Think from KERA

If not for truckers, we wouldn’t have food in our grocery stores, fuel in our cars or the ability to move an entire house worth of stuff across the country. Finn Murphy has logged more than a million miles back and forth across the United States driving trucks. He joins us to talk about all those hours at the wheel, which he writes about in “The Long Haul: A Trucker’s Tales of Life on the Road” (W.W. Norton).

Lizzie Velasquez became an Internet sensation – though not in a way anyone would want – when she was the subject of the video “World’s Ugliest Woman.” She joins us to talk about living with the rare genetic condition that has affected her appearance – and about how we can have a positive attitude despite setbacks in our lives. Her new book is called “Dare to be Kind: How Extraordinary Compassion Can Transform Our World” (Hachette).

In 1994, Rwanda witnessed a genocide that left more than a million people dead. And in the aftermath, the country entrusted the job of rebuilding to women – in fact, more than 60 percent of its elected leaders in Parliament are women. Swanee Hunt joins us to talk about the lessons we can learn from these women, which she writes about in “Rwandan Women Rising” (Duke University Press).

In March 2011, gunmen from the Zetas cartel descended on the Mexican town of Allende to exact revenge on a suspected source working with the DEA. When they were done, dozens and dozens of men, women and children were dead. Ginger Thompson joins us to detail the leak that lead to the killings – and to talk about what life in Allende is like now. Her story “How the U.S. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico” is a co-production of ProPublica and National Geographic.

Researchers are hard at work studying ways to extend the reach of the human body – from figuring out how to regenerate lost limbs to developing telepathic communication. Adam Piore joins us to talk about rethinking the limits of our existence, which he writes about in “The Body Builders: Inside the Science of the Engineered Human” (Ecco).

A year ago today, demonstrators gathered in downtown Dallas to protest the killings by police officers of Philando Castile, Alton Sterling and others. And by the end of the night, five of the officers who were assigned to protect those protesters were killed in a shootout that also left a gunman dead. During this special episode of Think, we’ll look back at the night of July 7, 2016, we’ll hear from one of the officers who was wounded in the attack and we’ll talk about how Dallas has changed – and stayed the same – since that night.

A majority of Texas schools offer abstinence-only sex education or no sex education at all. At the same time, Texas has one of the highest teen-pregnancy rates in the nation. We’ll talk about the many factors at play when it comes to teaching the state’s young people about sex with Cynthia Osborne of the Center for Health and Social Policy at the University of Texas and Jessica Chester, a former teen mom who now advises people on family planning.

Patrick O’Malley is a psychotherapist by trade – yet that training didn’t fully prepare him to deal with the death of his infant son. O’Malley joins us to talk about how grief is not something to be cured – rather, it’s part of our lasting connection to the ones we’ve lost. His new book is called “Getting Grief Right: Finding Your Story of Love in the Sorrow of Loss” (Sounds True).

Eating is an experience that requires all of our senses. And the color of the plate, the sound of the music and the feel of the fork in our hands can enhance – or distract from – how the food actually tastes. Charles Spence, head of Oxford University’s Crossmodal Research Laboratory, joins us to talk about how our senses work together to create a memorable meal, which he writes about in “Gastrophysics: The New Science of Eating” (Viking).

There may be no two contemporaries in American military history who are remembered more differently than George Washington and Benedict Arnold. Historian Nathaniel Philbrick joins us to talk about how the relationship between these two changed during the war, which he writes about in “Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution” (Penguin). Nathaniel Philbrick on … … the role Benedict Arnold played in America’s origin story:  “We had George Washington as this great hero, but if you’re going to create a myth of origins you also need a villain, and enter Benedict Arnold. By attempting to surrender West Point to the Brittish, he was a traitor not only to George Washington and the Continental Congress but to every American. Suddenly, we had the hero and we had the villain. We had the snake in the Garden of Eden. And so the genesis of the country could move beyond an act of betrayal when it came to King George and look to the defense of our own personal freedoms.” This episode originally aired on May 15, 2017.