Social critic Alissa Quart says the American ideal of the self-made, rugged individual is built on a lie. In her book "Bootstrapped," she argues that even the people who preached the gospel of self-reliance, like Laura Ingalls Wilder and Henry David Thoreau, didn’t live up to it themselves. More
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Interviews By Topic
When producer Angelo Bautista was growing up, he dreamed of being in the internet. Not on the internet, but inside of it. Now, he's torn about social media. He's still addicted to scrolling, but posting about his own life — that's another story. But if nobody sees you on the internet, do you exist? More
Journalist Sebastian Junger had nearly died when reporting from war zones around the world, but nothing prepared him for the ruptured aneurysm that almost killed him. He's now trying to explain a mysterious encounter he had with his dead father.More
Scientists are revolutionizing our understanding of life and death. It’s now possible to revive patients hours after they’ve been declared clinically dead. Dr. Sam Parnia talks about these advances and the new science of near-death experiences. More
Kaia Sand is a journalist whose day job is executive director of the community newspaper Street Roots in Portland, Oregon. She’s also a poet and she uses both lenses – journalism and poetry – to write about the people she knows and things she sees firsthand in her city. More
We asked Arab-American poet Philip Metres to write an original poem in the style he’s known for — documentary poetry — a genre that blends techniques from journalism and poetry to offer a fresh way of hearing today’s news.More
As a documentary poet, Camille Dungy writes not just about headline-making news, but about news on a more intimate scale — about motherhood, marriage, and her garden. It’s an approach she says was very much inspired by the "godmother" of documentary poetry, Muriel Rukeyeser. More
Nathaniel Mary Quinn was abandoned as a child. Today, he’s a celebrated painter, exhibiting around the world. He tells Charles his remarkable story about talent and perseverance in the face of enormous odds.More
Alma Mahler inspired symphonies, poems and paintings. She was lover and muse to some of the most celebrated artists of the early 20th century. Novelist Mary Sharratt thinks she would have been a great artist in her own right – if she hadn’t been born a woman. More
Novelist Siri Hustvedt knows how the creative process feels. Neuroscientist Heather Berlin knows what it looks like in the brain. Together with Steve, they explore the emerging science of creativity.More
Sitting together to reflect on Barbara's years of work to shine a light on the experiences of middle and lower class Americans, her friend and colleague Alissa Quart recorded this interview with her in 2021. Ehrenreich died in September of 2022.More
While caring for other human beings may be the most important work of all, it sure isn’t reflected in the pay scale. That train of thought led Angela Garbes to her book, “Essential Labor: Mothering As Social Change.”More
Rodrigo Toscano is a serious poet. He’s also a longtime OSHA outreach trainer of workers and the national projects director of The Labor Institute, a non-profit focusing on the contracts and workplace safety of telecommunications workers.More
Daniel Bergner felt frustrated and helpless back when one of his closest family members — his brother — was diagnosed as having bipolar disorder. So Bergner decided to report out other possibilities for his brother’s healing.More
Maia Szalavitz is an expert in addiction. She is also someone who has experienced it personally as a young woman. It was during that time that she came upon a concept that is only now changing how we think about recovery on a mass scale —harm reduction.
More
Hunting for rocks at the beach seems like a harmless pastime, right? For Katie Prout, it’s been a coping mechanism, a sense of control. But when she decided it was time to get help with her mental health struggles, she was met with endless obstacles.More
In 2006, Alex Miller was a US Navy IT specialist, tracking pirates off the coast of Somalia. Two years later, he didn't have a home.More
Justin Garrett Moore has been exploring the issue of "care architecture" for years. Moore is leading projects to address social justice and housing issues through empathy and respect for each others’ humanity.More