In 2006, Alex Miller was a US Navy IT specialist, tracking pirates off the coast of Somalia. Two years later, he didn't have a home.More
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Interviews By Topic
Justin Garrett Moore has been exploring the issue of "care architecture" for years. Moore is leading projects to address social justice and housing issues through empathy and respect for each others’ humanity.More
As a journalist, Bobbi Dempsey exposes an often hidden world of constant insecurity that isn’t quite homelessness — she specializes in writing about issues that have affected working-class women like herself.More
Ojibwe historian David Treuer thinks it’s time for a new kind of Native American narrative, with fewer stories of hardship and what he calls “trauma porn.” Treuer has written a sweeping counter-narrative of Native American history, “The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee.”More
Blackjack, slots, roulette, and sports betting are legal on Native-owned land because that’s where tribes have sovereignty. But what exactly does that mean? It’s complicated, says tribal gaming expert Steven Andrew Light.More
The story of Mazotec healer Maria Sabina is a notorious example of how psychedelic enthusiasts have exploited the knowledge of Indigenous cultures they don’t really understand.More
Hinge points are moments of crisis where a new system can be made. Philosopher Nancy Fraser believes the particular crises we face today are so severe they actually present an opportunity.More
China Mieville is a writer best known for speculative fiction, but he's also written a lot about Marxism, most recently in a history of the Communist Manifesto called “A Spectre, Haunting."More
Tool-making? Agriculture? Language? French neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene believes there’s an even more basic cognitive skill that gave humans an evolutionary jump start — geometry.More
As Steve says in this 2005 profile, part of the magic of Nobel Prize-winning short story author Alice Munro was the way she condensed the essence of a life into a short space. Munro passed away on May 13, 2024. She was 92.More
Frank Stella sits down with Steve Paulson to talk about a lesser known aspect of his remarkable career — his work as a printmaker.More
Our producer Charles Monroe-Kane has a passion for ravens. The raven has meaning for him from legend and art, to the point where he’s had one tattooed on his forearm.More
Dustin Mater is a Chickasaw artist who's fascinated by ancient rock art. He says these images resonate with stories he heard from tribal elders, which he uses as inspiration for his own art. More
In the years when psychedelic science had been shut down, Amanda Feilding helped jump-start research into altered states of mind. Today, she's in her 80s and remains active in psychedelic research with her Beckley Foundation.More
Neuroscientist Christof Koch has pioneered the scientific investigation of consciousness. Recently, he had a mind-blowing experience — both terrifying and ecstatic — with 5-MeO-DMT, also known as toad venom.More
K-pop is connecting fans from all over the globe in a time of great disconnection, creating one of the biggest fan communities in the world. Producer Angelo Bautista takes us on a journey to the heart of K-pop fandom.More
Questions about identity, history, language, what should or should not be taught in school — these are all debates about confronting our past. Political theorist Adom Getachew says many of these issues were debated in Africa more than 60 years ago.More
Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" graphic novel is now a Netflix series. Gaiman has made a career out of tapping into our unconscious dreams and fears. In 2003, Steve Paulson traveled to Gaiman's home in Wisconsin to talk about where his story ideas come from.More