Latest Stories

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
The Maasai have lived alongside the Serengeti wildlife for generations.
Articles

Science journalist Sonia Shah, herself the child of Indian immigrants, has long been fascinated with the way animals, people and even microbes move. She says migration is both a crisis and an opportunity.

Length: 
09:30
rings of water in a puddle
Articles

Anthropologist Enrique Salmon formulated the concept of “kincentricity,” a worldview that sees everything around us — plants, animals, rocks, wind — as our direct relative. As Salmon says, “the rain is us, and we are the rain.”

Length: 
38:34
rainforest
Audio

Ann Patchett's "State of Wonder" is a story about medical ethics and self-discovery when everything seems lost. Patchett tells Anne about her own experience visiting the Amazon while researching her novel.

Length: 
11:29
A false bull
Audio

Mark Sundeen tells Anne he accepted an advance to write a travel book about bull-fighting in Spain. What he wrote instead was an over-the-top fake documentary.

Length: 
12:45
Pro-bee is pro-human
Audio

When we talk about bees, usually we mean honeybees. Or bumblebees. But that’s just two out of 20,000 different species of bees. Thor Hanson tells Anne about how different species of bees and humanity have developed dependence on one another.

sky
Dangerous Ideas

Magician Nate Staniforth has a dangerous idea for you. Tonight, after dark, go outside and look up to the sky.

Length: 
2:37
Site of Thoreau's Hut, Concord, Mass.
Articles

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life." Those famous lines from Henry David Thoreau's "Walden" have inspired generations of people — including his biographer, Laura Dassow Walls.

Catan
Articles

Board game critic Eric Thurm argues that games carry subliminal messages — and that even some of the most innocuous games are often more political than we think.
 

Length: 
14:47
Mahjong tiles
Interactive

Board games are a tradition for a lot of us. But have you ever thought about where those traditions come from? Producer Angelo Bautista investigates the history of mahjong.

Length: 
22:56
A man with totalitarian ideas and conspiracy swirling around him.
Articles

Examining both historical and present-day moments of widespread loneliness, philosopher Samantha Rose Hill argues we must understand our feelings of loneliness — otherwise they could be exploited to control us.

Length: 
14:47
A Black woman with her face on her knee
Audio

Poet Claudia Rankine spoke to Anne about the loneliness of being Black in America, and how the social isolation of the pandemic woke Black Americans up.

Length: 
15:57
Petina Gappah on "Persuasion"
Bookmarks

Author Petina Gappah recommends a book she explains is “The most African of Jane Austen’s novels.” Her reason why is a look at women in Africa today told through the eyes of two novelists: a Zimbabwean in 2020 and English woman in 1818.

Length: 
3:23
Philip Pullman
Bookmarks

Philip Pullman — author of the fantasy classic "His Dark Materials" — is clearly attuned to the imaginative world of children. So maybe it’s not surprising that the book that exerted such a pull on his own imagination was "The Pocket Atlas of the World," which he first encountered at the age of nine.

Length: 
3:43
ruth ozeki
Bookmarks

For her own book, author Ruth Ozeki drew from “Kamikaze Diaries,” a collection of writings left behind by the young soldiers who died on suicide missions. They represent a generation of brilliant, highly educated young students who were conscripted into the army and ordered not just to kill but to die.

Length: 
3:38
maps and guides
Sonic Sidebar

Dave Eggers – the writer and founder of McSweeney’s – has been all over the world. Along the way, he developed his own personal code of travel ethics.

Length: 
04:11
Helping hands while traveling. Illustration By George Wylesol (AFAR Magazine)
Articles

What’s the most uncomfortable you’ve ever been on a trip? Anu Taranath is a social justice facilitator and teacher, used to having difficult conversations about race, identity and privilege. She says those are issues that come up all the time when Americans travel abroad.

Length: 
13:15
Bookmarks

Nature writer and adventurer Robert Macfarlane has given away one book more than any other volume. It's "The Living Mountain," by Scottish writer and poet Nan Shepherd.

Length: 
4:40
Screenshot from "Desert Bus" playthrough by Phrasz013.
Sonic Sidebar

A simulated eight-hour bus drive earns you one point. Why would anyone want to play a game like that?

Length: 
3:04
Mark playing a game in his basement.
Audio

After suffering a terrible concussion, game designer Jane McGonigal created a game to help her feel better. In the years since, it's helped nearly half a million other people overcome depression, anxiety and other mood disorders.

Length: 
12:42
 Early fall on the pond in "Walden, a game."USC Game Innovation Lab
Video

Game developer Tracy Fullerton tells us why Henry David Thoreau would play her new game. It’s called “Walden.”

Length: 
8:46

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