Latest Stories

Mural of ancient soldiers returning from battle
Articles

Why do humans still wage wars? Despite their terrible costs, they benefit certain groups, and thoughout history, they've also galvanized social movements and sparked scientific advancements. Margaret MacMillan explains how wars have shaped us.

Length: 
17:21
Ruthie
Articles

Merle was smart, obedient, and always up for an adventure — the kind of dog you can take anywhere. But even the most cherished dogs grow old. A friend suggested that essayist Sarah Miller get a “bridge dog" — a young dog who might make Merle’s impending loss easier to bear.

Length: 
10:28
Prairie Fires of the Great West
Articles

Laura Ingalls Wilder insisted that every detail in her beloved "Little House" books was true. But Caroline Fraser, her biographer, says Wilder heavily edited the story of her family's life on the Great Plains. And in the process, created an American myth based on a lie or two.
 

Length: 
14:07
Fire man
Audio

TTBOOK producer Charles Monroe-Kane is a great storyteller who's led an adventurous life. Here's a wild story from his memoir "Lithium Jesus" about smuggling mob money when he lived in Prague in the 1990s.

"The Days Of Abandonment" by Elena Ferrante
Bookmarks

Alissa Quart recommends Elena Ferrante's "Days of Abandonment" and Elizabeth Hardwick's "Sleepless Nights."

Patti Smith
Audio

Legendary poet and singer Patti Smith has two selves. On stage, she revels in collaborating with the people around her and creating a memorable performance. But she reveals a very different self in her memoir "M Train." 

Charles (right) interviews Prince Marfo (left). (TTBOOK)
Audio

Prince Marfo is the Suyani Cultural Director of Ghana. He says his government needs to do a better job of welcoming African Americans — he wants to see them welcomed as sisters and brothers not just as Americans with resources.

Length: 
7:44
Tree
Articles

Richard Powers’ “The Overstory” has overturned a lot of conventional thinking. Though human characters shape the plot of this 500-page epic, the real heroes are trees.

Length: 
20:23
foggy trees
Articles

Suzanne Simard is a forest ecologist who's revolutionizing our understanding of trees. She has discovered that trees use underground networks to communicate and cooperate with each other. It turns out that whole forests can exist as a superorganism.

General Sherman, AKA Karl Marx
Audio

There's a famous sequoia named General Sherman that's the biggest tree on the planet. It has its own distinctive history linked to the Civil War general and a radical anarchist group. Cultural historian Daegan Miller tells this fascinating story.

Desert at Dusk
Articles

Ethnobotanist Gary Paul Nabhan has been called the “father of the local food movement.” Many of his insights come from the farming practices of Indigenous people living near the U.S.-Mexico border, who’ve grown food in arid habitats for centuries.

Length: 
36:17
osprey
Sonic Sidebar

Locking eyes with another creature in the wild can be a profound experience. For physicist and writer Alan Lightman, half a second of eye contact with a pair of ospreys felt like an epiphany.

Length: 
2:24
"Birds Watching." Printed reflective film mounted on aluminum on steel frame.
Photo Gallery

In Chicago, writer Gavin Van Horn and environmental artist Jenny Kendler visit her new art installation, which confronts viewers with the gaze of 100 giant bird eyes. It's meant to provoke curiosity, wonder, and awareness of how many non-human eyes are always watching us.

Length: 
15:24
Northern Rocky Mountains wolf
Audio

There are two famous moments that helped shape environmental politics. Gavin Van Horn, of the Center for Humans and Nature, tells us what happened when Aldo Leopold met the eyes of a dying timber wolf and when Paul Watson looked into the eye of a dying sperm whale.

Length: 
10:08
chimpanzee
Sonic Sidebar

In 1960, a young primatologist stared deeply into the eyes of a wild chimpanzee. She was Jane Goodall. He was David Greybeard. Their mutual gaze changed animal science forever.

Length: 
2:32
Pardeep Singh Kaleka and Arno Michaelis
Audio

Pardeep Singh Kaleka's father was murdered when a white supremacist attacked the Sikh temple that his father led. Remarkably, he and a former white supremacist met just two months after the massacre. Now, they work together.

Length: 
14:58
An abstract image of a man at a desk
Articles

Daniel Ziblatt has watched authoritarian leaders elected in country after country – Putin in Russia, Erdogan in Turkey, Orban in Hungary, Bolsinaro in Brazil. He says there’s a playbook for how demagogues destroy their countries' democracies.

Length: 
17:55
An illustration of a scientists synthesizing mushrooms in a lab
Articles

A psychedelic research center in Wisconsin is gearing up to manufacture enough medical-grade psilocybin to supply the world. Steve Paulson went to Usona Insitute to see where the magic's made, and got a peek inside the lab of chemist Alex Sherwood.

Length: 
6:48
A wolf
Bookmarks

"White Fang" by Jack London is a classic outdoor adventure story about a wild wolf-dog's struggle to survive in the Yukon Territory during the 1890's Gold Rush. Writer Quan Barry read it for the first time at age 11 and learned just how powerful a book can be. 

Length: 
2:56
Huck Finn
Bookmarks

“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain is one of the most controversial books in the American literary canon, particularly because of its frequent use of the N word. But for Enrique Salmon, a young Native kid trying to master the English language, “Huckleberry Finn” was the book that launched his lifelong love of reading.

Length: 
4:06
children reaching for the stars
Articles

English author and professor Katherine Rundell thinks all of us – even adults – can benefit by reading books primarily meant for kids. Reading children’s books might inspire us to take chances, learn new things and go — literally and figuratively — to new worlds.

Length: 
14:06
glowing mushrooms
Articles

Mushrooms and other fungi are mind-bending. A fungal network can spread for miles, but genetically, it’s a single organism. As biologist Merlin Sheldrake says, “they are everywhere at once and nowhere in particular.”

Length: 
40:07
Woman waiting for moment to speak at a meeting
Articles

Veronica Rueckert, a vocal coach and public radio producer and host, shares the ways women are silenced and offers advice for how to best tap into the power of their voice.

Length: 
12:06
Audio

Why are so many women criticized for "vocal fry"? Anne Strainchamps talks to podcaster Ann Friedman and NPR pioneer Susan Stamberg about critiques of female voices.

raven
Audio

Years ago, the philosopher David Abram was a sleight-of-hand magician who wanted to learn from the "traditional magicians" of Asia. So he apprenticed with a powerful shaman in Nepal, who seemed to have the ability to transform into a raven.

Length: 
14:02
Greg Dixon (Photo copyright gregdixonphoto.com)
Photo Gallery

Thousands of sandhill cranes gather each fall on the banks of the Wisconsin River before they head south for the winter. Anne and Steve visited the Aldo Leopold Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin to witness this migration firsthand, along with their guide: wildlife ecologist Stan Temple.

Length: 
06:55
Photos courtesy of the Aldo Leopold Foundation
Articles

David Barrie is fascinated by how animals find their way. How do they travel thousands of miles across oceans or continents, to a place they've never been, without any other creature to show them the way?

Length: 
11:25
We came over one hill and saw hundreds of zebras.
Photo Gallery

Imagine driving over a hill and seeing hundreds of zebras or a thousand wildebeest. Anne and Steve were lucky enough to witness this spectacle in the Serengeti. Their expert guide, Moses Augustino Kumburu, describes the Great Migration.

Length: 
09:20
Articles

Elizabeth Krohn says she left her body, went somewhere else, met and talked to God. And then came back to dream the future. What does her experience tell us about where religion comes from?

Length: 
8:26
 A herd of topi.
Audio

The fact that so many animals migrate — sometimes thousands of miles — has puzzled people over the ages. Why do they take such risky journeys? Conservation biologist David Wilcove studies migration, and he says the scale of migration is staggering.

Length: 
10:10

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