Our walking journey in the footsteps of Dorothy Day begins in Union Square in New York City, where the first Catholic Worker newspaper was distributed in 1933, and continues to St. Francis Xavier Church, where a tapestry of Day looks over all who walk through the doors.More
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Interviews By Topic
Longtime Catholic Worker volunteer and resident Jane Sammon and former Maryhouse chaplain Fr. Geoffrey Gneuhs tell Shannon about Dorothy Day's life at Maryhouse, the Lower East Side community that feeds and houses the poor.More
At Manhattan University and on the Staten Island ferry, the “Dorothy Day,” theologian Kevin Ahern and George Horton and Carolyn Zablotny, who are all working toward Day’s canonization, talk with Shannon about the future of the Catholic Church and what it means to be a saint.More
Samoan journalist Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson was born and raised on the island of Savai'i. Rising sea levels washed away the small barrier islands that protected her home, eventually, forcing people to move — just one example of climate change disappearing islands in the South Pacific.More
The debate among cartographers today is about which is better — a paper map, or a digital one? Cartographer Mamata Akella argues that there are merits and downsides to both.More
Bill Limpisathian is a professor of cartography and specializes in a brand new field – map cognition, or how we use and see and think about maps in the brain. More
Uzbekistani electronic musician Andrew Pekler is fascinated by "phantom islands" — islands that 15th and 16th century explorers made up to please wealthy patrons of their expeditions. So, he built an digital map of them, and added a soundtrack.More
At a small think tank in Italy, scientists and philosophers debate the nature of intelligence. Dartmouth neuroscientist Peter Tse traces the evolution of human intelligence — and says our imagination is both our greatest gift and deadliest weapon. More
A group of scientists, philosophers and writers discuss and debate the many different kinds of “intelligence” — and why we’re still grappling with our understanding of sentience in plants, animals and AI. Is a robot dog actually smart?More
At the Galileo Museum in Florence, there’s a dazzling collection of old scientific instruments, including the telescope Galileo used to discover new moons. Cosmologist Marcelo Gleiser explains how Galileo revolutionized the scientific worldview.More
Astrophysicist Adam Frank says there’s an emerging science of “planetary intelligence,” which regards the Earth itself as sentient. It’s a radical idea, with far-reaching implications, and it may just help save the planet. More
A Maori conservationist in New Zealand, Mere Takoko is arguing for granting personhood for whales, who she says are her Indigenous Polynesian ancestors.More
Scientists at Project CETI exploring the sounds of whales have found a “sperm whale phonetic alphabet.” Carl Zimmer, author and science writer for The New York Times, puts the latest whale communications research and news into perspective.More
Marine biologist Shane Gero has spent decades listening to whale conversations. Through Project CETI, he’s found recent success using technologies like artificial intelligence to better understand what whales are saying. More
Roger Payne revolutionized the science of whale biology by discovering the songs of humpback whales. In this 1995 interview, Payne (who died in 2023) described the thrill of touching a whale, and why he fears for the future of whales.More
Time may be a fundamental quality of the universe, but physicists still can't explain what time is. That hasn't stopped theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser from devoting much of his life to studying the origins of time and the formation of the cosmos.More
Marjolijn van Heemstra is the poet laureate of Amsterdam. As her anxiety about climate change and other problems ratcheted up, she found solace in the larger cosmos and became a "dark sky" activist.More
Physicist Carlo Rovelli travels to the core of a black hole, where the arrow of time reverses and a white hole is born. More