What is water? When Anne Strainchamps asked Wisconsin's Poet Laureate, Kimberly Blaeser called up the story and myth of the Anishinaabe. Blaeser says growing up on the White Earth Reservation, surrounded by lakes, made her who she is today.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Self-described former jihadist Mubin Shaikh recounts his journey into, and out of, extremism.
Thomas Campanella tells Jim Fleming the Elm tree once spread its arching branches over trees from one end of the country to the other, but in the end it was loved to death.
In all this talk about the future, we should probably remember that the past repeats itself. Here's lauded Latin American author, Eduardo Galeano reading from his “Children of the Days.”
You can also listen to our extended conversation with him.
There's an entire sector of the economy run by people who are working diligently to get inside your head and harvest your attention? Does that creep you out? They're called the Attention Merchants. And their business model consists of attracting your attention and then reselling it for profit. They're ad-based TV channels, clickbait producers and the big social media producers. Law professor Tim Wu is the author of "The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads."
Steve Paulson reports on the state of Chinese literature today. He talks with Annie Wang, Nobel Prize Laureate Gao Xingjian and National Book Award winner Ha Jin.
Chicago historian Tim Samuelson tells Jim Fleming about the time the City of Chicago decided to reverse the flow of the Chicago river and send its waste south along the Mississippi.
Shakespeare expert Stephen Greenblatt says Shakespeare believed all rulers suffered from insomnia.
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