Interviews By Topic

Cooking Greens: A Delicious Family History Lesson

John Givens invites us into his kitchen where he cooks his family's traditional greens.More

Farmers work the fields on Soul Fire Farm as part of their workshop series. These workshops are designed to teach Black, Indigenous, and people of color specific farming and homesteading practice that they can apply on their own farmland.

How Black Farmers Lost 14 Million Acres of Farmland — And How They're Taking It Back

Farmer Leah Penniman, co-director of Soul Fire Farm in New York state, and author of "Farming While Black," is digging deep into the soil and her African history to change the story for a new generation.More

The First Job, The Polling Place, The Community Space: How McDonald's Became 'The Closest Thing To Home' For Black Communities

Historian Marcia Chatelain found a surprising connection between McDonald's and civil rights history when researching her book "Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America." She writes about the intersection of race, capitalism and fast food.More

(Left to Right) Venice Williams, executive director of the Alice's Garden urban farming project, gives Anne a tour.

My Garden Is An Outdoor Parish

Venice Williams, an ordained minister, runs Alice's Garden Urban Farm in Milwaukee. She finds connection and spirituality on this land, which was once a location of the Underground Railroad.More

'When You Hold Land You Have to Keep It'

The promise of 40 acres and a mule didn't materialize for most Black Americans. But attorney Savi Horne, executive director of the Land Loss Prevention Project, is fighting for Black farmers to get their land back, now.More

The Power in Naming an Illness

Poet Shira Erlichman say overcoming the shame of your diagnosis goes a long way toward treating it. Naming the illness — even naming the meds used to treat it — can make all the difference.More

Do 10 Burpees And Call Me In The Morning

Exercise is good for you. And while that might seem pretty obvious, Dr. Claudia Reardon says that it goes deeper than that — specific exercises can actually act as effective treatments for specific mental illnesses.More

Fruit bodies of the fungus Psilocybe pelliculosa

How Psychedelic Experiences Might Treat Depression

After the excesses of the 1960s — and an ensuing moral panic — psychedelic research was outlawed by the United States government for decades. But today, the research is blossoming as a promising treatment for depression and anxiety.More

Seeing The World With A Mathematician's Eyes

For centuries, people have considered mathematics the purest form of knowledge — and our best bet for deciphering the universe's hidden order. Steve spoke with two people who love math: physicist James Gates and science writer Margaret Wertheim.More

The Weird World Of Eels

Eels are philosophically and scientifically slippery — they're still some of the most mysterious creatures on the planet. Journalist Patrik Svensson has been obsessed with them, and wound up writing a surprise bestseller — “The Book of Eels.”More

We Call Them Fish. Evolution Says They're Something Else.

Lulu Miller's book “Why Fish Don’t Exist” — which examines ichthyologist David Starr Jordan — is a meditation on the shadow side of scientific classification, and the dangers of trying too hard to impose order on chaos.More

The Original Algorithm Was Written In The Stars

Putting aside the question of whether there's any validity to it, the ancient science of astrology has a lot in common with contemporary data science. In fact, data scientist Alexander Boxer calls astrology humanity’s very first set of algorithms.More