Mansoor Adayfi was held at Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp for more than 14 years without charges, and he joins us to tell his personal story of being kidnapped at age 18 by warlords in Afghanistan and sold to the U.S. after 9/11.
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Why Gay Bars Matter
KERA’s Miguel Perez joins us to discuss the significance of gay bars to LGBTQ life in North Texas. And later in the hour, Oberlin College sociologist Greggor Mattson talks about the closure of so many of these spaces during the pandemic has meant to the communities they serve.
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¡Hola Papi! Is Here To Help
John Paul Brammer is an author, illustrator and advice columnist of “¡Hola Papi!” on Substack. He joins us to discuss being gay, bi-racial, finding his footing with family and relationships, and all the wisdom he’s tried to impart to eager followers of his work.
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She Went To Med School At 18. Now She Fights For Your Health
Dr. Leana Wen is an emergency physician, public health professor at George Washington University and former Baltimore health commissioner. She joins us to discuss her work in the area of public health on everything from opioid addiction to disease outbreaks to infant mortality.
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She Survived A Civil War, Then Discovered The Trauma Of Racism
Author Wayétu Moore joins us to discuss her family’s escape from civil war in Liberia, the experience of being an immigrant in Texas, and her eventual return to Africa to better understand the experiences of her fellow migrants.
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The Inmates Sentenced To Die From Covid
Lisa Armstrong is a professor at the University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and she joins us to talk specifically about incarcerated people over the age of 55 who could’ve been paroled early to reduce overcrowding but instead remained in prison.
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Could An Algorithm Predict A Suicide?
Harper’s magazine senior editor Will Stephenson joins us to discuss the emerging field of suicidology, which hopes to explain the act and its precursors, while gaining a deeper understanding of its complexity.
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Was She An Abused Child?
Anna Qu teaches in the MFA program at New England College, and she joins us to tell her story of estrangement from her Chinese immigrant family after she turned them in to the Office of Children and Family Services for overworking her.
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Why Do We Judge Women Over How They Give Birth?
Leslie Jamison teaches in Columbia University’s MFA program, and she joins us to talk about the rise of the Cesarean section and the backlash against it, pitting the procedure against the idea of a “natural birth” and a woman’s worth as a mother.
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It’s Time To Embrace Our Wrinkles
Anna North, senior reporter for Vox, joins us to talk about how embracing aging skin has come part-and-parcel with the relaxing of beauty standards the last year-and-a-half has provided across the globe.
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What It’s Like To Gain A Sense
Dr. Susan R. Barry, professor emeritus of biology and neuroscience at Mount Holyoke College, joins us to discuss three case histories, including her own, of people gaining a new way of seeing or hearing at an older age.
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Quarantines Aren’t Going Anywhere
Journalist Nicola Twilley joins us to talk about how and why quarantines have been used throughout history – and about how the technique has been updated to fight modern threats.
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