Think from KERA

As a teen, Damon Young wished a white person would call him a racial slur just to have a good fight story. The cofounder of VerySmartBrothas.com joins host Krys Boyd to talk about the shifting definition of black masculinity – and about what it’s like to live in a country you feel is out to get you – which he writes about in “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in Essays” (Ecco).

As a millennial, Karoline Kan was born into a China quickly building a prosperous middle class. She joins host Krys Boyd to talk about how her experiences differed from older family members – including her mother, who defied the country’s one-child policy to bring Karoline into the world. Her new memoir is called“Under Red Skies: Three Generations of Life, Loss, and Hope in China”(Hachette).

Emory University psychologist Frans de Waal’s previous research delved deeply into animal intelligence. He joins host Krys Boyd to talk about the natural evolution of that research, which looks into how animals feel. His new book is called“Mama’s Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves”(W. W. Norton).

President Trump has declared a national emergency at our southern border. North Korea may soon resuscitate it nuclear program. And ISIS seems to be expanding into Asia. Still, political scientist Micah Zenko joins host Krys Boyd to talk about why – relative to other time periods – we’ve never had less to worry about. His new book, written with Michael A. Cohen, is called “Clear & Present Safety: The World Has Never Been Better and Why That Matters to Americans” (Yale University Press) .

In 2007, Roger Sedjo shared the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change. He joins host Krys Boyd to talk about thinking about the problem on parallel tracks: One focused on slowing global warming and another planning for its inevitability. His new book is called“Surviving Global Warming: Why Eliminating Greenhouse Gases Isn’t Enough”(Prometheus Books).

Twice as many Latino voters turned out for the 2018 midterms than did for the 2014 election. As the political landscape heats up for 2020, Maria Teresa Kumar, president and CEO of Voto Latino joins host Krys Boyd to talk about the issues that drive Latinx voters to the polls.

Hurricanes, earthquakes and other natural disasters cause enormous physical damage. Seismologist Lucy Jones joins host Krys Boyd to talk about the damage that’s harder to see – the long-term psychological toll these events have on the people who experience them. Her book“The Big Ones: How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us (And What We Can Do About Them)”(Anchor Books) has just been released in paperback.

Sandra Day O’Connor’s rise from life on an El Paso cattle ranch to Stanford Law School and ultimately the Supreme Court is a story that’s inspired generations of Americans. Evan Thomas joins us to talk about the many paths she blazed, which he writes about in “First: Sandra Day O’Connor” (Random House).

Before the Civil War, white women were more likely to inherit slaves than land. UC-Berkeley history professor Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers joins host Krys Boyd to talk about how this source of wealth for white women drove their participation in the slave market, which she writes about in“They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South”(Yale University Press).

What’s the relationship between IQ and well-being? Columbia psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman joins host Krys Boyd to talk about if smarter people are also more content. His essay“Are Intellectuals Suffering a Crisis of Meaning?” appears in Scientific American.