Artist, activist, and Afrofuturist Ingrid La Fleur recommends collection of books, films and artists for those interested in understanding Afrofuturism as an aesthetic and as a movement.More
Exploring the Deeper End of Ideas
Politics and History
What do Steve Jobs, Estee Lauder and Ted Williams have in common? They were driven by individual compulsions.More
In One Hour, One Life, you start as a naked newborn. The only way you can survive even the first three minutes is if another player — a stranger — adopts you. It’s a surprisingly powerful experience – but that’s what Jason Rohrer is famous for designing.More
Christy Wampole is a French professor who writes a lot of cultural criticism, including a pair of a New York Times columns about “How to Live Without Irony." Steve Paulson got together with her to talk through the corrosive effects of irony.More
Charles Monroe-Kane talks with Christian Picciolini about his campaign to de-program white supremacists, including Richard Spencer, the most prominent face of American white supremacy today.More
You can find powerful critiques of capitalism and inequality on political platforms — and also on music stages. Take Brother Ali: he’s a Midwestern, Muslim rapper and one of the most popular socially-conscious hip hop artists out there.More
Seattle councilwoman Kshama Sawant is the first socialist to win an election there in almost a century. Her platform included fighting for — and winning — a $15 minimum wage, and a tax on the wealthy.More
Sean Wilentz is a leading American historian and a proud liberal. Steve Paulson asked for his take on the new pink tint in Democratic politics.More
One of today’s leading Marxists theorists is the University of Wisconsin sociologist Erik Olin Wright. He recently stopped by our studio to talk socialism with Steve Paulson.More
Could socialism ever really take off in America? Half a century ago, socialists ruled a major American city — Milwaukee. Haleema walks the streets of Wisconsin's biggest city to learn more about what socialist policy looked like on the ground.
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You’re the finance minister of a small bankrupt nation. It's 2015 and the biggest financial power in Europe is forcing you into a deal you know will ruin your country. What do you do? Yanis Varoufakis said "no."More
In 2011, nearly 70 teenagers were shot and killed in Norway. The gunman was a white supremacist named Anders Breivik. Journalist Asne Seierstad spent years trying to figure out how someone could do something so evil. More
Cleve Jones was a young activist and Harvey Milk’s protege, the man who would later create the AIDS Memorial Quilt. What he remembers about that time is how the gay community channeled anger and grief into a night he’ll never forget.More
Self-described former jihadist Mubin Shaikh believes many terrorists are drawn to political violence for very rational reasons. He recounts his journey into, and out of, extremism.More
For his book “The Sultan and the Queen,” Jerry Brotton has uncovered a history that goes against everything we’ve been told about the relationship between Islam and the West.More
We sat down with conservative intellectual Victor Davis Hanson, classics scholar Donna Zuckerberg, and French-Tunisian political scientist Nadia Marzouki to talk about President Trump’s speech, and try to unpack the question at the center of the president's speech: Is the survival of the West the fundamental question of our time?More
Lawrence Ross delved into the "Green Book," a 1957 handbook to help black motorists find safe stops along the highway, and used it to shape a contemporary road trip that celebrated black history, culture, and business.More
Finn Murphy talks about his career as a long-haul driver who moves people's possessions across the country.More