The Interrupters tells the moving and surprising stories of three "violence interrupters" who try to protect their Chicago communities from the violence they once doled out. They believe that violence spreads like an infectious diseases, so the treatment should be similar: stop the infection at its source.
You've heard the saying, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Journalist David Rieff thinks that's rubbish, and he says if you want peace, it's sometimes better to forget historical crimes than try to get justice.
All eyes have been on the Middle East for some months now. But al Qaeda has been conspicuous for its absence...
We all love the feeling of getting lost in a good story and seeing the world through a character’s eyes. Recently, psychologists have been studying whether that experience actually changes readers. Novelist and cognitive psychologist Keith Oatley tells us about the latest research connecting fiction with empathy.
Summer festivals are a huge part of the American music scene -- and of the music marketplace. Why do millions of people risk sunburn and dehydration when they could hear the same music better with earbuds? Music critic Maura Johnston unpacks the economics and the atavistic lure of the summer music festival.
Thebe Medupe is an astrophysicist who grew up under apartheid. He talks about the stories he grew up hearing from his village elders and the astronomical legends of the Dogun people in Mali.
Jim Fleming read “Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and philosopher Sadie Plant talks with Steve Paulson about drug use by some famous writers, from Coleridge to Freud.
Sherman Alexie wrote a novel in response to 9/11. He thinks the fanaticism of flying planes into buildings is the end game of tribalism and he wanted to teach his sons something else.
