When Thomas Jefferson designed the University of Virginia’s central Rotunda, he set out to build a temple to the book, a stunning rebuke to the Christian churches that anchored every other college of his day. But Jefferson’s secular utopia didn’t pan out exactly as he planned.

With state support shrinking and the dependence on private support increasing for most public universities what does the financial landscape of the future look like? What makes an institution public? Is it the source of funding? History? Mission? Or something else?

Washington has its fair share of brown-nosers. We talk with the authors of Sucking Up: A Brief Consideration of Sycophancy about yes-men, now and through the ages.

Scholars, historic interpreters, and descendants of enslaved people recently gathered at Montpelier, the home of James Madison. They were there to create a rubric for historic sites who want to engage descendant communities in their work. We share stories and interviews from Montpelier's Summit on Slavery.

Poet Kiki Petrosino in her poem, If My Body Is a Text, reflects on a year of tragic outcomes during traffic stops between police and African American drivers. Plus: Most of us have heard of Negro League Baseball, but there were many other all-black sports leagues and teams across America in the 20th century. David Wiggins shares how African-American athletes built their own place for sports in a segregated world.

Wine, chocolate, and flowers. We talk with experts about these Valentine's Day essentials.

Maggie Walker was an African American teacher and businesswoman and the first woman of any race to charter a bank in the United States. There's now a statue of her in the former capital of the Confederacy. Plus: A town’s historical markers tell visitors the story of a place. But what do they leave out?

America is hooked on opioids—by one count, there are currently more opioid prescriptions than people in the southeastern United States. This week we’re taking a deep dive into the causes of the opioid crisis. And more.

Donald Trump’s election was seen by many commentators as a decisive statement by a marginalized White working class. A new book The New Minority: White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality explains where this theory comes from and why so many White voters are feeling class and racial resentment. Plus we dive into the immigration debate and why good numbers are hard to find.

Today we hear a lot about "blue collar" voters, but it wasn't always the case that the working class mattered. In this week's show, we look at why working class neighborhoods tend to get the short end of the stick, how a British monarch leveraged the working class to extend her reign, and who is responsible for the origin of the census.