RadioWest

The writer Michael Pollan is with us to talk about his book on psychedelics. It’s about their potential to heal mental illnesses, and to explore the subject, Pollan took a few trips himself.

The wild horse is a majestic, beloved, and federally protected icon of the American frontier with a history as epic as the land it inhabits. It’s also the subject of heated controversy and dispute.

Physicist Jim Al-Khalili joins us to explain what life on other planets could like, where it could be, and what would happen if we found it - or it found us.

The psychologist Alison Gopnik worries that parenting is too much like being a carpenter, where you shape chosen materials into a final product. But what if we parented more like gardeners—creating nurturing spaces in which children can flourish?

Monday, we’re talking to historian Richard Francis about Samuel Sewell. He was the only one of the judges during the Salem Witch trials who apologized for his role in the execution of 20 people.

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.