Think from KERA

When we separate out our trash and fill the recycling bin, we feel like better stewards

of the earth. But maybe it’s time to look outside the bin to really address climate change. Journalist Tatiana Schlossberg joined host Krys Boyd in October to talk about how re-evaluating our lifestyles is the key to any real, radical change. Her book is called “Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don't Know You Have.”

There’s the place you call home: the physical four walls, the back porch, the garden …

and then there’s the metaphor of home: the hearth and heart of your identity. Sarah M. Broom joined host Krys Boyd in August to talk about the New Orleans home where she and her siblings grew up, and the emotional toll of being displaced from the world she loved. She writes about her experiences in her memoir, “The Yellow House,” which went on to win a National Book Award.

When he was 50 years old, Tommy Tomlinson weighed 460 pounds, putting him at risk for heart disease, diabetes and plenty of other ailments. He joined host Krys Boyd in February to talk about his lifelong battle with weight – and about what it’s like to move through the world constantly aware of your size, which he writes about in “The Elephant in the Room: One Fat Man's Quest to Get Smaller in a Growing America.”

To truly understand today’s synthetic opioid crisis we have to go back thousands of years and examine the world of pure opium. Dr. John H. Halpern, a psychiatrist and former medical director of the Boston Center for Addiction Treatment, joins host Krys Boyd to talk about how the power of the drug, first detected in Mesopotamia, has built to a crisis today. His new book, co-written with David Blistein, is called “Opium: How an Ancient Flower Shaped and Poisoned Our World.”

America is full of cheaters – from the executive who goes to jail for a white collar crimes to the child who steals the answers to the test. J.M. Fenster joins host Krys Boyd to talk about a system of fibs, infidelities and fraud that permeates every corner of our society and why, big or small, they matter. Her new book is called “Cheaters Always Win: The Story of America.”

We can acknowledge that in many, myriad ways the Civil War still defines America. We know how it started — but what did it look like when the war was winding down? S.C. Gwynne joins host Krys Boyd to talk about how an increase in violence in the war’s final year actually helped bring it to a close. His new book “Hymns of the Republic: The Story of the Final Year of the American Civil War.”

More than 850,000 families lost their homes due to foreclosure in 2008. And when the dust settled from the Great Recession, all signs pointed to a mortgage and investment banking system riddled with fraud. Reveal journalist Aaron Glantz joins host Krys Boyd to talk about how “mortgage products” let so many Americans down. His new book is called,“Homewreckers: How a Gang of Wall Street Kingpins, Hedge Fund Magnates, Crooked Banks, and Vulture Capitalists Suckered Millions Out of Their Homes and Demolished the American Dream.”

Americans like to think that, as the home of the free, racism and discrimination have no place in our society. History says otherwise. Erika Lee, director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota, joins host Krys Boyd to talk about how our country’s fear of the “other” has been with us since the beginning — and how our historical amnesia is holding back healing. Her new book is called “America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States.”

The yearly outbreak of the common cold doesn’t really change much about society. But epidemics of plague, cholera and, most recently, Ebola, have affected not just health policy but military strategy and even the arts. Frank M. Snowden, the Andrew Downey Orrick Professor Emeritus of History and History of Medicine at Yale University, joins host Krys Boyd to talk about how infectious outbreaks — both terrifying and romanticized — have shaped our world, which he writes about in “Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present.”

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance are the five stages of grief. But life doesn’t always move in a straight line. George A. Bonanno, professor of clinical psychology and chair of the Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology at Columbia University’s Teachers College, joins host Krys Boyd to talk about research that shows a complex pattern of grieving and new insights into resilience. His book “The Other Side of Sadness: What The New Science of Bereavement Tells Us About Life After Loss” is now out in paperback.