Latest Stories

woman running
Articles

New York Times Phys Ed columnist Gretchen Reynolds explains why movement is so important to our daily health, why running might be overrated, and how a little bit of pain can really maximize the benefit you see from your daily workout routine.

Teju Cole
Audio

Teju Cole grew up in Nigeria and then moved to U.S., joining millions of others in the African diaspora. He became an acclaimed novelist and photographer, and now celebrates the cosmopolitan culture of global cities, including Lagos and New York.

Length: 
04:48
Photo Gallery

When you’re visiting a new city, it helps to have a guide. Dejene Hodes took Anne and Steve on a tour of Addis Ababa, from the Mercato to the financial district. He says the city is bursting with entrepreneurial energy and ambition.

Length: 
04:06
A moment on the street in Addis Ababa.
Audio

Ghanaian post-colonial theorist Ato Quayson thinks a lot about globalization, diaspora and transnationalism. Because he’s a literary scholar, he decided to "read" a single street — Oxford Street in Accra — as a study of contemporary urban Africa.

Length: 
04:58
Lending a helping hand.
Audio

Historian Emily Calacci says the massive migration into African cities isn't following the Western model of urban development. Instead of an infrastructure of roads, railways and electric grids, many African cities rely on "people as infrastructure."

Length: 
06:33
Mondays, powered by coffee
Audio

Why does it seem like we always head into Monday feeling let down? Journalist Katrina Onstad explains how we ruined the weekend, and how to get it back.
 

Length: 
7:12
WORKER HARDER
Articles

In one recent study, 50 percent of people surveyed said they often or always feel exhausted from work. Emma Seppala says that it’s because collectively, we’re falling for outdated ideas about success.

Length: 
9:32
roller coaster
Sonic Sidebar

Writer B.J. Novak imagines a roller coaster that's modeled after real life, and designed by the artist Christo.

Length: 
3:49
Ferris wheel
Audio

At one point there were more than 1,500 amusement parks across America. Historian Lauren Rabinovitz says they helped ease the country into a period of rapid technological change.

Length: 
10:57
Ghostly image
Audio

Kelly Link writes what she calls "slipstream fiction" — magical realist with a strong dose of weird.

Length: 
14:12
Walt Disney
Audio

Cultural anthropologist Scott A. Lukas describes the history and cultural significance of theme parks such as Disney World.

Length: 
11:49
girl reading
Articles

New York Times Book Review Editor Pamela Paul on why reading — and more importantly, a deep connection to when, why, where and how of what we read — is so important at every age. 

Length: 
10:00
Articles

Author Susan Orlean on how the worst library fire in American history brought an entire city together to save 700,000 books.

Length: 
13:52
ipad reading
Audio

Are we losing the ability to read difficult books? Cognitive scientist Maryanne Wolf says we need to develop a "bi-literate reading brain" so that we can switch back and forth between the deep reading of print and the skimming of electronic texts.

Length: 
9:17
From the Codex Seraphinianus
Photo Gallery

The "Codex Seraphinianus" has a magical air to it, full of bizarre illustrations and beautiful calligraphy in a made-up language. Publisher Charles Miers told Charles why he published the book, and why trying to understand it isn't really the point.

Length: 
8:28
Brain activity
Articles

After months of isolation, the COVID-19 lockdown is rewiring your brain. Neuroscientist David Eagleman says our brains are continually in flux, responding to the surrounding world. And the silver lining of coronavirus? It's probably boosting your creativity.

Length: 
14:46
neon brain
Articles

Writers are used to working in isolation. So how are they responding to the COVID-19 lockdown? Ilan Stavans has edited an anthology of international writing to consider the question. Stavans himself says the pandemic has liberated him as a writer.

Length: 
13:54
Phineas Gage
Photo Gallery

In 1848 Phineas Gage suffered a gruesome accident. BIasting through rock to build a new railroad in Vermont, an explosion sent a 3-foot, 13-pound iron rod straight through his skull. Remarkably, Gage lived, but brain science changed forever.

Length: 
19:04
Octopus
Articles

Philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith says the octopus is "probably the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien.” It has no bones and most of its neurons are in its arms — not its brain. Can we ever fathom octopus consciousness?

Length: 
10:35
Colson Whitehead
Articles

Colson Whitehead’s novel "The Underground Railroad" won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Steve Paulson spoke with him about this powerful, sweeping epic.

Length: 
12:46
Marina Abramovic
Audio

For more than 40 years, Marina Abramovic has been testing what’s permissible — and physically possible — in art.

Length: 
13:26
A still from "Fantastic Fungi." (Moving Art)
Articles

Fungi contain vast, untapped potential, says Louie Schwartzberg — to remediate pollution, reverse climate change, even address chronic disease and mental disorder — something he argues in his film "Fantastic Fungi."

Articles

Writer Eugenia Bone’s obsession with mushrooms began with her love of eating them. She shares notes from her hunts for morels as well as three recipes for how to best enjoy fungal delicacies. 

Length: 
11:50
Mushroom music
Sonic Sidebar

Mushrooms have inspired scientists, chefs and even musicians. Mycologist Lawrence Millman says they’ve also inspired a few composers, including Vaclav Halek and John Cage.

Length: 
4:08
A drawing of a carving by Charles Edenshaw in the late 1
Sonic Sidebar

The Haida First Nation people in British Columbia have a myth about the origin of humanity coming from "Fungus Man." And that myth contains plenty of truth.

Length: 
2:57
The house from Anne of Green Gables
Bookmarks

Ebony Thomas is the author of “The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games.” For her the most important word in that title is "imagination." She believes that without imagination we can't change the world because we can't see it. We can't daydream a better world into existence. It's why she's always identified with another literary daydreamer — Anne of Green Gables.

Length: 
4:20
A knight at the gates
Bookmarks

A girl, a horse, and a magical sword save a kingdom in Robin McKinley's young adult classic, "The Blue Sword" — a book beloved by women of all ages. "Hild" author Nikola Griffith explains why. 

Length: 
4:00
children's book illustration of a city street
Bookmarks

There’s a book that author Ada Calhoun thinks of as both one of her favorites to read out loud with her son, as well as one that has inspired her own writing. It’s “A Street Through Time: The 12,000 Year Journey Along the Same Street ” — a story of one street, leading the reader through historical events and the passage of time, with the street itself starring as the main character.

Length: 
3:41
Apps
Articles

Sara Wachter-Boettcher warns that failing to account for the unintended ways technology shapes our lives can cause us pain that might be avoided if we think about how we design digital platforms and apps differently.

Length: 
10:56
Elizabeth Feinler, Radia Perlman, and Stacy Horn.
Articles

You know the Apple origin story with the two Steves in the garage. You know the Facebook origin story with Mark Zuckerberg in his dorm. But journalist Claire Evans argues, if you want to tell the internet origin story, you have to talk about women.

Length: 
13:20

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