May 19, 2023
The Prison They Didn't Build
There's a meadow in eastern Kentucky where people sometimes hunt mushrooms, get married, attend a music festival. Something that's not happening? There's no prison getting built. This week, Judah Schept tells us why that prison was a close call.
May 12, 2023
Thinking with Freud
Parapraxis is a new magazine that examines the psychic mechanisms of our social lives. This week, a conversation with its founding editor, Hannah Zeavin, about the magazine, gender panics, fears of discussing whiteness in a psychoanalytic context, and more.
April 7, 2023
How to Survive the Future Episodes 1 & 2
This week, the first two episodes of How to Survive the Future, a podcast about today, from the perspective of tomorrow. But first, a frog in a bedroom leads to a bit of climate panic.
March 24, 2023
3 Music Stories
What it took to turn Anne Frank’s diary into a mainstage opera; a new album from Witness Protection; and mysterious music coming into the radio station
March 17, 2023
Left is Not Woke with Susan Neiman
Philosopher Susan Neiman on why the left should be wary of wokeness, how Germany’s reckoning with its past has become more complicated, and why the differences between two European philosophers - Immanuel Kant and Michel Foucault – matter for politics today.
March 10, 2023
Veterans Doing Art
Todd Burkhardt is a veteran, and he’s started asking other veterans to do needle felting with him. And drawing. And making masks. This week, what happens when vets do art.
March 3, 2023
Replay: Becoming a Participant in the Landscape
Sam’s day job involves removing invasive plants and restoring native ones. Fire is one of the ways he does that. He’s a lifelong hunter, too - that’s what got him into landscape restoration. This week, a walk in the woods with Sam Shoaf.
February 24, 2023
Family Policing
We think of the foster care system as being about care. Micol Seigel says within the system people do care for each other. But it’s primarily about policing.
February 17, 2023
Mixtape
It’s a mixtape! Five songs (okay, stories), by five different producers. Three are about being behind the scenes. One’s about your dad retiring. And an investigation into love.
February 10, 2023
Jack and Seigen
Jack was studying vocal performance when he met Seigen at the local Zen center. They became good friends. They took walks, stopping to look at every tree. Then Seigen asked Jack to drive him to an execution.
January 27, 2023
Comic Books and Billboard Charts, Collecting and Ranking
Malcolm Mobutu Smith on comic books, collecting, and the exhibit he just put together based on that collection. Then, Bill Carroll uses the quantitative skills he developed as a chemist to analyze the billboard charts of the 1960s and 70s.
January 13, 2023
If My Hands Could Look Like Hers
First, a conversation with artist Honey Hodges about collages, immigrating to the U.S., and the opportunity to care for someone who has always taken care of you. Then, naturalist Jim Eagleman reminds us why we should go outside in the winter, and at night.
January 6, 2023
Censorship and Freedom
Three stories. One about the challenges of accessing books in prison. One about how overlooking a neighborhood’s history has affected the place. One about a comic book artist who has yet to experience writers’ block.
December 23, 2022
Mothering on Two Sides of the Atlantic
A conversation with novelist Jacinda Townsend about her new novel, which tackles the subject of motherhood from two perspectives on different sides of the world.
December 30, 2022
A Graphic Novel about the Medicalization of Death and Dying
The graphic novel Headland is about a woman in a hospital, the wilderness she visits in her mind, and the tortoise she meets there. It’s also about the medicalization of death and dying. This week, we talk with the author, Kate Schneider. Plus, Midwestern Movies, with Alicia Kozma.
December 16, 2022
Indiana's Oil and Gas Boom Still Echoes Today
Scholar and writer Ava Tomasula y Garcia tells the story of the Calumet Region, how the gas boom started with a bang, brought major industry and new racial dynamics, and why “the Rust Belt” is a bit of a misnomer.
