Legend says the Pearl of Lao Tzu was found in 1934 after a diver drowned trying to pry it from the mouth of a giant clam. The writer Michael LaPointe has traced the pearl's unbelievable story through a tangled web of fact and fiction.

New Yorker staff writer Jelani Cobb writes about the problems we have in this country with race and injustice. He says that race may just be a mythology, but it’s also a useful way of looking at our checkered history, and talking about it isn’t easy.

Plastics. They’ve changed medicine, transportation, and food and water safety. But they've also become a global headache. There's more than six billion tons of plastic trash in the world. What can be done about the problem of plastics?

How should people outside of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints respond to the request to dump nicknames like Mormon or LDS? How are you thinking about it?

What does it mean to be dopesick? When you're addicted and have run out of pills, it means misery and desperation. Journalist Beth Macy joins us with chilling stories from America's opioid crisis.

In his book Far From the Tree , the writer Andrew Solomon tells the stories of children whose profound differences—dwarfism, schizophrenia, Down syndrome, genius, and others—have made them the subjects of prejudice and changed their parents’ lives.

Thursday, we’re talking about sexual violence against undocumented laborers. Journalist Bernice Yeung joins Andrew Becker to explain their struggle for justice in the age of the #metoo movement.

Have you ever wondered how inanimate objects feel? Radio producer Ian Chillag's new podcast casts actors in the roles of everyday objects, like a can of off-brand cola. It's silly, yes, but it's full of very real, very human feelings.

Tuesday, we're talking about beavers. Nature writer Ben Goldfarb says beavers were crucial in shaping America's landscape and its human history. Then we killed them by the score. He joins us to explain why we should learn to love beavers.

Writer and adventurer Craig Childs’s latest book is a unique kind of travelogue. It’s about his journeys across the country and back in time to the Ice Age to learn what life was like for the first people to arrive in North America.