problem what it is: fascism.

Length: 
11:23
Dictators who are also authors
Articles

When they weren’t committing mass murder, many of the noteworthy authoritarian leaders of the 20th century wrote books. Terrible books. Journalist Daniel Kalder read all of them.

Length: 
7:57
From Vivienne's Shadow Walk in Venice
Articles

Sound artist Vivienne Corringham takes us on one of her "shadow walks," where she records local spaces and how they affect the people who live there, then "sings the walk" through vocal improvisations.

Length: 
09:10
Interactive

Well, maybe not all of them. But we'd like to get there! In "Listening to the City" we travel from New York to Los Angeles to Jacksonville to Baltimore and beyond, seeking to better understand the urban environment through some seriously close listening. 

gas station
Articles

Can you hear racism and intolerance? Jennifer Stoever can when she listens to the “sonic color line” — a way to hear racial division, how it’s reinforced and maintained, by whom and why, and at what cost. 
 

Length: 
13:51
Amanda Shires
Deep Tracks

While pregnant with her first child, Amanda Shires was playing fiddle on the road for her husband, the country superstar, Jason Isbell. Near the end of her pregnancy, touring got to be too much. So she stayed home, alone, for weeks… with nothing to do but write songs.

Length: 
11:58
Water walkers
Video

Since 2003, Grandma Josephine Mandamin led fellow Anishinaabe women on sacred “water walks” around Great Lakes. Fellow water walker, Siobhan Marks, tells her story.

Length: 
6:11
Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail.
Articles

Sean Wilentz is a leading American historian and a proud liberal. Steve Paulson asked for his take on the new pink tint in Democratic politics.

Length: 
9:24
Articles

Margery Kempe was one of the world's most famous Christian mystics — a medieval pilgrim with a penchant for uncontrollable sobbing. 

An aerial shot of the Garden Homes neighborhood in Milwaukee.
Photo Gallery

Could socialism ever really take off in America? Half a century ago, socialists ruled a major American city — Milwaukee. Haleema Shah walks the streets of Wisconsin's biggest city to learn more about what socialist policy looked like on the ground.

Length: 
11:58
we are the 99 percent
Articles

Bernie Sanders may be the public face of American socialism, but if you really want to understand its exploding popularity, you need to understand its pull among millennials, explains Bhaskar Sunkara, the founder and editor of Jacobin magazine. ​​​​​

Length: 
10:43
Jacqueline Woodson
Articles

Author Jacqueline Woodson writes the kind of “black girl narrative” that didn’t exist when she was younger — and she’s always wished she had to read.

Potato gleaners in France
Articles

Influential French New Wave filmmaker Agnes Varda has passed away at 90. She died of breast cancer in her home in Paris. In 2002, Steve spoke to her about her seminal work "The Gleaners and I."

Length: 
8:20
The Lucky Inn in Center of the World, Ohio
Photo Gallery

Amidst economic devastation, producer Charles Monroe-Kane asks what it takes to survive in the Rust Belt.

Length: 
36:18
Gorilla
Articles

What separates your mind from an animal's? It's a question we've all asked, but renowned primatologist Frans de Waal says there's no point trying to rank who's smarter or dumber in the animal world. In fact, he believes there's no clear dividing line between humans and the rest of the animal world.

Length: 
13:30

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