Wonder Cabinet

Sharing of personal pronouns has become standard practice on resumes, business cards, email signatures and more. And that’s just one sign of an increasingly widespread shift in how we think about gender. So what’s next? And what would it take to actually celebrate gender freedom? To have trans joy?

Original Air Date: January 15, 2022

Guests: 

Jules Gill-Peterson — Big Freedia — Torrey Peters — Akwaeke Emezi

Interviews In This Hour: 

Historian Jules Gill Peterson shares stories of trans experiences from the 1920s and 1930s — A Diva's Oasis? Bounce Music — 'Detransition, Baby' author Torrey Peters on life, love, gender and parenthood — Many Identities, One Spirit

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We all know we should walk more. The evidence just keeps accumulating – walking makes us healthier, happier, smarter, more relaxed, more resilient – not to mention longer-lived. But even with the best of intentions, sometimes we all need a little push to get out the door.

Original Air Date: July 30, 2022

Guests: 

Annabel Abbs — Jeremy DeSilva — John Francis

Interviews In This Hour: 

Walking the footsteps of trailblazing women — Human feet are terrible, evolutionarily speaking — Walk the earth

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Remember when reading still felt magical? When a book could sweep you off your feet into another world? It might be that the best way to find your way back the magic is through a kid’s book. We talk to authors about Wonderland, magic wands, unicorns and other children's stories that inspire.

Original Air Date: May 01, 2021

Guests: 

Katherine Rundell — Quan Barry — Enrique Salmon — Ebony Thomas — LL McKinney — Lulu Miller

Interviews In This Hour: 

Why A Pandemic Is The Perfect Time To Read Children's Literature — Quan Barry on 'White Fang' — Enrique Salmon on 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' — Is Hermione Black? The Answer Depends On How Old You Are — Alice The Doomslayer Rises In L.L. McKinney's Reimagining of 'Alice In Wonderland' — Lulu Miller on 'The Search for Delicious'

Further Reading:

Bookmarks Hub 

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Ever want to quit your job, leave the rat race behind, and head back to the land? Buy an old farmhouse or build a solar-powered home and live self-sufficiently on a few acres of your very own? Generations before you have shared that dream. The reality is more complicated. Even owning your own land is an ethical minefield. 

Original Air Date: December 18, 2021

Guests: 

Makenna Goodman — Simon Winchester — Hayden King

Interviews In This Hour: 

Can you live off the land and still live ethically? — What does 'owning' land actually mean? — How the Land Back movement is reclaiming land stolen from Indigenous people

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Colonization in Africa was much more than a land grab. It was a project to replace — and even erase — local cultures. To label them inferior. Music, arts, literature and of course language. In other words, it permeated everything. So how do you undo that? How do you unlearn what you’ve been forced to learn?

In this hour, produced in partnership with the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) and Africa is a Country — we learn what it means to decolonize the mind.

Original Air Date: March 20, 2021

Guests: 

Adom Getachew — Simon Gikandi — Ngugi wa Thiong’o

Interviews In This Hour: 

Reckon with the Past To Decolonize the Future — Reclaiming the Hidden History of Blackness — Never Write In The Language of the Colonizer

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The psychedelic revolution in mental health treatment is on the way, with FDA approval likely in just a few years. Which means that before long, the treatment of choice for depression and addiction could be a hallucinogen like psilocybin. And more psychedelic compounds are in the pipeline for PTSD and other disorders.

Original Air Date: July 02, 2022

Guests: 

Alex Sherwood — Bill Linton — Lou Lukas

Interviews In This Hour: 

The lab that could supply psilocybin to the world — Psilocybin, the 'God molecule,' and the quest to revolutionize mental health care — Could psychedelics erase our fear of dying?

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There are old folktales and legends of people who can become animals. Animals who can become people. And there’s a lesson for our own time in those shapeshifting stories — a recognition that the membrane between what's human and more-than-human is razor thin.

Human identity cannot be separated from our nonhuman kin. From forest ecology to the human microbiome, emerging research suggests that being human is a complicated journey made possible only by the good graces of our many companions. In partnership with the Center for Humans and Nature and with support from the Kalliopeia Foundation, To The Best Of Our Knowledge is exploring this theme of "kinship" in a special radio series.

To learn more about the Kinship series, head to ttbook.org/kinship.

Original Air Date: November 20, 2021

Guests: 

Sharon Blackie — David Abram — Chris Gosden — Stephen Graham Jones

Interviews In This Hour: 

Reclaiming the fierce women who are shapeshifters — How a man turned into a raven — Shapeshifters, shamans and the 'New Animism' — Horror author Stephen Graham Jones on what our monsters say about us

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At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, producer Charles Monroe-Kane made 300 yard signs that read "You're not ok. That's ok." He put them on his porch. Soon they were gone.

Original Air Date: June 18, 2022

Guests: 

Charles Monroe-Kane — Susan Cain — Alissa Wilkinson — Mary Laura Philpott

Interviews In This Hour: 

The story of a pandemic yard sign — Author Susan Cain on how bittersweetness adds flavor to daily life — 'Artists anticipate things because they work in the realm of the imagination': Creating in a pandemic time loop — What would you put in your bomb shelter?

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Categories: depression, mental health, COVID-19, pandemic

If you had to travel 500 miles across country, on foot, with no map, no GPS, without talking to anyone — to a destination you've never seen, could you do it? It sounds impossible, but millions of creatures spend their lives on the move, migrating from one part of the Earth to another with navigation skills we can only dream of. How do they do it — and what can we learn from them?

Original Air Date: July 25, 2020

Guests: 

Moses Augustino Kumburu — David Wilcove — Stan Temple — David Barrie — Sonia Shah

Interviews In This Hour: 

The Serengeti's Great Migration, Up Close — Why Do Animals Migrate? — Sandhill Cranes Make The Long Journey South — The Greatest Navigators on the Planet — The High Costs — And Potential Gains — Of Migration, Both Animal And Human

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As audio producers, one of the most fun things we get to do is bring the soundscape of a novel to life — cue the monsters, the storms, the footsteps of a creature emerging slowly from the ocean. So that’s what we’re bringing you today: Great writers, epic sound design.

Original Air Date: July 03, 2021

Guests: 

Nnedi Okorafor — Neil Gaiman — N. K. Jemisin — Ann Patchett — Richard Powers — Lorrie Moore — Kelly Link — Mark Sundeen

Interviews In This Hour: 

Nnedi Okorafor's Alien Invasion of Lagos — Neil Gaiman Brings Us To The End Of The World — A Not So Distant Future in the N.K. Jemisin's 'Broken Earth' Trilogy — Ann Patchett on 'State of Wonder' — Richard Powers on Writing the Inner Life of Trees — Lorrie Moore on Bringing Characters To Life With Brevity — Kelly Link on 'Pretty Monsters' — Mark Sundeen on 'The Making of Toro'

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