Think from KERA

When we donate clothing and other goods to a charity, do we really know where they go? Turns out, our decluttering fuels a global, billion-dollar, second-hand trade system. Adam Minter joins host Krys Boyd to talk about people who find treasure in our trash — and why, with all our stuff, we continue to buy new things. His new book is called “Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale.” 

Pragmatic, relentless, pursued, and emboldened: those are apt to describe Susan E. Rice, former national security adviser and UN ambassador under President Barack Obama. She joins host Krys Boyd to talk about everything from her family’s history of enslavement, to her own privilege and power, to her headline-making policy decisions that still define America’s reach today. Her book is, “Tough Love: My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For.”

Stem-cell therapies promise to relieve aching joints, treat autism, even cure cancer. But without real, scientific research behind the claims, it’s hard for consumers to know if they’re buying a miracle cure or exposing themselves to snake oil. Health and science journalist Laura Beil joins host Krys Boyd to talk about an industry skirting the line between innovation and danger, which she reports on in her podcast “Bad Batch.”

In 1973, a Stanford psychologist and seven others conducted an undercover sting to test the legitimacy of mental health diagnoses. The resulting scientific paper changed the course of modern psychiatry … but was any of it true? Author Susannah Cahalan joins host Krys Boyd to talk about her search for answers as she investigated the watershed study. Her new book is called “The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness.” 

Same-sex marriage was legalized by the Supreme Court in 2015, but that decision didn’t settle ongoing questions of how churches incorporate LGBTQ members. Mark Wingfield, associate pastor of Dallas’ Wilshire Baptist Church, joins host Krys Boyd to talk about the tough and meaningful work a group of his congregants and clergy did to reach answers his church needed to address the question. His book is called “Why Churches Need to Talk About Sexuality.”

With Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, Disney has created some of cinema’s most recognizable female characters. Which is ironic, considering the studio was once quite a boys club. Nathalia Holt joins host Krys Boyd to talk about Disney’s Golden Age and the women who fought gender discrimination behind the scenes. Her new book is called “The Queens of Animation: The Untold Story of the Women Who Transformed the World of Disney and Made Cinematic History.”

As climate scientists try to protect a warming world, some are looking to indigenous peoples for lessons in caring for the land. Alejandro Frid, an ecologist for First Nations of British Columbia’s Central Coast and adjunct assistant professor in the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria, joins host Krys Boyd to talk about integrating Western science with ancient traditions, which he writes about in “Changing Tides: An Ecologist’s Journey to Make Peace with the Anthropocene.”

Journalist Tom Junod had lost confidence in himself. He was known as cynical, hardened journalist. So it was an inside-joke that he’d be assigned to interview the nicest man in America: Fred Rogers. Junod joins host Krys Boyd to talk about what turned into an unlikely, lifelong friendship with a quiet man who possessed a special power to deeply empathize with children and adults alike. The new movie “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”– starring Tom Hanks as Mr. Rogers – is based on a 1998 article Junod wrote for Esquire.

Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer shared the 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their “experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.” Duflo and Banerjee are both economics professor at MIT, and they join host Krys Boyd to talk about building a more humane world through rethinking the exchange of goods and services. Their new book is called “Good Economics For Hard Times.”

Nefertiti Austin’s request seemed simple enough – all she wanted was to adopt the boy she was already caring for as a foster parent. She joins host Krys Boyd to talk about what that painstaking process taught her about how America thinks of single, black motherhood. Her new book is called “Motherhood So White: A Memoir of Race, Gender, and Parenting in America.”