Think from KERA

Four years ago, Michael Brown was shot and killed by police, setting off days of protests in Ferguson, Mo. Protesters captured the fallout with cellphone cameras, and Sabaah Folayan joins us to talk about turning that bystander footage into a portrait of unrest that differs from the more traditional media presentation. Her documentary “Whose Streets?” airs tonight at 10 on KERA-TV.

Whales can weigh up to 300,000 pounds and live for 200 years or more.

Nick Pyenson is the curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian

Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington. He joins

us to talk about how whales evolved from land-roaming creatures – and

about their prospects for survival in a warming world. His new book is

called “Spying On Whales: The Past, Present, And Future of Earth’s Most Awesome Creatures” (Viking).

Andrew Sean Greer won the Pulitzer Prize this year for his novel “Less” (Little, Brown and Company). He joins us to talk about his humorous tale of a writer on the edge of 50 who literally travels the world in an effort to avoid an awkward encounter with a former love.

Silicon Valley is the new Las Vegas, filled with hopeful entrepreneurs hoping to hit the jackpot. Corey Pein became one of them in order to uncover the truth and the lies of the tech industry. He joins us to talk about the experience, which he writes about in “Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley” (Henry Holt and Company).

As a child, Abdi Nor Iftin was obsessed with American culture – even before U.S. Marines arrived in his native Somalia to battle the country’s warlords. He joins us to tell his amazing story of fleeing Mogadishu for Kenya, winning an American visa in a lottery and learning that making his way here was more complicated than he thought. His new book is “Call Me American: A Memoir” (Knopf).

Most of us will encounter a traumatic event in our lives. They’re often unavoidable, but what we can control is how we react to them. Psychiatrist Dennis Charney joins us to talk about bouncing back from life’s worst moments. He’s a co-author of“Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges”(Cambridge).

If you’re searching for humanity at its worst, online is a good place to look. Notre Dame anthropologist Agustín Fuentes joins us to talk about how some of our terrible social media behavior is actually partly a result of our evolution. His story“Are We as Awful as We Act Online?”appears in the August issue of National Geographic magazine.

When confronted with racist behavior, white people can exhibit a range of emotions – including anger, fear and guilt. Robin DiAngelo joins us to talk about how these behaviors get in the way of meaningful interracial dialogue, which she writes about in“White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism”(Beacon Press).

How much of ourselves are we obligated to share with others, and what do we have a right to keep hidden? Sarah Igo of Vanderbilt University joins us to talk about those questions and others, which she explores in her new book“The Known Citizen: A History of Privacy in Modern America”(Harvard University Press).

Both Republicans and Democrats are more likely to classify a news statement as factual if it favors their side – that’s according to a new study by the Pew Research Center. Jeffrey Gottfried, senior researcher at Pew, co-authored “Distinguishing Between Factual and Opinion Statements in the News.” He joins us to talk about why some Americans are better than others at interpreting the news.