Rashid Johnson is a rising star in the art world. Using signature materials like shea butter and black soap, he explores themes of race, yearning and escape, and grapples with what it means to come of age as a black artist and intellectual.More
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Politics and History
Investigative journalist Alexandra Hall examined the "Proud Boys," a men's organization whose founder preaches libertarian ideals, the rejection of feminism, and the "veneration of the housewife," which translates to the belief that most women belong at home.More
Anne Strainchamps joins a group of women, Laurie, Jane, Carol and Liz, to watch the premiere of Season 7 of "Call the Midwife" and talk about birth. More
Sociologist Arlene Stein has been following four people who were identified as female at birth but later transitioned to male. She tells their stories in her book, “Unbound.” More
A men's club where "racist" is an insult but "chauvinist" is a mantra.More
A few years ago, Niki Okuk started a tire recycling company in Los Angeles. Run along the lines of a worker-owned cooperative, the employees are people who would ordinarily have a hard time finding any job. More
If hate moved next door, would you recognize it? Edgar Feuchtwanger was a young Jewish boy living in Munich when Adolf Hitler moved into the building across the street. Edgar recalls the horror of watching Hitler's rise to power.More
What do Steve Jobs, Estee Lauder and Ted Williams have in common? They were driven by individual compulsions.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
University of Wisconsin sociologist Erik Olin Wright was one of the world's leading Marxist theorists. He died in early 2019. In 2018, he stopped by our studio to talk socialism with Steve Paulson.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 his message: Is the survival of the West the fundamental question of our time?More
A lot of people feel guilty about something - diet, money, relationships or something else. Our host Anne Strainchamps and writer Devorah Baum definitely do. So we asked them to sit down to talk about how we wound up about in a giant cultural guilt trip.More
We decided to trace Western culture's fixation on guilt back to one of its earliest origins — the story of Adam and Eve. It's only a page and a half in the Bible, but literary historian Stephen Greenblatt told Steve Paulson why it has been so influential.More