Interviews By Topic

(Left to Right) Charles talks with Good City Brewing cofounder David Dupee and Lakefront cofounder and president Russ Klisch.

If Macro Lagers Are Milwaukee's Beer Past, What Does The Beer Future Look Like?

Beer has gone back from macro to micro. Russ Klisch (Lakefront Brewery) and David Dupee (Good City Brewing) talk with Charles Monroe-Kane about how returning to smaller scale has opened up new creative and business possibilities for beer makers.More

(Left to Right) Steve talks with Jenny Kehl and Dan Egan.

Who Owns the Great Lakes?

Journalist Dan Egan and political economist Jenny Kehl talk Steve Paulson through the finer points of the politics of water - from debates over water diversion to the struggle to keep the Great Lakes uncontaminated.More

The Challenge? Having Fun at a Vegas Poker Table

Acclaimed novelist Colson Whitehead got the magazine assignment of a lifetime: a week in Vegas, playing in the World Series of Poker. He tells Doug Gordon about high stakes poker and his own "anhedonia," his difficulty experiencing pleasure.More

"If You Want to be a Slacker, Become a Marxist"

Is it time to reassess the revolutionary ideas of Karl Marx? May 5^th marks the 200^th birthday of the thinker, and to mark the bicentennial, we dug into our archives to feature my 2014 interview with Terry Eagleton, who says we never really understood Marx.More

Marx in Soho

What if Karl Marx were alive today and came back for a visit? That's the premise of the one-man show "Marx in Soho," starring Brian Jones and written by the late historian Howard Zinn.More

Love and Capital

For all that's been written about Karl Marx, there's been no book about his marriage to Jenny Marx - until now. Biographer Mary Gabriel explains why Marx's family life had a profound influence on his thinking.More

Becoming a Marxist Intellectual

Benjamin Kunkel is not only a bestselling novelist and co-founder of the literary magazine n+1. He tells Steve Paulson why he's also a become Marxist public intellectual. More

How Hands Have Shaped Humanity

We have hands that can do things like knit, draw, throw pots, and build houses. In fact, there’s a philosopher, Colin McGinn, who thinks hands are what made us human.More

The Typewriter Poet

A few years ago, Tyler Knott Gregson challenged himself to write a poem a day on a vintage typewriter. Today, he's a daily Instagram poet.More

Can Knitting Improve Your Health?

Betsan Corkhill founded Britain's therapeutic knitting movement — the clinical application of knitting to treat a variety of mental and physical ailments. More

Life as a Benedictine Monk

"Religion always starts with mysticism," says David Steindl-Rast. Now 89, he's been a Benedictine monk since 1953. More

The Nightmare

Getting a good night's sleep is hard for a lot of people, but imagine trying to drift off when you have terrifying hallucinations.More

Let Us Pretend

When evangelical Christians say they talk to God, what do they mean? Anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann wanted to find out.More

Did God Talk to Me?

"To The Best Of Our Knowledge" producer and interviewer Charles Monroe-Kane started hearing voices when he was a child. He became a child preacher once he thought God was talking to him. More

Foxconn Taps Into The Plenitude And Perils Of Great Lakes Water

WisContext — a reporting collaboration between Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television and the University of Wisconsin's Cooperative Extension —has done some exceptional reporting on water rights and the economics of water diversion in our home state of Wisconsin. We're sharing some of it here.More

Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.