The kind of people who live in places like Jackson, Kentucky often get characterized as poor, white and angry. And worse, as redneck and racist – hillbilly white trash. J.D. Vance knows them well. They’re his people. He grew up in Kentucky coal country and the Ohio rust belt - places he left behind when he went to Yale Law School. Today he practices in Silicon Valley, but he’s just written a book called “Hillbilly Elegy," which should be required reading for this election year. Welcome to Jackson, Kentucky.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Stories of ghosts and clairvoyants are everywhere, but can they stand up to scientific scrutiny? A hundred years ago, William James led an elite group of scientists to investigate the paranormal. Deborah Blum tells this remarkable story.
A lot of people dismiss fashion as frivolous, but Media Studies professor Minh-Ha Pham says it's a great lens through which to study race, gender and class politics. "Fashion and so many other kinds of culture and practices that are traditionally associated with women... are often seen as frivolous," she says, and "that dismissal of fashion is linked to a larger, a broader sexism in our culture."
Hanna Pylvainen's debut novel "We Sinners" is loosely based on her own history in a fundamentalist Lutheran community.
Why do so many people think they hate math? Mathematician Jordan Ellenberg says deep down inside, we all think mathematically. We just don't know it.
Graham Robb is the author of “Rimbaud: A Biography.” He tells Steve Paulson that Rimbaud was an extraordinary poet but a manipulative and self-destructive personality.
George Michelsen Foy talks about his book, "Zero Decibels: The Quest for Absolute Silence."
Heinz Insu Fenkl is one of the world’s authorities on North Korean comics. In this NEW and UNCUT interview, Fenkl talks with Steve Paulson about what comic books tell us about North Korean society.
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