Grandmothers have the best curse words
two highlights: we hold swear words in a different part of the brain than the rest of language. We often don’t think of the literal meaning of common swear words…
Repackaging the Pill – 99% Invisible
In 1960, a new wonder drug hit the U.S. market. And while lots of new drugs promise dramatic results, this one would actually transform millions of lives and radically shift…
Civil War Widows
A woman who died in 1998 was married to a man who was born a slave and fought in the civil war in the union army. {listen} here is her…
Criminal Episode 70: The Procedure
The history of this country is such a dystopia. Thankfully there always seems to be people who leverage their own privilege to create networks and systems to help people targeted…
Germany – Reluctant Giant
The makers of this doc seem to be confused as to why German people want to give peace a chance. {listen}
The Wastebook
After a senator calls her research a waste of taxpayer dollars, biologist Sheila Patek heads to Capitol Hill to prove what her science is worth. In December 2015, the fight…
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…