The Root Cause
Padraic X. Scanlan tells the real history of the Irish Potato Famine
By Stephanie Bastek Friday, March 14, 2025
Something New in the West
Kurt Beals on translating All Quiet on the Western Front
By Stephanie Bastek Friday, February 28, 2025
Family/History
David Levering Lewis digs into his own origin story
By Stephanie Bastek Friday, February 14, 2025
The Epic Viking Saga of the Everyday
Eleanor Barraclough on the ordinary people of Norse history
By Stephanie Bastek Friday, January 31, 2025
Keepers of the Old Ways
Eliot Stein on the people keeping cultural traditions alive
By Stephanie Bastek Friday, January 17, 2025
The Snow Maiden
Our final episode of 2018 is a send-off to the solstice
By Stephanie Bastek Monday, December 30, 2024
Ho Ho Horror
Why not make this Christmas a little darker?
By Stephanie Bastek Friday, December 27, 2024
Kinship and Contradictions
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz on the complexities of Native American identity
By Stephanie Bastek Friday, December 13, 2024
Overconsumed
Adam Minter on what happens to all the stuff we downsize, declutter, and discard
By Stephanie Bastek Friday, November 29, 2024
Fiction, Fakery, and Factory Farming
Spanish novelist Munir Hachemi talks about Living Things
By Stephanie Bastek Friday, November 15, 2024
Read Me A Poem, Won’t You?
Behind the scenes of our sister podcast
By Stephanie Bastek Friday, July 3, 2020
Whale Song
Unlocking the mysteries of the world’s largest mammals with old bones and new technology
By Stephanie Bastek Friday, June 26, 2020
Founding Falsehoods
Reconsidering how we’ve been telling stories about American history
By Stephanie Bastek Friday, June 19, 2020
The Antebellum Feminine Mystique
Contrary to fables, white female slave owners in the South were just as deeply invested in the institution as their male counterparts
By Stephanie Bastek Friday, June 12, 2020
Still Junk Science
How scientific inquiry has been complicit in, or explicitly aligned with, racism and white supremacy
By Stephanie Bastek Friday, June 5, 2020
Cræft in the Time of Corona
What we make with our hands tell us a lot about ourselves, even in a pandemic
By Stephanie Bastek Friday, May 22, 2020
Spy Games and Secrets
Matthew Quirk opens the dossier on thriller writing
By Stephanie Bastek Friday, May 15, 2020
Trouble Brewing
The story of how coffee recalibrated the world
By Stephanie Bastek Friday, May 8, 2020
Tropical Troublemakers
A new novel explores the true life and crimes of O. Henry
By Stephanie Bastek Friday, May 1, 2020
