Born This Gay
At the turn of the 20th century, a German doctor sets out to prove that homosexuality is rooted in biology—but his research has consequences he never intended. In pre-Nazi Germany,…
Dialect versus language — what’s the big deal?
There are many rubrics that people cite as indicators of a dialect versus a language. Take mutual intelligibility. If two varieties of speech are mutually intelligible, surely they must be…
Kurt Vonnegut and the Rainmakers
In the mid 1940s, no one would publish Kurt Vonnegut’s stories. But when he gets hired as a press writer at General Electric, the company’s fantastical science inspires some of…
Six Degrees
Finding the right six people to make a difference. What does it mean to be connected to every person on earth? {listen}
From beyond the grave
trying to hold onto someone after they are dead
The Inventor and The Thief / Snap Judgment, “Legacy”
This story is a pretty good example of how capitalism kills innovation and how the mob and capitalism work in very similar ways.
Allusionist 58: Eclipse
It's August 2007. Lauren Marks is a 27-year-old actor and a PhD student, spending the month directing a play at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She's in a bar, standing onstage,…
Free Thinking: Will Self, R. D. Laing and Mandy.
the mind, consciousness, ADHD, Alzheimer’s and PTSD
Avoiding Armageddon With Dr. Carrie Nugent
Dr. Carrie Nugent is an asteroid hunter at the California Institute of Technology’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center. She even has an asteroid named after her: Asteroid 8801 Nugent. On…
Violent Women
I was listening to this ep of Criminal about a woman who spent 17 years in prison for killing a man who was choking her and saying he was going…