Wonder Cabinet

What if the guiding principle we used in cooking, eating and growing food was love? From an

*Guests: *

Simran Sethi — Samin Nosrat — Michael Twitty — Josh Noel

*Interviews In This Hour: *

The Frightening Sameness Beneath Hundreds of Flavors — A Little Grammy, A Little Bubbe: A Writer Embodies Family History Through Food — Anyone Can Cook—With the Right Elements — Does 'Selling Out' Make a Difference You Can Taste? — Two Dishes, Two Tastings: A Dinner Party with Simran, Michael, Samin and Josh

On this Winter Solstice, what can we learn from the natural world — from animals, from the water — about surviving and even celebrating the cold?

Guests:

Douglas Quin — Piers Vitebsky — T.C. Boyle — Bernd Heinrich — Lucy Jane Bledsoe — Lynne Cox

Interviews In This Hour:

How Animals Sound in Winter — Piers Vitebsky on 'The Reindeer People' — T.C. Boyle Recommends 'Winter World' — Ingenuity of Animals in Winter — Lucy Jane Bledsoe's Antarctic Novel — Swimming to Antarctica

Even the most welcome gift can spark guilt, resentment, obligation or vulnerability. This hour, unwrapping the tangled emotions behind giving — and getting.

Guests:

Megan Costello — Haddayr Copley-Woods — David Graeber — Anand Giridharadas — Elizabeth Dunn

Interviews In This Hour:

In A Medical Crisis, Small Gestures Are Life-Changing — The Problems With Help You Didn't Ask For — There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Gift — The Strings Attached To Big-Ticket Donations — Giving Happiness That Lasts, Rather Than Things That Take Up Space

The board games we play tell us so much more about ourselves than we think — our history, our politics and our inner psychology.

Guests:

Angelo Bautista — Eric Thurm — Brin-Jonathan Butler — Annelise Heinz — Linda Feinstein — Jeff Yang

Interviews In This Hour:

Picking Up The Pieces Of Mahjong — What You Learn In The 'Magic Circle' — Chess, A Perfect Game for Crushing Your Opponent’s Ego

It creeps into everything: guilt that we're not good enough, fit enough, smart enough. As we peruse Instagram, all we see is the perfection of others reflecting our own failures back at us. Why do we spend so much time feeling guilty? Should we?

Guests:

Devorah Baum — Lucas Mann — Thomas Curran — Stephen Greenblatt — Susan Bandes 

Interviews In This Hour:

Why Do We Still Feel Guilty? — Reality TV And Other Things We Secretly Love — Perfectionism Is Making Young People Miserable. Here’s How To Help.— Original Sin And The Genesis Of Guilt — Should Judges And Juries Look For Remorse?

Is there a book you can’t forget? A book that left a mark on you? We celebrate books and reading with an eclectic cast of writers from around the country.

Guests:

Chloe Benjamin — Anne Lamott — Rebecca Traister — Natalia Sylvester — Tommy Orange — Pamela Paul — Shannon Henry Kleiber — Jericho Brown — Susan Orlean

Interviews In This Hour:

Anne Lamott on 'Pippi Longstocking' — Powerful Book Encounters — Tommy Orange on 'A Confederacy Of Dunces' — Reading As Our First Window To The World — A Book Club On The Day Of The Book Choosing — Jericho Brown on 'The Witches Of Eastwick' — The Book Burning That Brought All Of Los Angeles Together

Scientists and explorers have found a whole new world under our feet. It's an exciting place, and it's changing what we know about the planet and ourselves.

Guests:

Robert Macfarlane, Jill Heinerth, Ben Holtzman, Werner Herzog, Christine Desdemaines-Hugon

What if experiencing dread — the horror of it all — is good for you?

Guests:

Amy Stewart, Kathryn Harkup, Gemma Files, Dan Chaon, Blanche Barton

Whether you know it or not, your closets are filled with personal information. Do you think about what are you saying with your clothes?

Guests:

Angelo Bautista, Avery Trufelman, Carolyn Smith, agnès b., Jo Paoletti

What if the most unselfish thing you could do was to pursue pleasure and joy? We make the case for the transformative power of joy, pleasure and delight.

Guests:

Ross Gay, Kathryn Bond Stockton, Laurie Santos, Lynne Segal