Thinking Aloud

Tonight on Thinking Aloud we have an interview about marine debris, otherwise called ocean garbage, otherwise called the watery graveyard for plastic. Whether you know it or not, human debris is accumulating scarily fast in all the world's oceans. Because it degrades on the scale of millenia, most of that junk is leftover plastic. The most famous example of this is The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a huge gathering of non-oceanic stuff that is the size of the continental U.S. It is a very scary global problem, one that is only now getting on the radar screen of most Americans. Our guest today is the woman who is tasked by the U.S. government with getting rid of and especially preventing more of that dangerous marine debris.

We rarely think about how every man-made objects, from our cars to our phones to our clothing, is colored with a pigment that had to be invented or manipulated by someone at some point. Color is made.

We’re joined by Kassia St Clair, author of "The Secret Lives of Color." St Clair’s surveys 75 shades that range all over the color wheel, unlocking their unique histories and stories.

Sociologist Joel Best discusses his new book, "American Nightmares: Social Problems in an Anxious World" and examines how social problems are constructed and recreated throughout history.

Malcolm Evans, chair of the United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law in the University of Bristol, joins the show to discuss torture prevention and the promotion of religious freedom.nbsp;

You may have heard about or watched the recent launch of the new Elon Musk rocket, a launch that is continuing the forward progress of advancing technology in areas we could hardly have imagined even two hundred years ago.

We're joined by Zach Weinersmith, co-author of "Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve or Ruin Everything," we'll be talking about some other technologies like Musk's space programs that could be changing our future for the better, the worse, or perhaps just the weird.

Kory Stamper, a lexicographer and editor with Merriam-Webster dictionaries, gives us a behind-the-scenes look into what it's like to be the person writing definitions for words like God, fact, and on fleek.

Wendy Rouse, author of Her Own Hero: The Origins of the Women's Self-Defense Movement, joins us to talk about how women during the Progressive Era took it upon themselves to become their own protectors and fight against gendered notions of inherent feminine weakness.

Ross King, author of Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies, joins Marcus Smith to discuss Monet's later life and the psychological turmoil he experienced while painting his famous water lilies.

Marcus Smith visits with a literature expert to explore the phenomenon of reading aloud as a social activity in the eighteenth-century home.

Sisters, scholars, and design enthusiasts Julia and Ellen Lupton join the show for a conversation about design, life, and living spaces.