Podcast Favorites
Type: Podcast
Episodes: 195 episodes
Here are my favorite podcast episodes. They span many different podcasts and are generally around of theme of learning / being inspired / a novel (to me) concept.
If you find a show you like, make sure to subscribe to that podcast individually to get all their episodes!
If you find a show you like, make sure to subscribe to that podcast individually to get all their episodes!
The economy, explained, with stories and surprises. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, "Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy." Now imagine that's actually a fun evening. That's what we're going for at Planet Money. People seem to like it.
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Radiolab is a show about curiosity. Radiolab, with Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, is a radio show and podcast weaving stories and science into sound and music-rich documentaries.
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Design is everywhere in our lives, perhaps most importantly in the places where we've just stopped noticing. 99% Invisible is a weekly exploration of the process and power of design and architecture. From award winning producer Roman Mars.
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Have fun discovering the hidden side of everything with host Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of the best-selling "Freakonomics" books. Each week, hear surprising conversations that explore the riddles of everyday life and the weird wrinkles of human nature-from cheating and crime to parenting and sports.
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A journey through fascinating ideas, astonishing inventions, and new ways to think and create. Based on riveting TEDTalks from the world's most remarkable minds.
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Primarily a journalistic non-fiction program, it has also featured essays, memoirs, field recordings, short fiction, and found footage.
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Invisibilia (Latin for invisible things) is about the invisible forces that control human behavior - ideas, beliefs, assumptions and emotions. Co-hosted by Lulu Miller, Hanna Rosin and Alix Spiegel, Invisibilia interweaves narrative storytelling with scientific research that will ultimately make you see your own life differently.
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Welcome to Revisionist History, a new podcast from Malcolm Gladwell and Panoply Media. Each week, over the course of 10 weeks, Revisionist History will go back and reinterpret something from the past. An event. A person. An idea. Something overlooked. Something misunderstood. Because sometimes the past deserves a second chance.
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A show about the internet. And trained rats, time travel, celebrity dogs, Mason Reese crying, phone scammers who fall in love, angry flower children, workplace iguanas, and more.
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Is your phone watching you? Can wexting make you smarter? Are your kids real? These and other essential quandaries facing anyone trying to preserve their humanity in the digital age. Join host Manoush Zomorodi for your weekly reminder to question everything.
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Radiolab's More Perfect is a series about the Supreme Court. More Perfect explores how cases deliberated inside the rarefied world of the Supreme Court affect our lives far away from the bench.
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The Longest Shortest Time is a bold, daring podcast about parenthood in all of its forms. But you don't need to be a parent to listen. We tell stories about the surprises and absurdities of raising other humans - and being raised by them.
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A series about what it's really like to start a business.
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From public radio producer, Nate DiMeo, comes The Memory Palace, a finalist for the 2016 Peabody Award and one of iTunes Best Podcast of 2015. Short, surprising stories of the past, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hysterical, often a little bit of both.
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A new history podcast from Gimlet Media, where we go back to the time our divisions turned into a war, and bring you stories left out of the official history.
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*** Named a best podcast of 2021 by Time, Vulture, Esquire and The Atlantic. ***
Each Tuesday and Friday, Ezra Klein invites you into a conversation on something that matters. How do we address climate change if the political system fails to act? Has the logic of markets infiltrated too many aspects of our lives? What is the future of the Republican Party? What do psychedelics teach us about consciousness? What does sci-fi understand about our present that we miss? Can our food system be just to humans and animals alike?
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You Are Not So Smart is a show about psychology that celebrates science and self delusion. In each episode, we explore what we've learned so far about reasoning, biases, judgments, and decision-making.
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The past is never past. Every headline has a history. Join us every week as we go back in time to understand the present. These are stories you can feel and sounds you can see from the moments that shaped our world.
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Each episode is an empathy shot in your arm, featuring true stories about about the people we meet, the connections we make, the heartbreaks we suffer, the kindnesses we encounter, and those frightful moments when we discover that we aren't even who we thought we were.
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Criminal is a podcast about crime. Not so much the "if it bleeds, it leads," kind of crime. Something a little more complex. Stories of people who've done wrong, been wronged, and/or gotten caught somewhere in the middle.
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BackStory with the American History Guys is a nationally syndicated, hour-long, weekly public radio show hosted by renowned U.S. historians Ed Ayers, Peter Onuf, and Brian Balogh.
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Ever find yourself in a conversation about race and identity where you just get...stuck? Code Switch can help. We're all journalists of color, and this isn't just the work we do. It's the lives we lead. Sometimes, we'll make you laugh. Other times, you'll get uncomfortable. But we'll always be unflinchingly honest and empathetic. Come mix it up with us.
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You can follow the show at @DrMayaShankar on Instagram.
Apple Podcasts’ Best Show of the Year 2021 Editor's Note: Maya Shankar blends compassionate storytelling with the science of human behavior to help us understand who we are and who we become in the face of a big change. Maya is no stranger to change. “My whole childhood revolved around the violin, but that changed in a moment when I injured my hand playing a single note,” says Shankar, who was studying under Itzhak Perlman at the Juilliard School at the time. “I was forced to try and figure out who I was, and who I could be, without the violin." Maya soon discovered a new path in the field of cognitive science, where she earned her PhD as a Rhodes Scholar studying how and why we change. Her insights into human behavior ultimately led her to create A Slight Change of Plans—Apple Podcasts’ Best Show of the Year in 2021. You’ll hear intimate conversations with people like Tiffany Haddish, Kacey Musgraves, and Riz Ahmed, as well as real-life inspirations, like John Elder Robison, who undergoes experimental brain stimulation to deepen his emotional intelligence, Daryl Davis, a Black jazz musician who inspires hundreds of KKK members to leave the Klan, and Shankar herself, who had her own “slight change of plans” earlier this year. The show also explores the science of change with experts like Adam Grant and Angela Duckworth. "What I love most about this show is that the content is evergreen," says Shankar. "You can listen to episodes in any order and at any time."
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It’s easy to forget that the United States started as an experiment: a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, with liberty and justice for all. That was the idea. On this weekly show, we check in on how that experiment is going. The Experiment: stories from an unfinished country. From The Atlantic and WNYC Studios. WNYC Studios is a listener-supported producer of other leading podcasts, including Radiolab, On the Media, and Death, Sex & Money. Since 1857, The Atlantic has been a magazine of ideas—a home to the best writers and boldest minds, who bring clarity and original thinking to the most important issues of our time.
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Unseeable forces control human behavior and shape our ideas, beliefs, and assumptions. Invisibilia—Latin for invisible things—fuses narrative storytelling with science that will make you see your own life differently.
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Think bigger. Create better. Live smarter. Ideas are coming at you every day from all directions. Where do you even start? Hosted by Rufus Griscom, and featuring thought-leaders Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Adam Grant, and Daniel Pink, THE NEXT BIG IDEA brings you the most groundbreaking ideas that have the power to change the way you live, work, and think. Each episode dives deep into one big idea through immersive storytelling, narration and curator interviews with the most interesting authors at work today.
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You might think you know what it takes to lead a happier life… more money, a better job, or Instagram-worthy vacations. You’re dead wrong. Yale professor Dr. Laurie Santos has studied the science of happiness and found that many of us do the exact opposite of what will truly make our lives better. Based on the psychology course she teaches at Yale--the most popular class in the university’s 300-year history--Laurie will take you through the latest scientific research and share some surprising and inspiring stories that will change the way you think about happiness.
For an even deeper dive into the research we talk about in the show and to sign up to our newsletter visit: happinesslab.fm
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Ezra Klein gives you a chance to get inside the heads of the newsmakers and power players in politics and media. These are extended conversations with policymakers, writers, technologists, and business leaders about what they believe in and why. Look elsewhere for posturing confrontation and quick reactions to the day's news.
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Nick van der Kolk's Love and Radio features in-depth, otherworldly-produced interviews with an eclectic range of subjects, from the seedy to the sublime. Get inside the mind of a rogue taxidermist. Find out what it's like to experience a stroke firsthand. Or spend time with an artist who gives away her life savings every night. You've never heard anything like it before.
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How are the things we're talking about being talked about somewhere else in the world? Gregory Warner tells stories that follow familiar conversations into unfamiliar territory. At a time when the world seems small but it's as hard as ever to escape our echo chambers, Rough Translation takes you places.
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The Hidden Brain helps curious people understand the world - and themselves. Using science and storytelling, Hidden Brain's host Shankar Vedantam reveals the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, the biases that shape our choices, and the triggers that direct the course of our relationships.
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We all think we'd be able to spot a predator like Larry Nassar, the disgraced Olympic gymnastics doctor who sexually abused patients for decades. Of course you would believe a girl or a young woman who came to you looking for help. Right? Believed is a story of survivors finding their power in a cultural moment when people are coming to understand how important that is. It's an inside look at how a team of women - a detective, a prosecutor, and an army of survivors - won justice in one of the largest serial sexual abuse cases in U.S. history. It's also an unnerving exploration of how even well-meaning adults can fail to believe.
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First, on the Adam Ruins Everything TV show, Adam Conover broke down widespread misconceptions about everything we take for granted. Now, join Adam as he sits down with the experts and stars from the show to go into even more detail.
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A new show about how big stories we thought were over were actually the beginning of something else. Hosted by Pat Walters.
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Common Sense with Dan Carlin isn't a show for everyone, and that's what makes it so great. It's a smart, deep, passionate, engaging, inquisitive and of course, politically Martian view of news and current events. There's nothing else like it.
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Heben Nigatu and Tracy Clayton cover everything from race, gender and pop culture to squirrels, mangoes, and bad jokes, all in one boozy show.
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Objects hold history. They're evocative of stories stamped in time. As part of The Washington Post's coverage of the Smithsonian's new National Museum of African American History and Culture, people submitted dozens of objects that make up their own lived experiences of black history, creating a "people's museum" of personal objects, family photos and more. The Historically Black podcast brings those objects and their stories to life through interviews, archival sound and music.
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Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.
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Child abductions are rare crimes. And they're typically solved. For 27 years, the investigation into the abduction of Jacob Wetterling in rural Minnesota yielded no answers. In the most comprehensive reporting on this case, APM Reports and reporter Madeleine Baran reveal how law enforcement mishandled one of the most notorious child abductions in the country and how those failures fueled national anxiety about stranger danger, led to the nation's sex-offender registries and raise questions about crime-solving effectiveness and accountability.
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In this episode, first aired in 2011, we talk about the meaning of a good game — whether it's a pro football playoff, or a family showdown on the kitchen table. And how some games can make you feel, at least for a little while, like your whole life hangs in the balance. This hour of Radiolab, Jad and Robert wonder why we get so invested in something so trivial. What is it about games that make them feel so pivotal?
We hear how a recurring dream about football turned into a real-life lesson for Stephen Dubner, we watch a chessboard turn into a playground where by-the-book moves give way to totally unpredictable possibilities, and we talk to Dan Engber, a one time senior editor at Slate, now at The Atlantic, and a bunch of scientists about why betting on a longshot is so much fun. And finally, we talk to Malcolm Gladwell about why he loves the overdog.
CITATIONS:
Videos -
The Immaculate Reception (https://zpr.io/izhV3Sm88SWF) by Franco Harris on December 23, 1972. Harris was the Pittsburgh Steelers’ fullback at the time.
Books -
Stephen J. Dubner’s book, Confessions of a Hero Worshipper (https://zpr.io/iQUwfF8vGArj)
Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!
Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.
Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org
Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
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It’s not an exaggeration to say that “clock time” runs our lives. From the moment our alarms go off in the morning, the clock reigns supreme: our meetings, our appointments, even our social plans are often timed down to the minute. We even measure the quality of our lives with reference to time, often lamenting that time seems to “fly by” when we’re having fun and “drags on” when we’re bored or stagnant. We rarely stop to think about time, but that’s precisely because there are few forces more omnipresent in our lives.
“You are the best time machine that has ever been built,” Dean Buonomano writes in his book “Your Brain Is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time.” Buonomano is a professor of neurobiology and psychology at U.C.L.A. who studies the relationship between time and the human brain. His book tackles the most profound questions about time that affect all of our lives: Why do we feel it so differently at different points in our lives? What do we miss if we live so rigidly bound to the demands of our clocks and appointments? Why during strange periods like pandemic lockdowns do we feel “lost in time”? And what if — as some physicists believe — the future may already exist, with grave implications for our ability to act meaningfully in the present?
We discuss what time would be in an empty universe without humans, why humans have not evolved to understand time the way we understand space, how our ability to predict the future differs from animals’, why time during the Covid lockdowns felt so bizarre, why scientists think time “flies” when we’re having fun but slows down when people experience near-death accidents, what humans lost when we invented very precise clocks, why some physicists believe the future is already determined for us and what that would mean for our ethical behavior, why we’re so bad at saving money, what steps we could take to feel as if we’re living longer in time, why it’s so hard — but ultimately possible — to live in the present moment and more.
Mentioned:
Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes by Daniel L. Everett
Book Recommendations:
Noise by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein
When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut
The Age of A.I. by Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt and Daniel Huttenlocher
Thoughts? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. (And if you’re reaching out to recommend a guest, please write “Guest Suggestion” in the subject line.)
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.
“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld and Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta.
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Mel Blanc was known as “the man of 1,000 voices,” but, to hear his son tell it, the actual number was closer to 1,500. Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Tweety, Barney Rubble, Woody Woodpecker, Sylvester, Foghorn Leghorn — all Mel. These characters made him one of the most beloved men in the United States.
In this episode from 2012, Mel Blanc’s son Noel tells Producer Sean Cole how his father’s entire body would transform to bring life to these characters. But on a fateful day of 1961, after a crash left Mel in a lengcoma, it was the characters who brought life to him.Episode Credits:Reported by Sean Cole
Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!
Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org
Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
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When people ask me what my favorite episode of 99% Invisible is, I have a hard time answering. Not because they’re all my precious little babies or some such nonsense, but mostly it’s because I just can’t remember them all and there’s no simple criteria to judge them against each other. But the show is definitely in contention for the best episode we’ve ever made. It just has everything– engaging storytellers, brilliant reporting, and a compelling history of a moment when the world really changed. It’s called the Freedom House Ambulance Service. It originally aired in the summer of 2020, when a lot of the fundamental aspects of work, life, health, law enforcement, structural racism, cities were all being questioned by more and more people because of COVID and the George Floyd protests. Kevin Hazzard, who reported the piece, subsequently released a whole book on the Freedom House Ambulance Service called American Sirens: The Incredible Story of the Black Men Who Became America's First Paramedics. It’s new, it’s out now, you should buy it. should read it, it should be on all your Christmas lists. To celebrate the book’s release, I’m proud to re-present to you: The remarkable story of the Freedom House Ambulance Service.
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Why do we have a butt? Well, it’s not just for the convenience of a portable seat cushion. This week, we have a conversation with our Contributing Editor Heather Radke, who has spent the last several years going deep on one of our most noticeable surface features. She’s been working on a book called “Butts, a Backstory” and in this episode, she tells us about a fascinating history she uncovered that takes us from an eugenicists’ attempt in the late 1930s to concretize the most average human, to rise of the garment industry, and the pain and shame we often feel today when we go looking for a pair of pants that actually fit.
Special thanks to Alexandra Primiani and Jordan Rodman
Episode Credits:Reported by Heather RadkeProduced by Matt KieltyOriginal music and sound design contributed by Matt Kielty and Jeremy BloomMixing by Jeremy BloomFact-checking by Emily Krieger
Citations:You can Pre-order Heather’s book “Butts: A Backstory” here (https://zpr.io/QVFVLTTW9vpN)
Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!
Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.
Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.
Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
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The basic mechanics of the bike are pretty simple --- it’s basically a triangle with wheels and a chain drive to propel it forward. No batteries or engines. It seems obvious in hindsight .... And that’s why most people guess the bike was invented a long time ago. Yet the ‘running machine,' a kind of early proto-bike, debuted around 1817.
For much more on the history of the bicycle, check out Jody Rosen's book: Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle.
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Taiwan is at the center of a global feud. Its main defense may be what some call its "Silicon Shield" — its powerful semiconductor industry. On today's show, the story of how one economic hero helped to transform Taiwan's economy and create the "Taiwan Miracle."
Subscribe to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney
Subscribe to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney
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You can follow the show on Instagram @DrMayaShankar.
Civil rights icon Ruby Bridges is our guest today. She shares what it was like to be the first African-American student to attend an all-white elementary school in Louisiana in 1960. Ruby was just six years old at the time, and it would be years before she fully appreciated her role in advancing civil rights in America.
If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to sign up for our email list at Pushkin.fm.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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When we play Monopoly or basketball, we know we are playing a game. The stakes are low. The rules are silly. The point system is arbitrary. But what if life is full of games — ones with much higher stakes — that we don’t even realize we’re playing?
According to the philosopher C. Thi Nguyen, games and gamified systems are everywhere in modern life. Social media applies the lure of a points-based scoring system to the complex act of communication. Fitness apps convert the joy and beauty of physical motion into a set of statistics you can monitor. The grades you received in school flatten the qualitative richness of education into a numerical competition. If you’ve ever consulted the U.S. News & World Report college rankings database, you’ve witnessed the leaderboard approach to university admissions.
In Nguyen’s book, “Games: Agency as Art,” a core insight is that we’re not simply playing these games — they are playing us, too. Our desires, motivations and behaviors are constantly being shaped and reshaped by incentives and systems that we aren’t even aware of. Whether on the internet or in the vast bureaucracies that structure our lives, we find ourselves stuck playing games over and over again that we may not even want to win — and that we aren’t able to easily walk away from.
This is one of those conversations that offers a new and surprising lens for understanding the world. We discuss the unique magic of activities like rock climbing and playing board games, how Twitter’s system of likes and retweets is polluting modern politics, why governments and bureaucracies love tidy packets of information, how echo chambers like QAnon bring comfort to their “players,” how to make sure we don’t get stuck in a game without realizing it, why we should be a little suspicious of things that give us pleasure and how to safeguard our own values in a world that wants us to care about winning the most points.
Mentioned:
How Twitter Gamifies Communication by C. Thi Nguyen
Trust in Numbers by Theodore M. Porter
Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott
“Against Rotten Tomatoes” by Matt Strohl
“A Game Designer’s Analysis Of QAnon” by Reed Berkowitz
The Great Endarkenment by Elijah Millgram
Game recommendations:
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.
“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.
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When Alana Casanova-Burgess set out to make a podcast series about Puerto Rico, she struggled with what to call it. Until one word came to mind, a word that captures a certain essence of life in Puerto Rico, but eludes easy translation into English. We talk to Alana about her series, and that particular word, then turn to an old story about treating words as signals of something happening just beneath the surface.
Agatha Christie's clever detective novels may reveal more about the inner workings of the human mind than she intended. According to Dr. Ian Lancashire at the University of Toronto, the Queen of Crime left behind hidden clues to the real-life mysteries of human aging in her writing. Meanwhile, Dr. Kelvin Lim and Dr. Serguei Pakhomov from the University of Minnesota add to the intrigue with the story of an unexpected find in a convent archive that could someday help pinpoint very early warning signs for Alzheimer's disease and dementia. Sister Alberta Sheridan, a 94-year-old Nun Study participant, reads an essay she wrote more than 70 years ago.
La Brega update was produced by Maria Paz Gutierrez
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In tape five, three stories: first, a tale of how the cassette tape supercharged the self-help industry. Second, cassettes filled with history make an epic journey across Africa with a group of Lost Boys. And finally, Simon meets up with fellow Radiolabber David Gebel to dig through an old box of mixtapes and rediscover the unique power of these bygone love letters.
Mixtape was reported, produced, scored and sound designed by me, Simon Adler, with music throughout by me. Unending reporting and production assistance was provided by Eli Cohen.
Special Thanks to: Shad Helmstetter, Vic Conan, Glenna Salisbury, Jerry Rosen, Richard Petty, Sharon Arkin, William Mulwill for sharing his cassettes with me, and to the British library for sharing some of their recordings from their South Sudan collection, which is housed at the British Library Sound Archive.
Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.
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One morning, Oliver Sipple went out for a walk. A couple hours later, to his own surprise, he saved the life of the President of the United States. But in the days that followed, Sipple’s split-second act of heroism turned into a rationale for making his personal life into political opportunity. What happens next makes us wonder what a moment, or a movement, or a whole society can demand of one person. And how much is too much?
Through newly unearthed archival tape, we hear Sipple himself grapple with some of the most vexing topics of his day and ours - privacy, identity, the freedom of the press - not to mention the bonds of family and friendship.
Reported by Latif Nasser and Tracie Hunte. Produced by Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Latif Nasser and Tracie Hunte.
Special thanks to Jerry Pritikin, Michael Yamashita, Stan Smith, Duffy Jennings; Ann Dolan, Megan Filly and Ginale Harris at the Superior Court of San Francisco; Leah Gracik, Karyn Hunt, Jesse Hamlin, The San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive, Mike Amico, Jennifer Vanasco and Joey Plaster.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.
Episode originally published 09/21/2017
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Today we have a story about the sometimes obvious but sometimes sneaky effects of the way that we humans rearrange the elemental stuff around us. Reporter Avir Mitra and science journalist Lydia Denworth bring us a story about how one man’s relentless pursuit of a deep truth about the Earth led to an obsession that really changed the very air we breathe.
This episode was reported by Avir Mitra, and produced by Matt Kielty, Becca Bressler, Rachael Cusick, and Maria Paz Gutiérrez.
Special thanks to Cliff Davidson, Paul M. Sutter, Denton Ebel, and Sam Kean. Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.
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From the Pilgrims’ arrival at Plymouth Rock to the rise of the pandemic “quarantini,” alcohol has been a foundation of American society and culture. The Atlantic's Kate Julian explores how this tool for cohesion and cooperation eventually became a means of coping, and what history can teach us about improving our drinking habits.
This conversation originally ran on the podcast Today, Explained, hosted by Sean Rameswaram.
Further reading: America Has a Drinking Problem
Be part of The Experiment. Use the hashtag #TheExperimentPodcast, or write to us at theexperiment@theatlantic.com.
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This episode, a tale of a wonder drug that will make you wonder about way more than just drugs.
Doctor-reporter Avir Mitra follows the epic and fantastical journey of a molecule dug out of a distant patch of dirt that would go on to make billions of dollars, prolong millions of lives, and teach us something fundamental we didn’t know about ourselves. Along the way, he meets a geriatric mouse named Ike, an immigrant dad who’s a little bit cool sometimes, a prophetic dream that prompts a thousand-mile journey, an ice cream container that may or may not be an accessory to international drug smuggling, and - most important of all - an obscure protein that’s calling the shots in every one of your cells RIGHT NOW.
This episode was reported by Avir Mitra and was produced by Sarah Qari, Pat Walters, Suzie Lechtenberg, with help from Carin Leong and Rachael Cusick.
Special thanks to Richard Miller, Stuart Schreiber, Joanne Van Tilburg, and Bethany Halford.
Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.
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Since its inception, the perennial thorn in Facebook’s side has been content moderation. That is, deciding what you and I are allowed to post on the site and what we’re not. Missteps by Facebook in this area have fueled everything from a genocide in Myanmar to viral disinformation surrounding politics and the coronavirus. However, just this past year, conceding their failings, Facebook shifted its approach. They erected an independent body of twenty jurors that will make the final call on many of Facebook’s thorniest decisions. This body has been called: Facebook’s Supreme Court.
So today, in collaboration with the New Yorker magazine and the New Yorker Radio Hour, we explore how this body came to be, what power it really has and how the consequences of its decisions will be nothing short of life or death.
This episode was reported and produced by Simon Adler.
To hear more about the court's origin, their rulings so far, and their upcoming docket, check out David Remnick and reporter Kate Klonick’s conversation in the New Yorker Radio Hour podcast feed.
Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.
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Lies, liars, and lie catchers. This hour of Radiolab asks if it's possible for anyone to lead a life without deception.
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With the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the president is hoping to fill the seat with a more ideologically conservative justice. And evangelical Christians, who've become a powerful conservative voting bloc, have been waiting for this moment. But how and when did this religious group become so intertwined with today's political issues, especially abortion? In this episode, what it means to be an evangelical today and how that has changed over time.
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When we think of China today, we think of a technological superpower. From Huweai and 5G to TikTok and viral social media, China is stride for stride with the United States in the world of computing. However, China’s technological renaissance almost didn’t happen. And for one very basic reason: The Chinese language, with its 70,000 plus characters, couldn’t fit on a keyboard.
Today, we tell the story of Professor Wang Yongmin, a hard headed computer programmer who solved this puzzle and laid the foundation for the China we know today.
This episode was reported and produced by Simon Adler with reporting assistance from Yang Yang.
Special thanks to Martin Howard. You can view his renowned collection of typewriters at: antiquetypewriters.com
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.
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Obama delivers eulogy for John Lewis, makes impassioned call for voting rights - YouTube
URL: Website
Date: Jul 31st, 2020
Former President Barack Obama delivered a powerful eulogy for the late civil rights leader and Congressman John Lewis, and said Americans should honor his legacy by continuing to work for democracy and voting rights. "He as much as anyone in our history brought this country a little bit closer to our highest ideals," Mr. Obama said. Watch his full remarks from the funeral at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.
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It’s hard to imagine what the world will look like when COVID-19 has passed. So in this episode, we look back to the years after 1918, at the political, artistic, and viral aftermath of the flu pandemic that killed between 50 and 100 million people and left our world permanently transformed.
This episode was reported and produced by Rachael Cusick, Tad Davis, Tracie Hunte, Matt Kielty, Latif Nasser, Sarah Qari, Pat Walters, Molly Webster, with production assistance from Tad Davis and Bethel Habte.
Special thanks to the Radio Diaries podcast for letting us use an excerpt of their interview with Harry Mills. You can find the original episode here. For more on Egon Schiele’s life, check out the Leopold Museum’s biography, by Verena Gamper.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.
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How do you actually make change in the world? For 126 years, Mississippi has had the Confederate battle flag on their state flag, and they were the last state in the nation where that emblem remained “officially” flying. A few days ago, that flag came down. A few days before that, it coming down would have seemed impossible. We dive into the story behind this de-flagging: a journey involving a clash of histories, designs, families, and even cheerleading. This show is a collaboration with OSM Audio.
Kiese Laymon's memoir Heavy is here.
And the Hospitality Flag webpage is here.
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The video is horrific, and the brutality is stark. But that was the case in Ferguson in 2014 and Minnesota in 2016. This time, though, white people are out in the streets in big numbers, and books like 'So You Want To Talk About Race' and 'How To Be An Antiracist' top the bestseller lists. So we asked some white people: What's different this time?
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What if you had a superpower that allowed you to see part of the world that was to come? At the age of 60, a Scottish woman named Joy Milne discovers she has a biological gift that allows her to see things that will happen in the future that no one else can see. A look at how we think about the future, and the important ways the future shapes the present. | To learn more about this episode, subscribe to our newsletter. Click here to learn more about NPR sponsors.
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A little-known bit of world history about a rag tag group of sailors stranded for years in the Suez Canal at the center of a war.
Great Bitter Lake Association
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Our world is awash in code, and those zeroes and ones aren't as impersonal as you might think. In his new book, "Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World," journalist Clive Thompson provides an up-close look at the "invisible architects" of our digital age, revealing the ways they're shaping our society for better and worse.Support us by supporting our sponsors!Policy Genius — Go to Policygenius.com to get quotes and apply in minutes.LinkedIn — Visit LinkedIn.com/BIGIDEA for a free $100 LinkedIn ad credit to launch your first campaign.Skillshare — Go to Skillshare.com/BIGIDEA to start your two months now.Next Big Idea Club — The best books of the year delivered to your door. Visit nextbigideaclub.com/podcast
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Technology allows us to bank, shop and dine without talking to another human, but what toll is this taking on our happiness? The inventor of the ATM and the Talking Heads singer David Byrne join Dr Laurie Santos to explore the ways in which talking to strangers can bring us all genuine joy. For an even deeper dive into the research we talk about in the show visit https://www.happinesslab.fm/
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Waiting is something that we all do every day, but our experience of waiting, varies radically depending on the context. And it turns out that design can completely change whether a five minute wait feels reasonable or completely unbearable. Transparency is key.
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In an online world, that story about you lives forever. The tipsy photograph of you at the college football game? It’s up there. That news article about the political rally you were marching at? It’s up there. A DUI? That’s there, too. But what if ... it wasn’t.
In Cleveland, Ohio, a group of journalists are trying out an experiment that has the potential to turn things upside down: they are unpublishing content they’ve already published. Photographs, names, entire articles. Every month or so, they get together to decide what content stays, and what content goes. On today’s episode, reporter Molly Webster goes inside the room where the decisions are being made, listening case-by-case as editors decide who, or what, gets to be deleted. It’s a story about time and memory; mistakes and second chances; and society as we know it.
This episode was reported by Molly Webster, and produced by Molly Webster and Bethel Habte.
Special thanks to Kathy English, David Erdos, Ed Haber, Brewster Kahle, Jane Kamensky and all the people who helped shape this story.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.
To learn more about Cleveland.com’s “right to be forgotten experiment,” check out the very first column Molly read about the project.
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When confronted with trash piling up on a median in front of their home in Oakland, Dan and Lu Stevenson decided to try something unusual: they would install a statue of the Buddha to watch over the place. When asked by Criminal’s Phoebe Judge why they chose this particular religious figure, Dan explained simply: “He’s neutral.”
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Men are often the default subjects of design, which can have a huge impact on big and critical aspects of everyday life. Caroline Criado Perez is the author of Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, a book about how data from women is ignored and how this bakes in bias and discrimination in the things we design.
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A weird speech by Antonin Scalia, a visit with the some serious legal tortoises, and a testy exchange with the experts at the Law School Admissions Council prompts Malcolm to formulate his Grand Unified Theory for fixing higher education.
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Malcolm challenges his assistant Camille to the Law School Admissions Test. He gets halfway through, panics, runs out of time, and wonders: why does the legal world want him to rush?
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You Are Not So Smart, live in New York, at The Bell House, in Brooklyn -- David McRaney and three experts and a bunch of YANSS fans got together for a deep dive into how we turn perception into reality, how that reality can differ from brain to brain, and what happens when we dangerously disagree on the truth.
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Two brilliant women—one black, one white—assemble a spy ring in the rebel capital of Richmond, Virginia that eventually attempts a ‘mission impossible’ inside the military planning rooms of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
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In this episode we sit down with the director and producers of the documentary film, Behind the Curve, an exploration of motivated reasoning and conspiratorial thinking told through the lives of people who have formed a community around the belief that the Earth is flat.
- Live Show Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/you-are-not-so-smart-with-david-mcraney-tickets-58457802862
- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com
- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmart
SPONSORS
• The Great Courses: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart
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Invisibilia is a show that runs on empathy. We believe in it. But are we right? In this episode, we'll let you decide. We tell the same story twice in order to examine the questions: who deserves our empathy? And is there a wrong way to empathize? If you or somebody you know might need help, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24/7 at 1-800-273-8255 or at suicidepreventionlifeline.org.
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There's an industry of people working to eliminate bad police behavior. They're not activists or protestors. They're insurers.
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What is the relationship between the version of you that lives online and the one that walks around the earth? We think of our online selves as shadow versions of us which we can control. But in this age when facts are malleable, something strange is happening: our online selves are sometimes eclipsing our real ones, even when we don't want them to.
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Conspiracy theories are a feature of today's news and politics. But they've really been a part of American life since its founding. In this episode, we'll explore how conspiracy theories helped to create the U.S. and how they became the currency of political opportunists.
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The question we get more than any other here at Radiolab is "Where do all those stories come from?" Today, for the first time ever, we divulge our secret recipe for story-finding. Veteran Radiolab story scout Latif Nasser takes our newest producer Rachael Cusick along for what he calls "the world's biggest scavenger hunt." Together, they'll make you want to bake some cookies and find some true stories. But we can't find, much less tell, true stories without you. Find it in yourself to donate and help us make another year of this possible.
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The first day of Larry Nassar's sentencing hearing. The first day survivors get to face him, in person. The place is packed. It's jarring to see how young some of the faces in the courtroom are. It's one thing to know that Larry's victims are young. It's another to actually see 15-year-olds sitting with their moms.
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It's been 80 years to the day since Orson Welles' infamous radio drama 'The War of the Worlds' echoed far and wide over the airwaves. So we want to bring you back to our very first live hour, where we take a deep dive into what was one of the most controversial moments in broadcasting history. 'The War of the Worlds,' a radio play about Martians invading New Jersey, caused panic when it originally aired, and it's continued to fool people since--from Santiago, Chile to Buffalo, New York to a particularly disastrous evening in Quito, Ecuador.
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We trace the journey of an apology, from Japan to the U.S., that got an unlikely broker. Along the way, she had to work out: what a sorry is, who it's for, and what makes it stick.
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From bullying to hate crimes, cruelty is all around us. So what makes us hate? And is it learned or innate? This hour, TED speakers explore the causes and consequences of hate - and how we can fight it. Guests include reformed white nationalist Christian Picciolini, CNN commentator Sally Kohn, podcast host Dylan Marron, and writer Anand Giridharadas.
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Fake product reviews are wrecking the internet. But help is on the way: From a bodybuilding fake review hunter.
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California has a ton of solar power. But as soon as night falls, it's gone. Today on the show: How to bottle the sun.
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This week, we're throwing it back to an old favorite: a story about obsession, creativity, and a strange symmetry between a biologist and a composer that revolves around one famously repetitive piece of music.
Anne Adams was a brilliant biologist. But when her son Alex was in a bad car accident, she decided to stay home to help him recover. And then, rather suddenly, she decided to quit science altogether and become a full-time artist. After that, her husband Robert Adams tells us, she just painted and painted and painted. First houses and buildings, then a series of paintings involving strawberries, and then ... "Bolero."
At some point, Anne became obsessed with Maurice Ravel's famous composition and decided to put an elaborate visual rendition of the song to canvas. She called it "Unraveling Bolero." But at the time, she had no idea that both she and Ravel would themselves unravel shortly after their experiences with this odd piece of music. Arbie Orenstein tells us what happened to Ravel after he wrote "Bolero," and neurologist Bruce Miller helps us understand how, for both Anne and Ravel, "Bolero" might have been the first symptom of a deadly disease.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.
Read more:
Unravelling Bolero: progressive aphasia, transmodal creativity and the right posterior neocortex
Arbie Orenstein's Ravel: Man and Musician
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The way we draw our political districts has a huge effect on U.S. politics, but the process is also greatly misunderstood. Gerrymandering has become a scapegoat for what's wrong with the polarized American political system, blamed for marginalizing groups and rigging elections, but there's no simple, one-size-fits-all design solution for drawing fair districts. Drawing districts may be the most important design problem of representative democracy and this week FiveThirtyEight will guide us through the ways different states have tackled this problem.
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Reality TV may be popular around the world, but it's also roundly mocked as formulaic and contrived. So, can that kind of fragile fantasy world meaningfully influence reality? We look at the goals and impact of a UN-backed reality show called 'Inspire Somalia', that attempted to model democracy and freedom in a country racked by decades of clan warfare and oppression by extremist groups like al-Shabab.
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Research shows that kids who learn languages early have lots of advantages. This week, a dad who speaks five languages makes the case for teaching his kid only one. English.
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Equal protection of the laws: was granted to all persons by the 14th Amendment in 1868. But for nearly a century after that, women had a hard time convincing the courts that they should be allowed to be jurors, lawyers, and bartenders, just the same as men. A then-lawyer at the ACLU named Ruth Bader Ginsburg set out to convince an all-male Supreme Court to take sex discrimination seriously with an unconventional strategy. She didn't just bring cases where women were the victims of discrimination; she also brought cases where men were the victims. In this episode, we look at how a key battle for gender equality was won with frat boys and beer.
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A small shopkeeper in Philadelphia unwittingly stumbles into a con that helps take down the Confederacy.
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Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission is one of the most polarizing Supreme Court cases of all time. So what is it actually about, and why did the Justices decide the way they did? Justice Anthony Kennedy, often called the 'most powerful man in America,' wrote the majority opinion in the case. In this episode, we examine Kennedy's singular devotion to the First Amendment and look at how it may have influenced his decision in the case.
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For nearly 200 years of our nation's history, the Second Amendment was an all-but-forgotten rule about the importance of militias. But in the 1960s and 70s, a movement emerged - led by Black Panthers and a recently-repositioned NRA - that insisted owning a firearm was the right of each and every American. So began a constitutional debate that only the Supreme Court could solve. That didn't happen until 2008, when a Washington, D.C. security guard named Dick Heller made a compelling case.
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A group of ex-farmers, a terrorist from Kansas, and a schoolteacher attempt the greatest covert operation of the Civil War.
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Royce and Jessica James had big dreams for their baby, too. But when an ultrasound revealed they were having a daughter, Jessica began to worry about how gender stereotypes would affect their child.
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A man named Willie Nash is arrested for the murder of a white man in 1954, in Augusta Georgia. Witnesses place him at the scene. The victim picks him out of the lineup. He confesses. He is headed for the electric chair. Until his young black attorney, Donald L. Hollowell, mounts a defense that rivets black spectators and gives them hope.
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Stories of two parents who spy on their kids: one on purpose, the other by accident.
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A landmark Supreme Court case. A civil rights revolution. Why has everyone forgotten what happened next?
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Many of us are lured by the promise of self-improvement, but find it hard to follow through. In our 100th episode, TED speakers reveal ways to discover our better selves, from simple hacks to deep introspection. TED speakers include entrepeneur Jia Jang, Headspace co-founder Andy Puddicombe, psychologist Emily Balcetis, technologist Matt Cutts, and New York Times columnist David Brooks.
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Is there a part of ourselves that we don't acknowledge, that we don't even have access to and that might make us ashamed if we encountered it? We begin with a woman whose left hand takes instructions from a different part of her brain. It hits her, and knocks cigarettes out of her hand and makes her wonder: who is issuing the orders? Is there some other "me" in there I don't know about? We then ask this question about one of the central problems of our time: racism. Scientific research has shown that even well meaning people operate with implicit bias - stereotypes and attitudes we are not fully aware of that nonetheless shape our behavior towards people of color. We examine the Implicit Association Test, a widely available psychological test that popularized the notion of implicit bias. And we talk to people who are tackling the question, critical to so much of our behavior: what does it take to change these deeply embedded concepts? Can it even be done?
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Bryan Stevenson on why the opposite of poverty isn't wealth, but justice
URL: Website
Date: May 24th, 2017
Bryan Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. He and his staff have won reversals, relief, or release for more than 115 wrongly convicted prisoners on death row. He's the author of the power book Just Mercy, and a winner of a MacArthur "Genius" grant. There are only a few people I'd say this about, but he's a genuine American hero. This conversation begins with one of Stevenson's most provocative arguments. "The opposite of poverty isn't wealth," he says. "It's justice." In this podcast, he explains what he means.
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Today, a hidden power that is either the cornerstone of our democracy or a trapdoor to anarchy. Should a juror be able to ignore the law? From a Quaker prayer meeting in the streets of London, to riots in the streets of LA, we trace the history of a quiet act of rebellion and struggle with how much power "we the people" should really have. Produced by Matt Kielty and Tracie Hunte
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When Thomas Edison built his first electric power stations, there were no electric meters in people's homes. Lacking a better method, he started billing people a monthly fee based on how many light bulbs they had. It wasn't a very precise system.
Restored Westinghouse OB electric meter (circa 1920) by John Lester (CC BY 2.0)
Electric meters (much like the ones we still have today) were soon developed to replace the bulb-counting system. As electricity comes into houses, a little dial turns forward to show how much is used. And while the original designers never considered this possibility, it turns out that the little dial turns backward when electricity leaves a home.
For most people, electricity only flows one way (into the home), but there are exceptions - people who use solar panels, for instance. In those cases, excess electricity created by the solar cells travels back out into the grid to be distributed elsewhere. And in some states, people can can be paid for this excess electricity. The practice is called "net metering" (referring to the total or "net" amount of energy used) and while it started off as a relatively non-controversial practice, there are now big political battles being fought over it.
In this featured episode of Outside/In, Sam Evans-Brown of New Hampshire Public Radio and his colleagues Maureen McMurry and Taylor Quimby explore the origins and evolution of this practice, which all began quite accidentally with a single individual: Steven Strong.
Restored Westinghouse OB electric meter (circa 1920) by John Lester (CC BY 2.0)
Electric meters (much like the ones we still have today) were soon developed to replace the bulb-counting system. As electricity comes into houses, a little dial turns forward to show how much is used. And while the original designers never considered this possibility, it turns out that the little dial turns backward when electricity leaves a home.
For most people, electricity only flows one way (into the home), but there are exceptions - people who use solar panels, for instance. In those cases, excess electricity created by the solar cells travels back out into the grid to be distributed elsewhere. And in some states, people can can be paid for this excess electricity. The practice is called "net metering" (referring to the total or "net" amount of energy used) and while it started off as a relatively non-controversial practice, there are now big political battles being fought over it.
In this featured episode of Outside/In, Sam Evans-Brown of New Hampshire Public Radio and his colleagues Maureen McMurry and Taylor Quimby explore the origins and evolution of this practice, which all began quite accidentally with a single individual: Steven Strong.
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The day Sophie got her period, there were phone calls and high-fives all around. Sophie was psyched. But her mom, author Amy Silverman, felt torn. What does it mean to have daughter with a grown-up body, and a mind that doesn't quite match?
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Most of us feel we face more headwinds and obstacles than everyone else - which breeds resentment. We also undervalue the tailwinds that help us - which leaves us ungrateful and unhappy. How can we avoid this trap?
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Michael Bierut is an award-winning designer, partner at Pentagram in New York City, and author of various books on design. Over his decades in the field of graphic design, he has witnessed a shift in public awareness, especially when it comes to logos. With this increased attention, some endeavors (like political campaigns) that once relied on relatively simple conventions (candidate names and variations on flags) are being called upon to develop more refined and versatile solutions.
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This week, one man has been warning the world about an impending disaster for years, but no one will listen. Also, Alex makes a dumb decision.
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Dr. Pratima Gupta is a mom with the rare job combo of both delivering babies and terminating pregnancies. And in the year since we last talked to her, her job description has gotten even more interesting!
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We thought we knew the story of Bernie Madoff. How he masterminded the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, leaving behind scores of distraught investors and a $65 billion black hole. But we had never heard the story from Madoff himself. This week, reporter Steve Fishman and former Radiolabber Ellen Horne visit our studio to play us snippets from their extraordinary Audible series Ponzi Supernova, which features exclusive footage of the man who bamboozled the world. After years of investigative reporting - including interviews with dozens of FBI and SEC agents, investors, traders, and attorneys - the pair scrutinize Madoff's account to understand exactly why he did it, how he managed to pull it off, and how culpable he actually was. Was he a puppetmaster or a puppet? And if the latter, who else is to blame for the biggest financial fraud in history?
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This is a story about a forgotten part of civil-rights history that is still very much alive. In 1965, a group of black men in Louisiana called the Deacons for Defense and Justice took up arms against the Klan. Now a daughter of the Deacons wants to start a museum in their honor, but not everyone in town wants their story told.
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Right now lots of Republicans feel like they don't recognize their own party. Like a Minnesota congressman who's confused when the residents in his district, people he's known for years, start calling for a ban on Muslims moving to their town.
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Ashley's husband, Corey, is accused of the worst thing imaginable. What follows sends the family on an ever darkening journey, swinging between answers, hypotheses, emotions, and, ultimately, the truth.
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Watching lies become the truth in this year's election. And a few people who try to bridge the gap between the way the two sides see the facts.
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Things are pretty bad right now in Venezuela. Grocery stores don't have enough food. Hospitals don't have basic supplies, like gauze. Child mortality is spiking. Businesses are shuttering. It's one of the epic economic collapses of our time. And it was totally avoidable. Venezuela used to be a relatively rich country. It has just about all the economic advantages a country could ask for: beautiful beaches and mountains ready for tourism, fertile land good for farming, an educated population, and oil, lots and lots of oil. During the boom years, the Venezuelan government made some choices that add up to an economic time bomb. Venezuela didn't save its oil money. It used it to subsidize goods and services for the people, but in some unusual ways. Another choice: instead of making stuff at home, Venezuela imported almost everything it could. The government also kept tight control on the exchange rate between Venezuelan bolivars and U.S. dollars. As long as the price of oil was high, there weren't serious problems. Then oil prices came down.
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What you don't know won't hurt you, but it could hurt your company.
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Howard Schneider was a doctor treating psychiatric patients in the ER when he decided to transform the grocery store experience. He set out to invent the self checkout machine. Some parts of the design were pretty straightforward, like reading barcodes and taking payments. Other things, it turned out, were not so easy. Like figuring out when people are stealing. Schneider solves these problems. Or at least makes a machine that's good enough to use. In 1992, he eventually convinces a grocery store to install the machines. The result? Angry shoppers. Now, hundreds of thousands of grocery stores all around the world use self-checkout machines. But customers are still frustrated.
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In November 2012, a police officer named Tom Decker was shot and killed in Cold Spring, Minn., after getting out of his car to check on a man who lived above a bar. The man was quickly arrested and held in the Stearns County jail. He was interrogated but then released without charges. The state crime bureau later ruled him out as a suspect. Investigators turned their focus to another man, Eric Thomes, who hanged himself before he could be charged with the crime. Nearly four years after the murder, Sheriff John Sanner has refused to close the case "because we're still hopeful that new information will come in," he said.
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Love it or hate it, most of us have to work for a living. So, how can we make work more meaningful? This hour, TED speakers explore our values and motivations when it comes to the workplace. (Original broadcast date: October 10, 2015).
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On the night of February 27th, 2010, a magnitude of 8.8 earthquake hit Constitucion, Chile and it was the second biggest that the world had seen in half a century. The quake and the tsunami it produced completely crushed the town. By the time it was over, more than 500 people were dead, and about 80% of the Constitucion's buildings were ruined. As part of the relief effort, an architecture firm called Elemental was hired to create a master plan for the city, which included new housing for people displaced in the disaster. But the structures that Elemental delivered were a radical and controversial approach toward housing. They gave people half a house.
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Reporter Whitney Jones argues that R.E.M.'s Out of Time is the most politically significant album in the history of the United States. Because of its packaging.
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It's been a rough year for people who believe in free trade. In June, the UK decided to leave the European Union-the biggest free trade block in the world. A potential trade deal between the U.S. and Europe seems to be falling apart. And the Trans-Pacific Partnership - a trade deal between the U.S. and 10 other countries - has two very prominent opponents: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. On today's show, we pack 240 years of trade history into 22 minutes. There's a Scotsman who was captured by gypsies (possibly), a man who dreamed of world peace (truly), and Robert Smith in the streets with revolutionaries (sort of).
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During World War II, a labor shortage obliged the military to hire African American women with mathematical skills to help make complicated computations for warplane designs. This small team of black women faced discrimination but eventually would help NASA astronauts land on the moon. One woman whose grandmother was a "computer" helps tell the story.
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Secrecy, hacking, information leaks, whistle-blowers, foreign-operative propaganda pushers, disinformation, election tampering and the search for any truth in cyberspace occupy Dan's thoughts in this show.
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We recently visited a man who may be the best apple farmer in Lesotho. He wanted to expand his business - but he was wary of going all-in on apples. This is a common issue in the developing world: Farmers don't grow enough of the things they're best at growing. Why not? Two economists - who work across the hall from each other, and who have devoted their careers to studying ways to help the poor - came up with very different answers to that question. And they decided to figure out who was right.
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Shrinking cities have a problem: Millions of abandoned, falling-apart houses. Often, knocking them down is the best solution. But it can be remarkably hard to do that. On today's show, we visit a single block in Baltimore and figure out why it's so hard to knock down buildings - even when everybody wants them gone.
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Words can seem so puny and ineffective sometimes. On this show, we have stories in which ordinary people make last ditch efforts to get through to their loved ones, using a combination of small talk and not-so-small talk.
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Imagine you're a contestant on the hit game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? You're on the final question for one million dollars. You think you might know the answer, but you're not certain. The spotlights are beating down on you, the dramatic music is playing, your hands are shaking with adrenaline. In this situation, you are not the only one freaking out. The show's producers are backstage sweating bullets over what you're going to do. It's their job to set up the rules just right, so that there's drama, tension, and the promise of a massive payout... without actually giving out that massive prize all that often. If contestants won a million dollars all the time, the show would go broke.
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Mark Zuckerberg. Bill Gates. Steve Jobs. Most of the big names in technology are men. But a lot of computing pioneers, the ones who programmed the first digital computers, were women. And for decades, the number of women in computer science was growing. But in 1984, something changed. The number of women in computer science flattened, and then plunged.
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In the early '90s, Hank Rowan gave $100 million to a university in New Jersey, an act of extraordinary generosity that helped launch the greatest explosion in educational philanthropy since the days of Andrew Carnegie and the Rockefellers. But Rowan gave his money to Glassboro State University, a tiny, almost bankrupt school in South Jersey, while almost all of the philanthropists who followed his lead made their donations to elite schools such as Harvard and Yale. Why did no one follow Rowan's example?
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Overt discrimination in the labor markets may be on the wane, but women are still subtly penalized by all sorts of societal conventions. How can those penalties be removed without burning down the house?
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On November 2nd, 1983, Darrell Cannon was awoken by a pounding on his door. It was the Chicago police. They told him he was a suspect in a murder case, and they wanted him to confess that he was involved. When he didn't confess, the cops put him a car, drove him to a rural site, and tortured him. Darrell gave a confession that would land him in prison for more than 20 years. And Darrell's torture: It was not an isolated incident. A group of Chicago police officers tortured confessions out of some 118 suspects over a span of 20 years. Years later, Chicago has offered the victims a reparations package - in the form of an apology, acknowledgement, counseling, a memorial. And some money. Today on the show: Darrell Cannon's story: a tale of violence, payback, and how to make things right.
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In the two weeks since Philando Castile was shot and killed by a police officer in Minnesota after being pulled over for a broken taillight, we've learned that for Castile, routine traffic stops were far more routine than many people might imagine.
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At the trial of James Batson in 1982, the prosecution eliminated all the black jurors from the jury pool. Batson objected, setting off a complicated discussion about jury selection that would make its way all the way up to the Supreme Court. On this episode of More Perfect, the Supreme Court ruling that was supposed to prevent race-based jury selection, but may have only made the problem worse.
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Bowdoin College in Maine and Vassar College in upstate New York are roughly the same size. They compete for the same students. Both have long traditions of academic excellence. But one of those schools is trying hard to close the gap between rich and poor in American society-and paying a high price for its effort. The other is making that problem worse-and reaping rewards as a result.
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We all carry an invisible frame of reference in our heads that filters our experience. Alix and Hanna talk to a woman who gets a glimpse of what she's been missing - and then loses it.
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Americans LOVE solutions. But are there problems we shouldn't try to solve? Lulu visits a town in Belgium with a completely different approach to dealing with mental illness.
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What makes us who we are? How do parents mold children into who they are? In this hour, TED speakers reflect on how our upbringing shapes us. (Original broadcast date: August 1, 2014).
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We like to think of our own personalities, and those of our family and friends as predictable, constant over time. But what if they aren't? What if nothing stays constant over a lifetime?
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Stories of people making the wrong choice, even though the right one is staring them squarely in the eye. Basketball players making a conscious decision to not do the thing that makes them better, pollsters refusing to see the truth of Donald Trump, and more.
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Violins and violas are like living, breathing things. Many are hand-crafted with wood from a tree. Each one is different. And you know the story-Antonio Stradivari was the master. Some say he was the greatest maker of stringed instruments to ever live. The Stradivarius is one of the most powerful and expensive brands in the world.
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In the early 1960s, the Pentagon set up a top-secret research project in an old villa in downtown Saigon. The task? To interview captured North Vietnamese soldiers and guerrillas in order to measure their morale: Was the relentless U.S. bombing pushing them to the brink of capitulation?
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Social norms determine much of your behavior - how you dress, talk, eat and even what you feel. Alix Spiegel and new co-host Hanna Rosin examine two experiments that attempt to shift these norms.
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Coss Marte went from running a multi-million dollar drug operation to sitting in solitary confinement. And it's here, alone in his cell, where he gets the idea for his next business: a fitness company inspired by his time behind bars. But Coss quickly learns that building a legal business comes with its own set of challenges-one being that pitching your company on stage to a bunch of investors requires a slightly different approach to selling an eight-ball outside a busy New York club. Building a startup is a tough and uncertain endeavor for any founder. But for one with a criminal history, the journey can be far more complicated.
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The way people talk about being fat is shifting. With one-third of Americans classified as overweight, and another third as obese, and almost none of us losing weight and keeping it off, maybe it's time to rethink the way we see being fat. A show inspired by Lindy West's book Shrill.
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In the late 19th, a painting by a virtually unknown artist took England by storm: The Roll Call. But after that brilliant first effort, the artist all but disappeared. Why?
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In 1968, the police department in Menlo Park, California hired a new police chief. His name was Victor Cizanckas and his main goal was to reform the department, which had a strained relationship with the community at the time. Cizanckas made a number of changes to improve the department's image. One of the most ground-breaking and controversial was the new blazer-style uniform he implemented.
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Adam talks to Caitlin Doughty, who appeared on the Death episode of the TV show. Caitlin is a mortician, a death acceptance advocate, and the founder of the non-profit funeral home, Undertaking L.A. She's also the author of The New York Times bestseller Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. Adam and Caitlin discuss the bizarre world of funeral conventions, body compositing, and get deep about the afterlife.
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In 1973, a massive manhunt in New York's Adirondack Mountains ended when police captured a man named Robert Garrow. And that's when this story really gets started. This episode we consider a string of barbaric crimes by a hated man, and the attorney who, when called to defend him, also wound up defending a core principle of our legal system. When Frank Armani learned his client's most gruesome secrets, he made a morally startling decision that stunned the world and goes to the heart of what it means to be a defense attorney - how far should lawyers go to provide the best defense to the worst people?
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Stories of people who try simple mind games on others, and then find themselves in way over their heads.
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In 1979, a group of labor organizers protested outside a Ku Klux Klan screening of the 1915 white supremacist film, The Birth of a Nation. Nelson Johnson and Signe Waller-Foxworth remember shouting at armed Klansmen and burning a confederate flag, until eventually police forced the KKK inside and the standoff ended without violence. The labor organizers felt they'd won a small victory, and planned a much bigger anti-Klan demonstration in Greensboro, North Carolina. They advertised with the slogan: "Death to the Klan" and set the date for November 3rd, 1979.
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Author Peggy Orenstein tells us what the Internet is teaching teen girls about sexiness and desirability.
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Water and juice flow in the stude today for our totally G-rated, kid-friendly episode. Our guest is 11-year-old Marley Dias, who got sick of reading books about "white boys and dogs," so she started the #1000BlackGirlBooks campaign. Our pal Ashley Ford joins us for a discussion of the books we love.
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Stephen Ranzini runs University Bank in Michigan, and he prides himself on serving the local community. But one day, a Muslim man walked into his office and said: If your bank is so great at community service, how come you're not serving my community? According to many scholars, Islamic law prohibits charging interest. Interest, of course, is pretty fundamental to banking. Stephen Ranzini decided to find out: Is it possible to do what a bank does without charging interest?
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One day when her daughter was 1 month old, Nanna Balslev took the elevator to the top floor of one of the tallest buildings in Copenhagen. Here's why.
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For years, Paul Modrowski has been writing a blog from inside a maximum security prison. Only thing is, he was arrested when he was 18 and has never seen the internet. Sruthi Pinnamaneni reaches out to him with one small question that alters the course of her next year.
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A lot of full-time jobs in the modern economy simply don't pay a living wage. And even those jobs may be obliterated by new technologies. What's to be done so that financially vulnerable people aren't just crushed? It may finally be time for an idea that economists have promoted for decades.
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Credit cards and debit cards have tons of safety features. The extra security code on the back. Sometimes your picture. Your signature. That little hologram of a bird that nobody looks at. But, until recently, there's been a big safety feature missing from credit cards in the U.S.: The chip. It was rolled out to stop fraud in France decades ago. It worked. Every other major economy adopted it, except us. Until now. What took so long for it to get here? And now that it is here, why have so few stores adopted it? Today on the show, we bring you a brief history of what's in your pocket. It's a story of convenience vs. fraud-and it also includes a hippie inventor, the origin of the last great upgrade on your card, the magnetic stripe, and why it takes so long to "dip the chip."
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Unclasp your briefcase. It's time for a showdown. In competitive debate future presidents, supreme court justices, and titans of industry pummel each other with logic and rhetoric. But a couple years ago Ryan Wash, a queer, Black, first-generation college student from Kansas City, Kansas joined the debate team at Emporia State University. When he started going up against fast-talking, well-funded, "name-brand" teams, it was clear he wasn't in Kansas anymore. So Ryan became the vanguard of a movement that made everything about debate debatable. In the end, he made himself a home in a strange and hostile land. Whether he was able to change what counts as rigorous academic argument ... well, that's still up for debate.
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How does money motivate, trick, satisfy and disappoint us? In this hour, TED speakers share insights into our relationship with money. (Original broadcast date: April 4, 2014)
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Sinful behavior is human, and nearly impossible to avoid. In this hour, TED speakers talk about the guilty pleasure of behaving badly and the challenge of confronting sin - and avoiding it. (Original broadcast date: February 6, 2015)
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A few years back, a famous psychologist published a series of studies that found people could predict the future - not all the time, but more often than if they were guessing by chance alone. The paper left psychologists with two options. "Either we have to conclude that ESP is true," says Brian Nosek, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, "or we have to change our beliefs about the right ways to do science." Nosek is going with Option B - and not just for psychology experiments. He thinks there's something wrong with the way we're doing science. And he launched a massive project to try to fix it.
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Leslie Miley went from being a college dropout to Twitter's only black engineer in a leadership position. So why did he quit?
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If you had to guess, how many facts have you taken in today? How many factoids, dates, times, sale alerts, tweet-sized factoids, and other factual-or-at-least-pretending-to-be-factual pieces of information have passed across your screen? At this rate, how many more do you expect to take in by midnight? Let us present you with one more: According to Dr. Daniel Levitin, author of "The Organized Mind," your brain can only fully absorb four. Four.
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This episode we take a sober look at the throbbing, aching, craving desire states that return people (again and again) to the object of their addiction ... and the pills that just might set them free. Reporter Amy O'Leary was fed up with her boyfriend's hard-drinking, when she discovered a French doctor's memoir titled The End of My Addiction. The fix that he proposed seemed too good to be true. But her phone call with the doctor left her, and us, even more intrigued. Could this malady - so often seen as moral and spiritual - really be beaten back with a pill? We talk to addiction researcher Dr. Anna Rose Childress, medical psychologist Dr. Mark Willenbring, journalist Gabrielle Glaser, The National Institute of Health's Nora Volkow, and scores of people dealing with substance abuse as we try to figure out whether we're in the midst of a sea change in how we think about addiction.
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When ISIS takes control of a town, they also take control of its businesses and its economy. Today on the show: We examine a budget that got smuggled out of ISIS territory. We hear what it's like to live under an ISIS regime, including where people keep their money, how taxes get collected, and a $50 dollar candy bar.
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Yik Yak is an app that allows users to communicate anonymously with anyone within a 10-mile radius. In the first part of this week's show, we revisit a story we did in January, about how the app brought out a particularly vicious strain of racism at Colgate University. And in the second half of the show - The past month has seen a flood of similar stories at colleges like University of Missouri, Yale, and Georgetown. So we go beyond Colgate and talk to Jamil Smith of the Intersection podcast to try to understand Colgate in the context of these recent events.
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When we're kids, we have ideas of what we want to be when we grow up - movie star, doctor, astronaut. But what if we dream of being like Butch Cassidy, Jesse James, or John Dillinger? And what happens when you're not a kid anymore but you're still obsessed with becoming an outlaw?
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Is leadership only reserved for the extraordinary few? Who has what it takes to disrupt the status quo? In this hour, TED speakers share ideas about what it takes to forge a new path. (Original broadcast date: January 17, 2014)
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For much of the 70s inflation was bad. Prices rose at over 10 percent a year. Nothing could stop it. President Gerald Ford tried to cut inflation by asking Americans to spend less.
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Gimlet is starting a new line of business, and it's a complicated one: Branded content. Branded content is a piece of media (a video, a story, a podcast, etc.) paid for by a company that then has editorial control over the product. Lots of companies have been asking Gimlet to make podcasts for them. But, as we see in this episode, there are some very real anxieties about how to do this right.
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Last week, Canon City, Colorado discovered that dozens of students at the local high school had been taking and trading nude photographs "like baseball cards," shaking up the parents, police, and schools. In a town best-known for one of the tallest suspension bridges in the world, this was - to put it mildly - big news.
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Researchers are trying to figure out who gets bored - and why - and what it means for ourselves and the economy. But maybe there's an upside to boredom?
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The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is a law. It's been on the books for almost 30 years. And it makes totally mundane online behavior illegal.
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Households tend to take pantry food for granted, but canned beans, powered cheese, and bags of moist cookies were not designed for everyday convenience. These standard products were made to meet the needs of the military.
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We return to the offices of Gimlet for the start of a new mini-season. It's been a year since the company launched and things are changing... fast. In this episode, Alex and his wife, Nazanin, wrestle with a huge decision that has implications for both the company and their family.
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Twenty years ago, Ethan Zuckerman did something terrible on the internet. And he's still living with the consequences.
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I have a concern about personalized feeds. There is so much information out there, but I know that most of what I see are opinions and voices like my own. I worry this makes us more judgmental about other people, because most of what we believe gets emphasized by people who think the same way. How do we break out of the bubble?
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Vince Kosuga was an onion farmer back in the 1930s. A pretty successful one. But farming wasn't enough for him. He also liked to make bets on wheat and other crops. Then he had an idea: Why not try his luck with the crop he knew best? Today on the show, how Kosuga made millions on the greatest onion trade the world had ever seen. We tell you about a scheme to corner the market that got so out of hand that it eventually caused the Chicago River to flow not just with water but with America's onions. Onion farming hasn't been the same since.
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99% Invisible is honored to accept a 2015 Third Coast International Audio Festival award for Structural Integrity, a story of architectural engineering gone wrong, and then covertly made right. When it was built in 1977, the 59-story CitiCorp Center had a potentially fatal flaw that could have caused the building to collapse during a sever storm, and take out the entire Midtown Manhattan skyline with it. This flaw (and the plan to fix it) was so secret, that even the person who found the problem only discovered the full story decades later.
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As Candid Camera succeeded, it started to change the way we thought not only of reality television, but also of reality itself.
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We shop around when we get a plane ticket or buy a couch. But we spend thousands of dollars on health care without comparing prices. Today on the show: What happens if we pay patients when they choose the cheaper option?
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The Internet runs on advertising. Everyone from huge tech companies to scrappy start-up websites rely on ads. There's just one problem: People hate advertising and the tracking that comes with it - and droves of us have started blocking them.
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When we go online, we present a digital version of ourselves. How do we transform when we interact inside our screens? In this episode, TED speakers explore the expanding role of our "second selves".
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I Don't Know What You’ve Done With My Husband But He's a Changed Man
URL: Website
Date: Sep 17th, 2015
From domestic abusers to former child soldiers, there is increasing evidence that behavioral therapy can turn them around.
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On a Sunday morning in 1982, in Des Moines, Iowa, Johnny Gosch left his house to begin his usual paper route. A short time later, his parents were awakened by a phone call-it was a neighbor-their paper hadn't come. When the Gosches went looking for Johnny they found only his red wagon full of newspapers, abandoned on the sidewalk. Johnny Gosch was 13 when he disappeared. He had blue eyes and dirty blond hair with a small gap between his front teeth. And his would be the first face of a missing child ever printed on a milk carton.
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Rob Cohen revolutionized car chase movies with The Fast and the Furious franchise. After Hollywood turned on him, he got a knock at the door with a very lucrative offer. Today's show: the economics of the low budget production house that gave Rob Cohen a chance to prove himself again.
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Conventional programs tend to be expensive, onerous, and ineffective. Could something as simple (and cheap) as cognitive behavioral therapy do the trick?
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What's going on in China? Is the second largest economy in the world about to come crashing down? On today's show: how to view the stock market, why even Chinese officials don't trust the country's official economic numbers, and the big shift behind it all.
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When Roddey Player's family business started going south after 60 years, he did everything he could to avoid the big failure: bankruptcy. But what's painful for Roddey might just be the secret weapon of the U.S. economy. On today's show: we go to Charlotte, North Carolina and follow one company's path through bankruptcy with creditors, debts, pride and shame, all jumbled up in this very American idea that has helped set our economy apart for more than 100 years.
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We spend billions on end-of-life healthcare that doesn't do much good. So what if a patient could forego the standard treatment and get a cash rebate instead?
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Scientists took about 300 years to lay out the Periodic Table into neat rows and columns. In one hour, we're going to mess it all up. This episode, we enlist journalists, poets, musicians, and even a physicist to help us tell stories of matter that matters. You'll never look at that chart the same way again. Special thanks to Emotive Fruition for organizing poetry performances and to the mighty Sylvan Esso for composing "Jaime's Song", both inspired by this episode. Thanks also to Sam Kean, Chris Howk and Brian Fields.
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What do NASCAR drivers, Glenn Beck and the hit men of the NFL have in common?
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This week, 10 Minutes On Craigslist is back! Preston has posted the same ad to Craigslist over 300 times. He speaks to Sylvie Douglis about why he keeps posting. And in the second half of the show: Barry Crimmins is an influential comedian, and a survivor of sexual abuse. In the mid-90's he embarked on a one-man crusade to stop child pornographers who were operating with impunity on America Online.
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There are all kinds of civics-class answers to that question. But how true are they? Could it be that we like to read about war, politics, and miscellaneous heartbreak simply because it's (gasp) entertaining?
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Right now, all sorts of people are trying to rethink and reinvent education, to get poor minority kids performing as well as white kids. But there's one thing nobody tries anymore, despite lots of evidence that it works: desegregation. Nikole Hannah-Jones looks at a district that, not long ago, accidentally launched a desegregation program.
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A car plant in Fremont California that might have saved the U.S. car industry. In 1984, General Motors and Toyota opened NUMMI as a joint venture. Toyota showed GM the secrets of its production system: How it made cars of much higher quality and much lower cost than GM achieved. Frank Langfitt explains why GM didn't learn the lessons-until it was too late.
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Finance is a little like plumbing: it's not until the pipes fail that we really want to know what's happening. As the standoff between Greece and rest of Europe continues, Greece has had to shut down some major parts of its financial plumbing to stop major leakages. The effects are widespread and weird. Families are hoarding gasoline. Bean and rice imports are drying up. ATM lines resemble a slow-motion bank run. It's a lesson in the usually invisible things that keep an economy together.
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This is the story of a few documents that tumbled out of the secret archives of the biggest empire the world has ever known, offering a glimpse of histories waiting to be rewritten. Just down the road from a pub in rural Hanslope Park, England is a massive building - the secret archives of the biggest empire the world has ever known. This is the story of a few documents that tumbled out and offered a glimpse of histories waiting to be rewritten. When professor Caroline Elkins came across a stray document left by the British colonial government in Nairobi, Kenya, she opened the door to a new reckoning with the history of one of Britain's colonial crown jewels, and the fearsome group of rebels known as the Mau Mau. We talk to historians, archivists, journalists and send our producer Jamie York to visit the Mau Mau. As the new history of Kenya is concealed and revealed, document by document, we wonder what else lies in wait among the miles of records hidden away in Hanslope Park.
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On a recent weekend, I took a complete digital sabbatical, as in I locked my iPhone, iPad and MacBook in a drawer and completely disconnected. It was glorious. I'm constantly torn between the speed and efficiency of digital tools and the quiet and relaxation of analog ones. So as a quiet person, how do you find quiet space to work and think in the digital era?
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More than 90% of all automobile accidents are all attributable to human error, for some car industry people, a fully-automated car is a kind of holy grail. However, as automation makes our lives easier and safer, it also creates more complex systems, and fewer humans who understand those systems. Which means when problems do arise-people can be left unable to deal with them. Human factors engineers call this "the automation paradox."
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On the evening of May 31, 2009, 216 passengers, three pilots, and nine flight attendants boarded an Airbus 330 in Rio de Janeiro. This flight, Air France 447, was headed across the Atlantic to Paris. The take-off was unremarkable. The plane reached a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet. The passengers read and watched movies and slept. Everything proceeded normally for several hours. Then, with no communication to the ground or air traffic control, flight 447 suddenly disappeared.
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As crash experts sort out why an Amtrak train derailed in Philadelphia last month, killing eight passengers, Congress is still haggling over how to replenish the nation's Highway Trust Fund before it goes dry. All the while, the safety of America's roads and rails hangs in the balance. So on this show, Brian, Ed and Peter uncover the stuff of modern life that's hidden in plain sight. How have Americans decided what infrastructure to invest in, how to maintain it, and who ultimately has to pay for it? Our stories take a look behind the scenes at the electric grid, the shipping industry and the origins of oil pipelines.
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Listening - to loved ones, strangers, faraway places - is an act of generosity and a source of discovery. In this episode, TED speakers describe how we change when we listen deeply.
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Service jobs were a refuge for people when robots took factory jobs. Service jobs seemed safe-you needed the human touch. But robots are making headway there, too. They're checking us in at hotels, renting us cars and ringing us up at the supermarket. Today on the show, we go out for pizza at a place where machines have taken over parts of the server's job. Waiters are the latest group of workers meeting the machines that might replace them.
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Some information is so big and so complicated that it seems impossible to talk to kids about. This week, stories about the vague and not-so-vague ways to teach children about race, death and sex - including a story about colleges responding to sexual assault by trying to teach students how to ask for consent. Also, a story about how and when to teach kids about the horrors of slavery and oppression in America.
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It's nice to belong, to feel connected to others. But what happens when you realize that your fundamental beliefs don't line up with the people you want to be close to? Do you bring it up? And, what does that conversation sound like? Including a story by Mariya Karimjee, pictured. Guest host Sean Cole sits in for Ira.
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In December of 2009, photojournalist Lynsey Addario was embedded with a medevac team in Afghanistan. After days of waiting, late one night they got the call - a marine was gravely wounded. What happened next happens all the time. But this time it was captured, picture by picture, in excruciating detail. Horrible, difficult, and at times strikingly beautiful, those photos raise some questions: Who should see them, who gets to decide who should see them, and what can pictures like that do, to those of us far away from the horrors war and those of us who are all too close to it. Special thanks to Chris Hughes and Helium Records for the use of Shift Part IV.
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Humans need food, sleep, safety, love, purpose. Psychologist Abraham Maslow ordered our needs into a hierarchy. This week, TED speakers explore that spectrum of need, from primal to profound.
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So what are the "rules of war," and who gets to decide them? In this episode, Brian, Ed and Peter look at how past generations have answered those questions.
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In "How to Become Batman," Alix and Lulu examine the surprising effect that our expectations can have on the people around us. You'll hear how people's expectations can influence how well a rat runs a maze. Plus, the story of a man who is blind and says expectations have helped him see. Yes. See. This journey is not without skeptics.
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt ignores the advice of America's big-name economists - and listens instead to a guy who helped take care of the trees on his estate. Montagu Norman, head of the Bank of England, gets a coded message at a critical moment - and completely misunderstands what it means. On today's Planet Money: The gold standard and the Great Depression.
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On today's show, we visit the charming curmudgeon and respected finance writer James Grant. He says we should go back on the gold standard. His basic argument: Under the gold standard, money holds its value. Central banks can't create (or destroy) money at a whim. He says that under the gold standard, "the value was fixed. We adjusted our affairs to this North Star of value."
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Right now there are fewer than two hundred active trademarks for sounds. A surprisingly small number, considering sound has the power make-or-break brand.
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Even the most original ideas are essentially remixes. When is copying flattery, when is it thievery, and when is it sheer genius? In this hour, TED speakers explore how sampling, borrowing, and riffing make all of us innovators. Sampling music isn't about "hijacking nostalgia wholesale," says DJ Mark Ronson. It's about inserting yourself into the narrative of a song while pushing that story forward. Filmmaker Kirby Ferguson says nothing is original and that our most celebrated creators steal ideas - and transform them into something new. Clothing designs aren't protected by copyright - and the industry benefits by being more innovative, says Johanna Blakley. People often credit their ideas to individual "Eureka!" moments. But writer Steven Johnson shows how history tells a different story.
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In which we argue that failure should not only be tolerated but celebrated. When failure is stigmatized, people will do everything they can to avoid it, often at great cost. Levitt tells the story of a large multinational retailer that was opening its first store in China - and how the company's executives couldn't express their misgivings to a bullish boss. Then we hear a story in which the boss's "go fever" had far more tragic ramifications: the 1986 launch of the space shuttle Challenger. Allan McDonald, an engineer on the shuttle project and author of the book Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, tell us how his attempts to delay the launch were overruled.
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The hardest three words in the English language are "I don't know," and that our inability to say these words more often can have huge consequences.
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Brands help us assign value to almost everything we buy. But is there a way to know the difference between real and created value? In this episode, TED speakers explore the seductive power of brands. Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock tells the story of his quest to make a completely sponsored film - about sponsorship. Psychologist Paul Bloom argues that our beliefs about the history of an object change how we perceive it. Consultant Joseph Pine says we'll pay more for an experience that feels "real." Marketer Rory Sutherland explains how rebranding changed the potato forever.
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Success has become synonymous with financial wealth, influence and status. But can we define success in another way - one that welcomes a broader range of accomplishment? It may not be as obvious as you think. In this hour, TED speakers share ideas for what makes us successful. Life coach Tony Robbins describes why failure should not be an option. Psychologist Angela Lee Duckworth says "grit", not IQ, is the new predictor of success. Mike Rowe encourages us not to follow our passion. Ron Gutman shares some compelling research on the hidden power of smiling. And writer Alain de Botton shares a fascinating view about the American paradigm for success and failure.
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People in La Crosse, Wisconsin are used to talking about death. In fact, 96 percent of people who die in this small, Midwestern city have specific directions laid out for when they pass. That number is astounding. Nationwide, it's more like 50 percent. In today's episode, we'll take you to a place where dying has become acceptable dinner conversation for teenagers and senior citizens alike. A place that also happens to have the lowest healthcare spending of any region in the country.
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Music is Daryl Davis' profession, but extreme racism is his obsession.
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After years of planning and months of production, the Planet Money T-shirts are here. They'll be in the mail soon. We promise. The shirts were touched by people in rich countries with advanced degrees and by people working for some of the lowest wages in the world. They traveled thousands of miles across three continents. Over the next several weeks, we'll tell the story of the shirts, and of the world behind them. Today, we begin at the beginning: where the cotton in our shirt came from.
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We-ve all felt it, that irresistible urge to point the finger. But new technologies are complicating age-old moral conundrums about accountability. This hour, we ask what blame does for us - why do we need it, when isn't it enough, and what happens when we try to push past it with forgiveness and mercy?
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From medicine to the movies, the horrifying to the holy, and history to the present day -- we're kinda obsessed with blood. This hour, we consider the power and magic of the red liquid that runs through our veins.
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Should Tipping Be Banned: As we all know, the practice of tipping can be awkward, random, and confusing. This episode tries to offer some clarity.
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There ain't no such thing as a free parking spot. Somebody has to pay for it - and that somebody is everybody.
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Picture the scrum of the stock exchange - the flurry of buying and selling, the split-second decisions that make and break fortunes. Then take out all the humans and accelerate everything until you literally can't keep up.
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You know the bromide: "a winner never quits, and a quitter never wins." To which Freakonomics Radio says... Are you sure? Sometimes quitting is strategic, and sometimes it can be your best possible plan.
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Fact: Human beings love to predict the future. Fact: Human beings are not very good at predicting the future. Fact: Because the incentives to predict are quite imperfect - bad predictions are rarely punished - this situation is unlikely to change. But wouldn't it be nice if it did?
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Yes yes yes you've heard it all before, when it comes to stories of fathers and their children. There's the story of the kid who idolizes his dad, but then learns something and becomes disappointed. Or the opposite story, where the kid gives up on his dad when he's still young, and then much later comes to have a grudging respect. This week for fathers day: surprising stories of fathers trying to be good dads.
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Brazil is booming, but for most of the 20th century it was an economic mess. For a while, inflation was so high that grocery stores were raising their prices every day. Shoppers would run ahead of the guy changing the price tags, so they could pay the previous day's price. A series of leaders tried and failed to stop inflation. One guy instituted a price freeze. Another froze peoples' bank accounts. None of it worked. Then, the government brought in in four economists who had been talking to each other for years about how to fix Brazil's inflation problem. Their solution: Create a currency that doesn't exist. No coins, no bills.
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