Peter Edelman's Dangerous Idea? Putting people to work doing things we need done.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Angie da Silva is a historian of black cultural life in the United States, going back to the Civil War. She collects stories, both through oral history and archival research. But she's not merely a writer. She brings these stories to life through historical reenactment, often as a slave character she's created named Lila. She says that the stories she hears and tells are too often left out of our history books.
In this interview, she talks about her work and tells the story of Mary Meachum, a free black abolitionist who worked on the Mississippi in St. Louis.
For as closely linked as the voice is to our body and sense of identity, there are also a lot of external forces affecting our voices, both social and technological. In fact, when we're talking about mediated voices—voices we hear in music, film, and of course, on the radio—we're actually not talking about "voices" any more. We're talking about signal processing. And, as media historian Jonathan Sterne tells Craig Eley, signal processing shapes the sound of all vocal media, from your telephone calls to the music of T-Pain.
Psychologists John and Julie Gottman are famous for being able to predict with 94% accuracy whether a couple will break up, stay together unhappily, or stay together happily. In their Love Lab, they've identified hidden patterns of behavior that can strengthen or weaken relationships. If we'd known the secret to a good marriage was non-linear differential equations, we might have paid more attention in math class.
Why has America stopped inventing? Americans invent less than half of what we did a century ago. Half. Why? Are we less creative then we were 100 years ago?
David Schmader thinks "Showgirls" is the most brilliant bad movie ever made. He did a commentary for the new DVD edition and tells Steve Paulson why it's so hilarious.
Eric Schlosser says our marijuana laws have a lot to do with class and race prejudice.
David Gewirtzman is a Holocaust survivor from Poland. Jacqueline Murekatete is a University student who lived through the tribal massacres in Rwanda. The two tour together speaking about the horrors of genocide.
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