STORY IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE

#601 Robert Kolker
Every family has its secrets. Robert Kolker tells the story of an All-American family in the middle of the 20th century forced to grapple with that era’s stigma and the tragic consequences of serious mental illness.

#602 Ernest Freeberg
The end of the 19th Century in America, is often associated with the rise of profound social movements like the temperance movement; the women’s suffrage movement, and—more darkly—even the eugenics movement. Ernest Freeberg tells the story of the birth of the animal rights movement.

#603 Norm Ornstein
Many Americans believe our politics are broken. Norm Ornstein says the fault lies squarely with one political party—and will likely shape the course of the Biden administration.

#604 Chris Frantz
The music scene in the 1970s and 1980s is now the stuff of legend—from disco to the rise of hip hop, punk, and new wave, innovation and artistry dominated pop music. Chris Frantz was in the middle of it all as a founding member of Talking Heads.

#605 Kashmir Hill
We live in an age increasingly defined by the intrusion of technology in our lives. Kashmir Hill is a technology journalist whose work explores the looming tech-dystopia—and how we can avoid it.

#606 Thomas E. Ricks
Political divisions are as old as the republic, itself. But Thomas E. Ricks says that if we’re serious about preserving the union, there is much we can learn from the founders’ study of the ancient republics in antiquity.

#607 Amy Bruni
Everyone has a ghost story—a personal family experience, something that happened to a friend, an uncle, or even ourselves. Sometimes these stories are comforting and sometimes they are not. Amy Bruni shares her experience as a paranormal investigator.

#608 Sam Pollard & Bend Hedin
In the 1960s, the Federal Bureau of Investigation spied on civil rights leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Sam Pollard and Bend Hedin tell that story in a powerful documentary that shines a light on race, power, and the politics of personal destruction.

#609 Dan Barry
It’s been one year since the coronavirus pandemic upended life across the globe. Dan Barry reminds us that behind the headlines and the previously unimaginable counts of cases and deaths, there are stories of individual lives interrupted and, all too often, cut short by the pandemic.

#610 SE Cupp
In the first months of the Biden administration, we’ve seen an intentional effort by the new president to return the country’s politics to some sense of “normal.” SE Cupp is a conservative voice who yearns for a return to substance in American politics.

#611 Christine Montross
The intersection of America’s criminal justice system and mental health is long and, often, misunderstood. Christine Montross tells us that America’s largest mental health institution isn’t a psychiatric hospital, it’s Cook County Jail in Chicago, Illinois.

#612 Vanessa Otero
Anybody on social media has seen it: dueling posts, arguing over a hot-political issue. The protagonists in these online debates are generally sincere in their convictions, but Vanessa Otero says that too many of us remain unaware of the media biases that shape our understanding of the world.

#613 Michael Oppenheimer
Some call it climate change, others call it a crisis, and still others call it a hoax. Princeton University climate scientist Dr. Michael Oppenheimer tells us to take seriously the impact climate change will have in all of our lives.

#614 Tim Gray
Stories from the Second World War continue to educate, fascinate, and even entertain audiences around the world. Documentary filmmaker Tim Gray tells those stories to educate a new generation about the horrors of war and the heroism of the generation that saved the free world.

#615 Pete Hammond
In the midst of a year that saw pandemic disease, social unrest, and bare knuckled politics, Hollywood churned out a tremendous body of work—even while theaters closed and films created for the big screen streamed directly to our homes. Film critic Pete Hammond says this year’s Academy Awards reflect the issues facing Americans.

#616 Josh Gad & Ida Darvish
The pandemic has had a profound effect on the entertainment industry, disrupting live performances and posing challenges for production in both film and television. Josh Gad and Ida Darvish are two of the bright lights of Hollywood and they tell us that the creative process continues.

#617 Julian Chambliss
The analytical mind can explain the world around us, but the creative mind can help create our future. Scholar Julian Chambliss explores the power of Afrofuturism in comic books, the expression of creativity in the midst of pandemic, and the way we think about and process history as a society.

#618 Jonathan Karp
Pick up a book, and you can transport yourself to any time in history—or the future, delve into the mystical or the romantic, or help us to open our minds and our hearts. Over the last 30 years, Jonathan Karp, president and CEO of Simon and Schuster, has put more of those books into hands than just about anyone else.

#619 Mariee Sioux
Folk music has a long and rich tradition in the United States, telling stories by capturing life in lyric and melody. Singer-songwriter Mariee Sioux uses those tools to tell stories that reflect her indigenous heritage.

#620 Janelle Wong
Asian-American hate crimes were brought into tragic focus with the March 16 mass shooting in Atlanta. University of Maryland professor Janelle Wong, a core faculty member in the Asian American Studies Program, discusses the long history of hate.

#621 Jamie Merisotis
Technology—specifically artificial intelligence and automation—are poised to change the way we work and the contours of society. Jamie Merisotis, president of the Lumina Foundation, argues that education must change to prepare citizens to work alongside machines, using our critical thinking, our reason, and our ethical judgment.

#622 Valarie Kaur
Love is the stuff of poetry, and heartache, and hope, and songs. But activist Valarie Kaur says love can be revolutionary and is needed as a public ethic to confront hate, and nationalism, and the violence born from ignorance.

#623 Dessa
Every one of us knows heartache—the sweet melancholy of a love that just doesn’t work. The multi-talented musician and artist Dessa traces much of her musical inspiration to that pain, and even commissioned a team of neuroscientists to help her fall out of love.

#624 Wendy Lower
In 2009, acclaimed historian of the Holocaust Wendy Lower was shown a picture of a family’s execution by Ukrainian allies of the Nazis some 70 years earlier. In the years that followed, her research gave names to the victims and the killers and lays bare the horror of the Holocaust on an intimate, personal level.

Additional episode descriptions are tba