Susan Burch teaches at Gallaudet University and is the author of “Signs of Resistance: American Deaf Cultural History, 1900 - 1942.” She talks about the “oralist” movement which required the deaf to learn sign language and lip reading.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Simon Winchester talks about the enormous volcanic eruption of Krakatoa in Indonesia in 1883. The tidal waves killed almost forty thousand people, and the resulting social chaos gave rise to the first incidents of Muslim clerics fomenting violent uprisings against Westerners.
Stephen Prothero tells Steve Paulson about the first American cremation, which didn’t really go very well, and the current craze for going out in a blaze of glory.
There’s a Modern Caveman Movement afoot. And their inspirational leader is 76 year-old Arthur De Vany. A man who says we all should be mimicking our caveman ancestors.
Toni Morrison may be a Nobel Laureate, but she still gets labeled a “Black woman writer.” She talks about her childhood and how the Civil Rights Movement magnified class differences.
The idea of a universal basic income is getting serious consideration these days from governments -- in Switzerland, Finland, even Kenya. Could it get traction in the U.S.? Absolutely, says journalist Rutger Bregman.
We're celebrating National Poetry Month this year by reading some of our favorite poems. Here's Sara with Allen Ginsberg's "Sunflower Sutra."
A small warning, there are some explicit words in the poem.
We know a lot about how slaves looked at books because of the hundreds of slave narratives they wrote. Scholar Cherene Sherrard-Johnson says a fundamental trope in those narratives is what’s called “the Talking Book.”
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