Ron Powers tells Jim Fleming that today’s teens may turn to violence to express their individuality since all the traditional means for signaling coolness have been co-opted by corporate consumer culture.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
As a growing number of people "come back from the dead" thanks to new resusitation techniques, there's are more stories of what it's like to die. In this discussion, doctors and scientists talk about trying to understand "near death experience."
Steve Paulson chats with Jim Fleming about his recent visit to Cuba. Steve was part of a delegation sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Institute of World Affairs.
So, is it society, nurture if you will, that creates the monsters among us or is it our nature? Enter the Fierce People - the indigenous Yanomamo Indians of the Amazon.
For writer and educator Parker Palmer, solitude is essential to recharging and gaining new perspective on life. He's just returned from a week-long retreat in the winter woods of Wisconsin, and stopped by our studio to talk about what what he gains from being alone.
Rebecca Dopart was working as a Peace Corps volunteer in Poland, in the mid-90s. While there, she fell in love and got married. Just three weeks after her wedding, her father-in-law died. In this story, Dopart recalls how her husband tended to his father’s body.
The common wisdom is that we’re getting more violent all the time. Witness the genocides and world wars of the last century. But cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker says we have it all wrong. And in his 800 page book “The Better Angels of Ourselves” he makes the case for how violence has declined.
White Americans of European descent will make up less than half the population by 2042, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In other words, white people will soon become a demographic minority. Philosopher Linda Martin Alcoff says that shift represents a sea change in how we'll think about American identity. She’s the author of the new book “The Future of Whiteness.” Alcoff told Steve Paulson that before we contemplate the future, we need to grapple with what it means to be white today.
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