Think from KERA

For many of us, the post-graduation years are spent chasing the traditional markers of success. New York Times columnist David Brooks joins guest host Courtney Collins to talk about how acquiring fame and fortune can still leave us empty inside – and about how true joy is found when we begin to lead our lives in service to others. His new book is called “The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life” (Random House).

When the financial industry is allowed to write its own regulations and the government seems focused on keeping corporations happy, it’s no wonder everyday Americans feel left behind. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz joins guest host Courtney Collins to talk about fundamental changes that will push markets to work for the people instead of the other way around. His new book is called “People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent” (W.W. Norton & Co.).

Traditional parental philosophy says we need to raise our boys to become men. But what does that even mean in 2019? Michael Reichert, founding director of the Center for the Study of Boys’ and Girls’ Lives at the University of Pennsylvania, joins guest host Courtney Collins to talk about updated approaches to bringing up boys that draw on new insights into psychology and neuroscience. His new book is called “How to Raise a Boy: The Power of Connection to Build Good Men” (Tarcher Perigee).

Suburbia has historically presented urban planners with a blank slate and an opportunity to rethink how we live alongside one another. Amanda Kolson Hurley joins guest host Courtney Collins to talk about planned communities that have bucked conventional thinking – from a tiny-house anarchist neighborhood in New Jersey to a Modernist enclave in Massachusetts. Her new book is called “Radical Suburbs: Experimental Living on the Fringes of the American City” (Belt Publishing).

As our understanding of sentience has developed, our understanding of who or what is included in what’s known as the “moral circle” has evolved. Sigal Samuel joins guest host Courtney Collins to talk through which other beings we should be thinking about with greater compassion. Her essay “Should Animals, Plants, and Robots have the Same Rights as You?” appears in Vox.

As a reporter for KXAS television, Bobbie Wygant witnessed many of the most important events of the 20th Century that happened in North Texas. She joins guest host Courtney Collins to talk about everything from covering the Kennedy assassination to interviewing the Beatles, which she chronicles in her new book,“Talking to the Stars: Bobbie Wygant’s Seventy Years in Television” (Texas Christian University Press).

Art has a way of provoking an emotional and physiological response from us – whether it’s laughing at a movie or crying during a sad song. This hour, we’re exploring the effect art has on our brains. We’ll talk with an art educator about how art promotes brain development in children, a psychologist about how we perceive and respond to art, and a professor studying how art can be used to treat PTSD.

Paradigm-shifting technologies such as the jet engine, radar and even the internet are a result of the public investment in science and technology that began in 1940. MIT professor Simon Johnson – a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund – joins host Krys Boyd to make the case that this style of investment is once again needed to pump life into our economy. His new book, written with Jonathan Gruber, is called“Jump-Starting America: How Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the American Dream”(PublicAffairs).

As the world’s largest cities grow exponentially, urban planners are urgently thinking through how to handle large populations living in close quarters. Architect and urban planner Peter Calthorpe joins host Krys Boyd to talk about the traits shared by the cities currently meeting the challenge. Calthorpe is featured in “Rethinking Cities,”a special issue of National Geographic magazine.

Helen Ellis left Alabama for New York when she got married. And every day she’s proving once again that you can take the girl out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of the girl. She joins host Krys Boyd to tell some hilarious stories about maintaining her Southern charm north of the Mason-Dixon. Her new book of essays is called“Southern Lady Code”(Doublday).