Writer M. Leona Godin talks about the cultural and scientific history of blindness – and what sighted people should know about what it’s like to be blind.
Read more
Nina Totenberg on her 50 years of friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg
NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg talks about how conversations with Ruth Bader Ginsburg developed into a nearly 50-year friendship.
Read more
The unfinished work of Reconstruction
Peniel Joseph is the Barbara Jordan Chair in Political Values and Ethics at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. He joins us to assess the current push for racial equality – from the election of Barack Obama to Black Lives Matter.
Read more
What does the census tell us about our democracy?
History professor Dan Bouk talks about his examination of the 1940 Census, which both set the stage for New Deal politics and divided the nation after World War II.
Read more
Everybody hates gerrymandering, but it’s here to stay
Professor Nick Seabrook joins guest host John McCaa to discuss the history of gerrymandering — even Abraham Lincoln was a victim — and why it’s not so easy to mitigate its effects today.
Read more
Meet the migrant rebels who sparked the Mexican Revolution
Historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez joins guest host John McCaa to discuss the Magónistas – brothers who fought for anarchy against the Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz – and the very wealthy U.S. business owners they angered along the way.
Read more
Why we can trace today’s America to Reconstruction
Kermit Roosevelt III, a professor of Constitutional law, joins guest host John McCaa to talk about how Abraham Lincoln’s vision of America and the Reconstruction period that followed served as a course correction.
Read more
The people who inspired the Founding Fathers
Historian Marilynne Robinson joins guest host John McCaa for a look at the people and events that shaped the Founding Fathers’ principles.
Read more
When did parenting get so competitive?
Andrew Bomback is an associate professor of medicine at Columbia University. He offers advice on how to break free of the intense cultural pressure surrounding parenting.
Read more
The pioneering plastic surgeons of WWI
Science writer Lindsey Fitzharris joins us to tell the story of Harold Gillies, a plastic surgeon who established one of the first hospitals for facial reconstruction as he worked to heal both body and soul.
Read more
The moments that made their mark on music
Pianist Stuart Isacoff joins us to talk about the history of Western music, guiding us through how the sounds we hear have changed, and how politics and religion pushed their trajectories.
Read more
The legendary hypocrisy of Thomas Jefferson
Prof. Thomas S. Kidd joins guest host John McCaa to discuss the ways Thomas Jefferson diverged from his own moral compass, from owning enslaved people to religion, and how it complicates the portrait of a man we know from history books.
Read more