Podcast Episodes

Barbara Kingsolver Thinks Urban Liberals Have It All Wrong on Appalachia

When Barbara Kingsolver set out to write her latest novel, “Demon Copperhead,” she was already considered one of the most accomplished writers of our…

2 years, 9 months ago

What We Learned From the Deepest Look at Homelessness in Decades

California has around half of the nation’s unsheltered homeless population. The state’s homelessness crisis has become a talking point for Republican…

2 years, 9 months ago

What Tom Hanks Thinks of America

There are few actors as widely beloved as Tom Hanks. Hanks has acted in over 75 films in his 46-year career, winning the best actor Academy Award two…

2 years, 10 months ago

A.I. Could Solve Some of Humanity’s Hardest Problems. It Already Has.

Since the release of ChatGPT, huge amounts of attention and funding have been directed toward chatbots. These A.I. systems are trained on copious amo…

2 years, 10 months ago

This Taught Me a Lot About How Decarbonization Is Really Going

The Inflation Reduction Act was the largest piece of climate legislation ever passed in the United States, setting aside hundreds of billions of doll…

2 years, 10 months ago

Best Of: A Revelatory Tour of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Forgotten Teachings

It’s hard to think of a more celebrated figure of the 20th century than Martin Luther King Jr.

He has a national memorial in Washington, D.C. His birt…

2 years, 10 months ago

What’s Really Going On in Russia?

Last weekend, in the course of about 36 hours, Vladimir Putin faced — and then survived — one of the most serious challenges to his rule in over 20 y…

2 years, 10 months ago

How ‘Being Animal’ Could Help Us Be Better Humans

One of the oldest human ideas is that we are somehow different from animals, somehow superior to them. That’s a mistake, argues the environmental phi…

2 years, 10 months ago

Why This Economist Wants to Give Every Poor Child $50,000

“Wealth is the paramount indicator of economic prosperity and well-being,” says the economist Darrick Hamilton. He’s right. Policy analysis tends to …

2 years, 10 months ago

What the Heck Is Going on With These U.F.O. Stories?

Earlier this month, a news outlet called The Debrief published a story that included, to put it mildly, some explosive material.

The story, reported b…

2 years, 10 months ago