Author Steve Almond wrestles with the ugly undertones of America's favorite sport.More
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Politics and History
In 2011, Mac McClelland was reporting on reconstruction in Haiti when she witnessed another woman's traumatic flashback. Just seeing the horror in that woman's face was enough to traumatize Mac.More
Journalist Jim Rendon tells producer Rehman Tungekar that resilence in the face of trauma is actually quite common.More
Psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk is studying the healing power of helping people with post traumatic stress disorder focus less on telling their stories, and more on how their stories feel — how they sound, look, or smell.More
The title of political scientist Benjamin Ginsberg's book says it all, “The Worth of War.” In it, he argues that war has greatly benefited civilization.More
Revenge is a major theme in Elliot Ackerman’s debut novel “Green on Blue.” The novel is told from the point-of-view of an Afghan boy named Aziz who’s seeking to avenge his brother Ali.More
Androids may seem like a modern idea, but there were life-size androids in the 18th century — beautiful robot women who could look around and even play the harpsichord. Historian Heidi Voskuhl tells this remarkable story.More
Filmmaker Astra Taylor wants to reclaim the democratic potential of personal technology.More
Doug Rushkoff believes personal technology is having an insidious effect on our relationship with time. He calls it “present shock.”More
If you want to know what a state-of-the-art election system looks like, you won't find it in the United States. Pippa Norris runs the Electoral Integrity Project at Harvard and the University of Sidney, which monitors elections in 153 countries. She told Rehman Tungekar that most of our democratic neighbors do a better job.More
Glen Weyl is an economist at Microsoft Research and he’s invented a whole new formula for collective decision making. It’s called quadratic voting — it sets up a marketplace where you can trade your vote, based on what you care about most.More
Political scientist Jonathan Bernstein makes the case for lowering the voting age considerably. Like, to birth.More
Cathy O'Neil, data scientist and author of the blog mathbabe.org, warns that politicians are perilously close to being able to tell voters only what they want to hear.More
Consider that the average American voter doesn't understand basic political facts like who their local representatives are. Should they still be allowed to vote? Philosopher Jason Brennan makes the case for an epistocracy: the rule of the knowledgeable.More
For decades, Todd Robbins has been entertaining audiences with his sideshow act, first at Coney Island and later with several off-Broadway shows. He demonstrated a few tricks of his trade.More
After spending time with a real-life superhero in Seattle called Phoenix Jones, author Jon Ronson wonders if people like him can actually fight crime.More
There’s a lot of scientific debate about the future of climate change. But have you ever considered the worst case scenario? David Wallace-Wells gives us one terrifying glimpse into the future.More
In the final volume of Laurie Halse Anderson's “Seeds of America” trilogy, white colonists everywhere can be heard talking about liberty and freedom – just not for African Americans. More