Think from KERA

Fifteen-year-old Ana sees her life turned upside down when she becomes engaged to a much older man and moves from the Dominican Republic to New York City. Ana is at the center of author Angie Cruz’s novel,“Dominicana,” and Cruz joins guest host Courtney Collins to talk about how her fictional character reflects the lives of so many real women.

At the age of 19, Shaka Senghor was sent to prison for second-degree murder. Years of reflection behind bars led him to a clearer understanding of the criminal justice system, and how hurt people, hurt people. He joins host Krys Boyd to talk about how he worked through his own pain and now helps communities heal theirs. His book is called “Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and Redemption in an American Prison.”

When white flight left urban cores ghost towns, Latinos moved in to create vibrant street life. A. K. Sandoval-Strausz, director of the Latina/o Studies Program and associate professor of history at Penn State University, joins host Krys Boyd to talk about how Latinos have influenced cities across the country. His new book is called “Barrio America: How Latino Immigrants Saved the American City.”

If you don’t have your GPS are you hopelessly lost? Have you been told men are better at math and women are better at language? And what does it take to train a winner? We’ll spent this hour talking with experts on brain science to separate fact from fiction – and to better understand what we know about gender, creativity and how our brain is programmed to lead us home.

The Guantánamo detention camp located within the U.S. Naval base in Cuba was set up to protect our country from foreign actors. But many Americans are concerned that our treatment of these prisoners betrays the values we’re trying to protect. Peter Jan Honigsberg is a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law and founder and director of Witness to Guantanamo. He joins host Krys Boyd to talk about his years-long work chronicling the extrajudicial practices and people affected inside the prison walls. His book is called “A Place Outside the Law: Forgotten Voices from Guantanamo.”

In 2008, a recent high school graduate found out someone was trying to have her killed. The method? An online marketplace of hired assassins operating on the dark web. Technology writer Brian Merchant joins host Krys Boyd to talk about the surprising and shadowy world of crowd-sourced contract killers. His article “Click Here to Kill: The Dark World of Online Murder Markets” appears in Harper’s magazine.

No matter what religion you ascribe to – or even if you claim no religion at all – if you live in the West, you have been influenced by Christianity. Historian Tom Holland joins host Krys Boyd to talk about tracing Christian concepts from antiquity to today and how they’ve shaped the western world. His new book is called “Dominion: How The Christian Revolution Remade the World.”

The possibility that alien life may exist somewhere in the cosmos fuels the astronomers who search for it. But what if they’ve all been looking in the wrong place? Science journalist Adam Mann joins host Krys Boyd to talk about the renewed push and excitement to fund the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, despite skepticism and pushback. His article, “Intelligent Ways to Search for Extraterrestrials: Is there a more rational way to scan the heavens for alien life?” appeared recently in The New Yorker.

In military speak, “the golden hour” is that critical 60 minutes between when a soldier is wounded to when he or she must receive life-saving care. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Wood joins host Krys Boyd to talk about current experiments and crucial advances taking place in battlefield medicine that could push the chances of survival well beyond a one-hour window. His article, “Saving Lives in Tomorrow’s War, Today” appears in Texas Monthly.

American politics is mired in historically ugly divisions approaching the 2020 elections. But this atmosphere didn’t just appear overnight. Michael Kirk joins host Krys Boyd to talk about the factors that got us to this point and what the future could hold for our democracy. His Frontline documentary “America’s Great Divide: From Obama to Trump” debuts tonight on PBS stations.