Lynne Segal, the British feminist icon, has a theory about happiness: it's both personal and political. She advocates radical happiness — finding joy in collective action.More
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Interviews By Topic
Social scientists are finding that generating happiness in your life may have less to do with an arbitrary number — like your bank account or how many Instagram followers you have — and more to do with how well you connect with the people around you.More
Psychologist Laurie Santos created a college course to teach students how to use what scientific research has discovered about what makes us happy and why. It became the most popular class in the 300 year history of Yale.More
Kathryn Bond Stockton is an English professor and queer theorist and a self-professed lover of kissing. She wrote a whole book just to make out what kissing means in our lives.More
In a dark world, poet Ross Gay recommends "stacking delights." Share what you love, he says — not what you hate.More
Ebony Thomas doesn't see Hermione from the Harry Potter series as Black. But a whole new generation of young Black girls do, and they're using fan fiction and online communities to re-imagine a witch they can identify with more deeply.More
Inspired by "Alice in Wonderland" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," L.L. McKinney's Nightmare-Verse fantasy series reimagines Alice is a young Black girl from Atlanta. She told Steve Paulson that this Alice’s superpower is self confidence.More
153 flavors of ice cream. An acre of cold cereals. Why do supermarkets have so many choices? Or do they? Where we might see hundreds of flavors, varieties and brands of food, food journalist Simran Sethi sees a scary kind of sameness.More
Archeologist Eric Cline says a "perfect storm" of calamities led to the collapse of the Late Bronze Age. He points out that we face many of the same challenges today.More
Historian Jo Paoletti speaks with Shannon about gender's ever-changing relationship with fashion.More
The most iconic designers have always done more than invent new looks — they help re-imagine our lives, our world. As Steve Paulson discovered when he met designer agnés b.More
Renowned classicist Mary Beard says we have lots to learn from Ancient Rome, including insights into how empires rise and fall.More
Could you trade the convenience of instant-purchase online clothing stores for a wardrobe you made yourself? Carolyn Smith went for an even bigger challenge: only wearing clothing she made by hand for a full year.More
Avery Trufelman hosts "Articles of Interest," a six-part podcast from "99 Percent Invisible" about some iconic items of clothing — from blue jeans to Hawaiian shirts to pockets. Anne wanted to know how that work connects to what she wears every day.More
Choosing what to put on your body is more than just taking something off a hanger and praying it fits. When you get dressed in the morning, you’re constructing an identity. That’s complicated, as producer Angelo Bautista discovered.More
Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard has published six volumes of intensely personal descriptions of his daily life. But his “honesty” cost him some of his closest relationships, including his marriage.More
Priya Parker challenges us to question why we have certain traditions, and to be open to creating new ones that fit this unusual holiday time.More
Terese Marie Mailhot's brave and beautiful memoir about life on a Pacific Northwest reservation is making waves. She originally intended to tell her story as fiction, but ultimately made the difficult decision to write the whole, painful truth.
More