Louis Chude-Sokei, director of the African American studies program at Boston University, joins us to talk about his journey to understand his place in the Black diaspora.
Read more
The Limits Of Identity Politics
University of Manchester sociology professor Gary Younge joins us to talk about how societies operate based on assumptions and privileges granted to people based on their identities.
Read more
The Genesis Of The Bible
Kristin Swenson is an associate professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, and she joins us to talk about approaching the Bible anew with a sense of wonder and context.
Read more
You’re Lying To Yourself – And That’s A Good Thing
Shankar Vedantam, host of NPR’s “Hidden Brain,” joins us to talk about the myriad ways we lie to ourselves on a daily basis and how that might actually help lead to a much happier life.
Read more
The Scammers On The Other End Of The Line
Yudhijit Bhattacharjee is a contributing writer at National Geographic, and he joins us to talk about his journey into the world of telemarketers and their phone mills selling dubious products.
Read more
A Mom, A Daughter And The Ocean In-Between
Author Elizabeth Miki Brina joins host us to talk about her efforts to reframe her life’s experiences through her mother’s eyes, and her attempts to understand the pain and loneliness of what it was like for her to leave her homeland behind.
Read more
How Pocahontas Kept The Peace
Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Silver Professor of History Emerita at New York University, joins us to talk about how Pocahontas collaborated with a trio of English boys to keep communication flowing between the colonists and their Indian neighbors.
Read more
Why Kendrick Lamar Is A Genius
Music journalist Marcus J. Moore joins us to talk about how this one-of-a-kind artist manages to push musical boundaries while remaining a top-selling pop culture icon.
Read more
What Your Voice Says About You
New Yorker staff writer John Colapinto joins us to talk about the experience of losing his voice and how it led him to look into how the sounds we create are so integral to our identity.
Read more
Is Appropriation In Art Always Wrong?
Paisley Rekdal, Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Utah and the state’s poet laureate, joins us to discuss the places where identity intersects with politics, and why it’s important to confront the language we use when defining cultures.
Read more
You’re Being Judged By How You Talk
Katherine Kinzler, professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, joins us to talk about the biased ways we view dialects and accents.
Read more
What Grandstanding Says About You
Justin Tosi, assistant professor of philosophy at Texas Tech University, joins us to discuss why getting off the soapbox is the best way to make the world a better place.
Read more