Latest Stories

Where Heather and the bees converse
Articles

A single empty yellow chair sits next to Heather Swan’s tall, buzzing beehive in her backyard in Madison, Wisconsin. Swan keeps it there to sit next to the bees — some 60,000 insects —and talk with them.

Opening the hive
Photo Gallery

Heather Swan is a beekeeper and author — she tells Steve Paulson about what it's meant for her to be "chosen by the bees."

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Dangerous Ideas

"Just Mercy" author Bryan Stevenson believes in creating incentives to reduce the country's prison population.

Length: 
2:34
Demonstrators protest police brutality at a June 2 event in front of the White House.
Articles

At the heart of many Americans' fear of Black men is an ugly stereotype — the stereotype of the Black criminal. Historian Khalil Gibran Muhammad traces some of our current attitudes about race and crime to the late 19th century, when sociologists first began looking at crime statistics.

Length: 
12:29
Malcolm Gladwell
Articles

The narrative that police brutality is a question of a few "bad apples" is precisely the wrong way to think about police brutality, says journalist Malcolm Gladwell. 

Malcolm Gladwell
Bookmarks

Journalist Malcolm Gladwell is famous for mining behavioral science for his work, and when it comes to better understanding the intersection of crime, violence, and policing, he turns over and over to criminologist Frank Zimring.

Length: 
4:00
Women Who Rule
Articles

It's common in literary and historical accounts of powerful women to make them out to be villains — witches, demons, succubi, changelings — or erase them entirely. Historian Kara Cooney, author Madeline Miller, Religious scholar Serenity Young, and classics scholar Emily Wilson talk about why that might be.

blurred man
Articles

College campuses have long been hotbeds of political activity, fervent debate and occasionally violence stemming from a war of words, but today, in this era of call outs and cancel culture, there is a renewed and controversial argument over free speech playing out at universities and colleges around the country.

censored wall
Articles

After a polite HR representative called screenwriter and novelist Walter Mosley up to ask why he'd said the "N-word" during a story meeting, he realized how important it was to him to be able to have uncomfortable conversations as part of his work.

Length: 
13:35
Articles

In 2010, then-LAPD Chief William Bratton asked civil rights attorney Connie Rice to investigate the biggest police corruption scandal in Los Angeles history, and to train 50 LAPD officers in what she calls "public trust policing."

Length: 
13:14
Articles

The high profile deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner have raised all sorts of questions about racial profiling and the use of force by law enforcement. For writer Emily Bazelon, the debate has also raised an ethical question: When do you call the cops on an African American man?

Angie Thomas
Articles

The hit young adult author on how she channeled feelings in the wake of a tragedy into her debut novel, "The Hate U Give."

Length: 
9:46
Bookmarks

For decades, Stanley Crouch has cut a singular path through American culture as a cultural critic and an intellectual mentor to jazz figures like Wynton Marsalis. For all of his intellectual virtuosity, we were still surprised to discover the book that Crouch wanted to recommend: Alejo Carpentier’s “Reasons of State.”

Length: 
3:15
chris ware on "society is nix"
Bookmarks

When he’s not drawing, Chris Ware likes to read and look at vintage comics. He highly recommends a book that defies even his powers of description — a folio-sized reproduction of some of America’s first newspaper cartoons, made long before super-heroes and adventure stories took over the medium. Back then, he says, the medium could be anything — and was.

Length: 
3:30
Cheryl Strayed
Bookmarks

Cheryl Strayed’s "Wild" is one of the most famous wilderness memoirs of our time. She especially appreciates writers who combine honesty with emotional intensity — writers who reveal themselves unflinchingly on the page. She recommends a memoir by the writer Poe Ballantine.

Length: 
3:15
Magic mushrooms and our primate ancestors
Audio

Magic mushrooms go way back in human history. Some people even believe psychedelic mushrooms helped create human consciousness. We examine the "Stoned Ape Theory."

Length: 
18:16
Pamuk
Bookmarks

The Turkish writer and Nobel laureate says his favorite novel — the 800-plus-page Russian novel bursting with characters living the life of imperial Russian society — is a complex miracle of a book.

Length: 
3:19
Mushrooms on a tree
Audio

Paul Stamets may be the most passionate mycologist on the planet. He tells Steve why new medicines and technologies derived from mushrooms might save life as we know it.

Length: 
10:17
J woodson
Bookmarks

The author of "Another Brooklyn" recommends a James Baldwin novel she says belongs on everyone's bookshelf.

Length: 
3:31
Nicole Paris
Deep Tracks

Father-daughter beatboxers Nicole Paris and Ed Cage take vocal percussion from the cradle to the stage.

Length: 
5:35
Bobby McFerrin
Deep Tracks

Famous for his smash hit "Don’t Worry Be Happy," Bobby McFerrin is way more than that song. McFerrin talks to Steve about an eight-year project called "Vocabularies."

Värttinä
Deep Tracks

Here’s a very short taste of the power of music. It’s the Finnish acapella group Värttinä.

Bookmarks

Famed novelist Kazuo Ishiguro recommends “Prayers for the Stolen,” by Jennifer Clement —a harrowing tale about young children who are abducted in the midst of Mexican drug wars.

Length: 
3:52
Articles

Why is filmmaker Errol Morris is still outraged by the famous philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn?

Length: 
13:08
man playing guitar
Articles

Famous for his stories of people with brain disorders, Oliver Sacks wrote a lot about neurological mysteries, like the way a song can activate parts of the brain that language can’t even touch.

Length: 
09:36
Karl Ove Knausgaard
Bookmarks

Given the hyper-realism of author Karl Ove Knausgaard’s "My Struggle," you might be surprised to hear that the formative books of his childhood were filled with magic and imaginary worlds. He says Ursula K. Le Guin’s "Earthsea" fantasy series shaped him as an early reader.

Length: 
4:01
Larry Brilliant
Articles

Larry Brilliant is best known as part of the United Nations team of doctors responsible for curing smallpox. But back in the 1960s, he was a hippie whose guru told him his destiny was to help cure smallpox.

Length: 
19:36
ROSS GAY
Bookmarks

Because he’s fascinated by the process of collecting and by the impulse to document everyday life, poet Ross Gay recommends “Gene Smith’s Sink,” by Sam Stephenson. It’s a portrait of another collector — the legendary documentarian and photographer, W. Eugene Smith. 

Length: 
4:04
Wendel Patrick/Kevin Gift (Via Artists' Websites)
Audio

Kevin Gift is an acclaimed classical pianist. Wendel Patrick is a rising hip hop artist. And many people have no idea as they’re the same man.

Length: 
16:19
Susan Orlean
Bookmarks

For as long as she can remember, Susan Orlean has had a favorite book, "The Sound and the Fury," by William Faulkner. A Southern gothic novel set over a period of three decades, the book explores the lives of the members of one family, the Compsons. Told from multiple perspectives and set in several time periods, it’s not a chronological or easy read.

Length: 
3:01

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