Someone I’m Not: Chris Ware
From his home and studio in Oak Park, Illinois, artist Chris Ware shares motivations and challenges for telling stories from the perspectives of others in his work. “I distinctly remember…
Allusionist 60: Zillions
They look like numbers. They sound like numbers. You kinda know they are numbers. But they're not actually numbers. Linguistic anthropologist Stephen Chrisomalis explains what's going on with indefinite hyperbolic…
The Mean, Green, Water-Cleaning Machine
The Algal Turf Scrubber (ATS) is one of the marine ecology field’s best-kept secrets. Invented by Smithsonian scientist Dr. Walter Adey in the 1980s, the ATS harvests algae from large…
The Poetry of Everyday Life
How we use poetry to find meaning and to bring disparate aspects of life together. {listen}
Mary Beard abused on Twitter over Roman Britain’s ethnic diversity
Classicist says her assertion that there was at least some diversity under Roman rule led to ‘torrent of aggressive insults’
The End of Sand
Yogita Limaye investigates concerns, highlighted in a United Nations study, that vitally important reserves of sand are running out, with serious consequences for human society and the planet. Nearly everything…
Medicine Is Getting More Precise … For White People
In the past, many of humanity’s individual variations were invisible to us, but today, new technology offers us a way to peer into each person’s genome, allowing doctors to personalize…
Researcher reveals how “Computer Geeks” replaced “Computer Girls”
as late as the 1960s many people perceived computer programming as a natural career choice for savvy young women.
Criminal Podcast: Bears, Birds, and Bones
As long as 2,500 years ago, Native Americans placed the bones of their dead in giant mounds of earth in the shape of animals. The Effigy Mounds National Monument in…
Tales of passion
Author and activist Isabel Allende discusses women, creativity, the definition of feminism -- and, of course, passion -- in this talk.