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.More
A Kaleidoscope of Ideas
Politics and History
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.More
Journalist Alissa Quart thinks it's unfair when people's reputations are torn to shreds on Twitter for saying the wrong thing. She even wrote a poem about it.More
Avery Trufelman hosts "Articles of Interest," a six-part podcast from "99 Percent Invisible" about some iconic items of clothing — from blue jeans to Hawaiian shirts to pockets. Anne wanted to know how that work connects to what she wears every day.More
Tyrone Muhammad, also known as "Muhammad the Mortician," is the funeral director at Newark’s Peace and Glory Home for Funerals. He spent decades trying to stop the epidemic of gun violence in the black community he serves, but nothing prepared him for a pandemic.More
One of the greatest walkers of our time, William Helmreich — known for exploring every street in New York City — was an early casualty of COVID-19. But composer David Rothenberg got to walk with him one last time, around wetlands in Queens.More
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.More
What happens when an entire nation is social distancing and avoiding contact? Dr. Tiffany Field, founder and director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami Medical School, tells Anne about the power of therapeutic touch. More
Cultural critic Stanley Crouch tells Steve Paulson that Americans have some pretty messed up ideas about what it means to be authentic.More
Everyone's afraid of something. Here's a small sampling of fears from Question Bridge: Black Males, a transmedia project that fosters dialogue between African American men of diverse backgrounds.More
Inspired by stories of police brutality and the Rodney King beating, civil rights attorney Connie Rice says she declared "war" on the LAPD in the 1990s. These days, she trains and supervises 50 officers in one of Los Angeles' toughest communities.More
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?More
Tyrone Muhammad is tired of seeing so many young black men die from street violence. So the Newark mortician is using an in-your-face strategy to show people the effects of that violence: taking his work into the streets.More
Writer Karen Armstrong's dangerous idea is to love your enemies.More
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.More
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.More
Nineteenth century European explorer David Livingstone died of malaria nearly 150 years ago, but as author Petina Gappah explains, Africans are still debating his legacy today as they assess the impact of European colonialism.More
Do you ever have trouble sleeping? Steve Paulson does. And maybe you do too. How can something so simple be so hard — for so many people?More