Latest Stories

Earth
Articles

N.K. Jemisin’s “Broken Earth” trilogy — set in a futuristic world grappling with power, racism and oppression, with a dash of magic thrown in — is rooted in the historical moment we’re now living in.

Length: 
13:54
Ramtin Arablouei and Rund Abdelfattah
Audio

Ramtin Arablouei and Rund Abdelfatah are the producers and hosts of "Throughline" from NPR. They explain why history belongs in the news and how they fell in love with it.

Length: 
23:32
Charmaine Minniefield
Audio

"Praise houses" were places where Black people would gather in secret to affirm their African identity and cultural practices. Artist-activist Charmaine Minniefield explains how her Praise House Project pushes back against the erasure of history.

Length: 
12:47
Jamelle Bouie
Articles

Jamelle Bouie is a New York Times columnist and political analyst for CBS News with a knack for providing historical context for present-day debates. It’s given him a distinctive voice among today’s pundits.

Length: 
23:32
women walking
Audio

After a health scare, Annabel Abbs promised herself she'd make a real effort to walk every day. She fell in love with walking, even began taking multi-week walking vacations. And then she discovered she wasn't the only one — there's a hidden history of great women walkers from the past. So she decided to tell their stories.

Length: 
14:38
a drawing of human foot bones
Articles

Six million years ago – give or take – the first early humans stood upright and started walking. Thanks to a new look at the fossil record, paleoanthropologist Jeremy DeSilva has some new theories about how and why humans took those first steps.

Length: 
20:59
Nancy Fraser
Articles

Over four decades, philosopher Nancy Fraser has worked to expose the deep roots that connect all the crises of our time: racial violence, environmental devastation, the impoverishment of families, challenges to democracy. Think of each as the toxic byproducts of capitalism.

Length: 
18:50
Nancy Fraser
Audio

Hinge points are moments of crisis where a new system can be made. Philosopher Nancy Fraser believes the particular crises we face today are so severe they actually present an opportunity.

Length: 
16:32
19th-century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels scroll on their smartphones
Audio

China Mieville is a writer best known for speculative fiction, but he's also written a lot about Marxism, most recently in a history of the Communist Manifesto called “A Spectre, Haunting."

Length: 
15:36
A wolf eyes the horizon
Articles

Horror writer Stephen Graham Jones loves werewolves. He redefined the genre with his 2016 novel "Mongrels," about a family of werewolves on the run in a hostile American landscape — a story drawn from his own background.

Length: 
11:45
The Löwenmensch figurine after restoration in 2013
Audio

Shapeshifting images run deep in human history, going back to ancient cave paintings. Archeologist Chris Gosden says they're linked to the shaman's ability to cross into the spirit world where humans and animals merge.

Length: 
8:15
the raven
Audio

Bad things happen when people lose their connection to the more-than-human world. "Animals know something that we that don't," says psychologist Sharon Blackie. That's one lesson you can take from the old shapeshifting myths and fairy tales.

Length: 
13:41
Traveling in Canada
Articles

One of the most famous world travelers of any age was Barry Lopez, the explorer and writer who passed away in 2020. We wanted to remember him by re-visiting Steve Paulson's interview with Lopez about his memoir – called "Horizon."

Length: 
12:06
Illustration By George Wylesol (AFAR Magazine)
Articles

Unless you walk or bike to your next vacation destination, you’ll probably have to burn some fossil fuels to get there. Blogger Kathryn Kellogg is a guru of zero-waste living. She has a few tips on how to reduce your impact on the environment when you travel. 

Length: 
07:13
A cruise ship in Norway
Articles

Journalist Elizabeth Becker, the author of "Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism," breaks down how we got to this moment in global tourism, and how we might nudge nations, companies and ourselves to become more responsible travelers.

Length: 
10:55
bomb shelter
Sonic Sidebar

Mary Laura Philpott's memoir is called "Bomb Shelter." It is also an apt metaphor. When the world is on the brink, what do you and your family need to survive?

Length: 
3:30
duality
Articles

Susan Cain is the author of "Bittersweet." She says the experience of sadness can help us feel whole. Cain said "bittersweet" is one of those words we use, but don't know what it means.

Length: 
17:23
television
Articles

Critic Alissa Wilkinson has found that artists have been responding to the pandemic by doing what they do best: creating and making things that — for at least some people — helped them feel like they are still alive even as they face grief and trauma.

Length: 
9:01
Jim Thorpe and his fellow players in a snowstorm
Audio

Jim Thorpe was stripped of the Olympic gold medals awarded to him in 1912, but activists finally got them back in 2022. Today, Thorpe's legacy is about more than medals or even correcting historic wrongs — young Native Americans are looking to him for inspiration.

Length: 
15:37
Jim Thorpe (left) and Tall Paul (right) on the cover of Tall Paul's latest album.
Articles

Tall Paul is an Anishinaabe and Oneida rapper enrolled on the Leech Lake reservation in Minnesota. His new album is called "The Story of Jim Thorpe." Charles Monroe-Kane spoke with him about Thorpe’s legacy, sports and hip-hop.

Drawings of Jim Thorpe
Audio

During his traditional Sac and Fox funeral in Oklahoma, Jim Thorpe's body was stolen and sold to a small Pennsylvania town. His body is still there as a trophy and tourist trap. Native American activist Suzan Shown Harjo tells the story.

Length: 
13:11
Jim Thorpe on the football field, the Olympic track, and the baseball diamond.
Audio

Drawn from conversations with hip-hop artist Tall Paul, journalist Patty Loew and biographer David Maraniss, we hear stories from the NFL, from baseball, and, of course, from what made Thorpe a legend —the 1912 Olympic Games.

Length: 
22:13
man in color and shape
Audio

Tool-making? Agriculture? Language? French neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene believes there’s an even more basic cognitive skill that gave humans an evolutionary jump start — geometry.

Length: 
15:00
Jordan Ellenberg, geometer
Articles

Math superstar Jordan Ellenberg reveals the geometrical underpinnings of pretty much everything — from pandemics to voting districts to the 14th dimension. If geometry is indeed "the cilantro of math," Ellenberg could convert even the most die-hard hater to the joy of shapes.

Length: 
34:00
Poudre Lake is the headwaters of the Cache la Poudre River
Articles

Environmental philosopher and bonafide "mountain man" John Hausdoerffer explains how mountains are connected to all life on earth, and what it means to treat them as "living kin."

Length: 
12:12
Moonhouse
Audio

We're part of an extended web of kinship that includes not just people, but plants, animals, rivers and mountains. For Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk, a member of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, that knowledge has been passed down through many generations.

Length: 
9:35
Audio

People in the Andes have been telling stories about their mountains for centuries. Writer and educator Lisa Madera says they tell us something essential about the nature of mountains as geologic marvels and sacred sites.

Length: 
11:13
Kipling with illustrations from his home.
Photo Gallery

If you want to cancel a famous writer because of his retrograde politics, Rudyard Kipling — author of "The White Man's Burden" — is an obvious choice. So should we still read Kipling? We ask novelist Salman Rushdie and literary scholar Chris Benfey.

Length: 
19:25
yellow plains against a blue sky
Articles

From an early age, Ukrainian-American poet Ilya Kaminsky developed a deep personal understanding of the political power of poetry and language. He explains why poetry is such a powerful tool in crisis.

Length: 
14:15
Bernadine Evaristo
Articles

Bernardine Evaristo became the first Black woman to win the Booker Prize in 2019 for her novel “Girl, Woman, Other.” Evaristo talked with Shannon Henry Kleiber about how her childhood and her writing energize her advocacy supporting artists and writers of color.

Length: 
16:44

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