Think from KERA

School segregation has been illegal since the landmark Brown. V. Board of Education decision was handed down in 1954. That doesn’t mean that integration has been fully realized, though. Alvin Chang talks with host Krys Boyd about the subtle ways that schools manage to remain divided. His essay “School Segregation Didn’t Go Away. It Just Evolved” appears on Vox.

Plenty of parents sit in the bleachers of their kids’ games and wonder if maybe – just maybe – they are raising the next Tom Brady or LeBron James. Sports writer Sean Gregory talks with host Krys Boyd about how private coaches and club teams are tapping into that dream and pulling in big bucks in the process. Gregory’s story “How Kids’ Sports Became a $15 Billion Industry” is on the cover of the current edition of Time magazine.

Artificial intelligence has the potential to make our future lives much easier. And in the process, it might just ease some of us out of the workforce. MIT physics professor Max Tegmark talks with host Krys Boyd about tapping into the positives of A.I. while protecting our humanity. His book is called “Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” (Knopf).

Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling – these are the names we associate with police violence. And they all happen to be men. Attorney Andrea J. Ritchie talks with Krys Boyd about how women of color are also affected by police brutality. Her new book is called “Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color” (Beacon Press).

As Tropical Storm Harvey continues its assault on the Texas coast, residents are bracing for rain that could last through Friday. We’ll get the latest from reporters who have witnessed the destruction in Corpus Christi, Houston, Rockport and elsewhere. We’ll hear from residents whose lives have been upended. And we’ll put Harvey’s intensity in perspective and get a glimpse of its future with Greg Carbin, chief forecaster for the National Weather Service.

In previous centuries, marriage was often considered a political or economic arrangement rather than the culmination of courtship. Virginia Commonwealth sociologist Victor Tan Chen talks with host Krys Boyd about how the precarious nature of our safety net has many Americans once again considering their unions in economic terms. His story “America, Home of the Transactional Marriage” appears on The Atlantic’s website.

Baylor University is the world’s largest Baptist University. And as such, it would seem an unlikely setting for one of the most shocking scandals in college sports history. ESPN reporters Paula Lavigne and Mark Schlabach talk with host Krys Boyd about their investigation into the school’s string of sexual assaults, the subject of their book “Violated: Exposing Rape at Baylor University amid College Football’s Sexual Assault Crisis” (Center Street).

The people who manage our food supply also play an outsized role in carrying for our land and bodies of water. Miriam Horn talks with Krys Boyd about the intersection between feeding the country and carrying for its environment, which she writes about in “Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman: Conservation Heroes of the American Heartland” (W.W. Norton and Co.).

The inside of a volcano seems like one of the deadliest places on earth. And yet, new research is pointing scientists to these fiery craters as the possible origin of life. David Deamer of the University of California, Santa Cruz talks to host Krys Boyd about what studying volcanoes can tell us about the planet’s ecosystem, which he writes about in Scientific American.

Why are some people able to stop after one drink while others keep drinking until the bottle’s empty? Understanding the difference between these two types of brains is the key to helping alcoholics, drug users, gamblers and other addicts. Rita Z. Goldstein researches addiction at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and she joins host Krys Boyd to talk about the latest addiction research, which is featured in the September issue of National Geographic magazine.