Beth Allison Barr is a Southern Baptist from Texas who was raised evangelical, married a pastor and had two children. She’s also a feminist professor of medieval history at Baylor University, and the author of a book that isn’t winning her many friends in the evangelical world: “The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth.”More
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Interviews By Topic
Polls suggest that most Icelanders believe in elves and magical creatures. And that fascinates writer Nancy Marie Brown, who’s been to Iceland dozens of times. So she did her own investigation of elf stories and the nature of belief.More
Donald Trump won 84% of the white evangelical vote in 2020. To shore up that base, he’s now moving beyond conservative Christian values, to Christian nationalism. That nationalism, journalist Jeff Sharlet argues, represents a real and present threat of "simmering violence."More
When you look online, you might think the most important pursuit in life is self-creation — optimizing, curating, branding yourself. Social critic Tara Isabella Burton says our current obsession with personal identity has deeply religious roots, which then got co-opted by advertisers and the self-help movement.More
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
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
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
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
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
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
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