How does it work out over time for people who have made the transition to a new gender? Steve Paulson reached out to a transgender man — Benn Marine — to hear his experience.More
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Politics and History
Wendy Kline says the history of birth in America is the story of the medical establishment’s deliberate suppression of midwives. For her as for most mothers, it’s a story that’s political and personal. More
What's it like to discover that your own genetic ancestry is both black and white? At West Chester University in Pennsylvania, Anita Foeman leads the DNA Discussion Project, where students use DNA testing to learn about their mixed bloodlines.More
From the European Union to the United States, analysts have claimed that the Western world is seeing a resurgence of populism. Dutch philosopher Rob Riemen disagrees though, he says it's time to call the problem what it is: fascism.More
Can you hear racism and intolerance? Jennifer Stoever can when she listens to the “sonic color line” — a way to hear racial division, how it’s reinforced and maintained, by whom and why, and at what cost.
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
Margery Kempe was one of the world's most famous Christian mystics — a medieval pilgrim with a penchant for uncontrollable sobbing. More
Could socialism ever really take off in America? Half a century ago, socialists ruled a major American city — Milwaukee. Haleema Shah walks the streets of Wisconsin's biggest city to learn more about what socialist policy looked like on the ground.More
Bernie Sanders may be the public face of American socialism, but if you really want to understand its exploding popularity, you need to understand its pull among millennials, explains Bhaskar Sunkara, the founder and editor of Jacobin magazine. More
Amidst economic devastation, producer Charles Monroe-Kane asks what it takes to survive in the Rust Belt.More
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
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
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
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
In 2012, Princeton University professor Christy Wampole wrote a New York Times column that every hipster everywhere instantly hated it — but it struck a chord with people who had grown tired of pop culture dominated by self-awareness and snark.More
Countries around the world pour money into policing their borders — with walls real or virtual — while a global black market smuggles people across them for money. Artist Molly Crabapple imagines another way.More
In 2013, violinist Mariela Shaker escaped the Syrian Civil War and relocated to the US, moving from Aleppo, a city of 2 million, to a small Illinois town of less than 10,000.More
Financial Times columnist Wolfgang Munchau on the political realities of mass migration in Europe, and what it might mean for the future of the European Union.More