Think from KERA

America has a secret hidden in plain sight: more than half a million children – ages 12 and in certain situations, younger – are legally laboring on farms, often in dangerous and backbreaking conditions. Valeria Fernández joins host Krys Boyd to talk about how the farming industry is exempt from the standards that govern other sectors, which she writes about for Pacific Standard magazine.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal set ground rules for working conditions, including the legalization of organized unions. But not long after WWII, union membership began a sharp decline. Former New York Times labor correspondent Steven Greenhouse joins host Krys Boyd to talk about how this shift led directly to income inequality and other modern problems, which he writes about in “Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor.”

Gun violence dominated the weekend as many as 22 people were killed by a gunman in El Paso – and nine more were shot to death less than 24 hours later in Dayton, Ohio. Host Krys Boyd gets an update from El Paso, and later in the hour we talk with experts on gun violence, the anger of young men, and ways to address the growing problem.

We’ve all had those moments: forgetting where you put the keys, going blank on what to grab at the grocery store. We joke with our friends that it’s because “the mind is the first to go.” Scholar and author Lewis Hyde joins host Krys Boyd to talk about how forgetting can actually allow for profound change and even be a blessing. His new book is called “A Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past.”

Let’s see if you know this quote, “Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads!” Or “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” The iconic lines from “Back to the Future” and “Apocalypse Now” are linked in film critic J. Hoberman’s newest cultural anthology, a book that takes its title from another famous line, “Make My Day: Movie Culture in the Age of Reagan.” Hoberman joins guest host Courtney Collins to talk about movies and politics in the late 1970s and ’80s – and how those films dive into the themes American audiences yearned for.

Economists study poverty using hard data – but the numbers don’t always reflect personal experiences. University of Wisconsin-Madison associate professor Sarah Halpern-Meekin joins guest host Courtney Collins to talk about how low-income parents struggle for family and community — and how a vacuum of social ties can perpetuate the cycle of hardship. Halpern-Meekin’s new book is called “Social Poverty: Low-Income Parents and the Struggle for Family and Community Ties.”

A house-bound widow in Maine, a professional baseball pitcher who’s forced off the mound by injury – what do they have in common? A life-long friendship and the pain that comes with losing the thing you love most. This is the the story driver inside the pages of “Evvie Drake Starts Over,” the New York Times best-selling novel by author Linda Holmes, host of NPR’s “Pop Culture Happy Hour”. She talks about her quirky, hopeful work with guest host Courtney Collins.

There’s a saying, “it costs a lot of money to be broke.” Georgetown law professor Peter Edelman agrees. His new book, “Not a Crime to Be Poor,” explores all the ways our systems nickles and dimes people below the poverty line — from a multitude of fees for minor infractions to evictions stemming from domestic violence calls. He joins guest host Courtney Collins to talk about his investigations of state and local government policies and his call for a renewed focus on social justice.

Citizens of Honduras are routinely extorted by gangs and regularly murdered if they fail to pay up. Those gangs operate unchecked in part because of a government infested with corrupt officials. Sonia Nazario spent a month reporting in the country, and she joins guest host Courtney Collins to talk about how this combination of violence and corruption has everyday Hondurans fleeing in record numbers – and to explain why cutting U.S. aid is making the situation worse. Her story on the topic appears in The New York Times.

Bed-bound, paralyzed from the waist down, Nnedi Okorafor woke up from what was supposed to be minimally-invasive surgery with her life upside down. Her recovery meant periods of hallucinations, nightmares, as well as a re-examination of her very identify. Okorafor, an acclaimed science fiction and fantasy author, brings her personal story to the page in her new book, “Broken Place and Outer Spaces,” which she discusses with guest host Courtney Collins.