Wonder Cabinet

Cats on public radio! Yes, it's a thing. He Made A Cat Video And You'll Never Guess What Happened Next...; The Case For Cat Citizenship; Cats Hate Your Music - Here's What They Want You To Play; The Big Cat Biologist And The Blind Date: 3-Minute Fiction; The Shocking Truth About Tiger Farms; Dogs Helped Humans Conquer The World.

We explore procrastination and try to answer the question, Why do we put things off and how can we stop? Procrastination 101; Procrastination Anxiety; Procrastination as Vice; Coping with Procrastination; Moving Past Procrastination; Felicia Day, Geek Goddess.

You know those end of the year lists?  Best books, movies, music and so on?  This hour, To the Best of Our Knowledge shares the best interviews from 2015.  Plus a booklist or two. The 36 Questions that Lead to Love; Helen Macdonald Battles Grief with a Goshawk; The Historic Hunt to Record America's Rarest Bird; Poet Claudia Rankine on Her Award Winning Book, "Citizen"; Keith Powell on Hollywood's "Urban" Voice Problem; Being Terry Gilliam.

Rising sea levels, brutal storms and droughts, record temperatures...is there anything we can do about climate change? As world leaders gather at the Paris Climate Summit, we consider a range of proposals - from geoengineering and new green technology to a post-carbon economy.  Capitalism vs. the Climate; Modern Monkeywrenching; Is Nuclear Power the Answer?; Geoengineering 101; Al Gore's Optimism; Questioning our Growth Fetish; Finding Hope in the Age of Climate Change.

Automated machines are taking over our lives. They're not the scary robots you see in movies, but more and more of today's technology — from smart phones to airplanes — is automated. But do we want to give machines so much control?

Thanksgiving How to Cultivate Gratitude; Raising Gracious Children; The Problem with Gettng Help; Gifting is, well, complicated; Punk Turns 40!; Patti Smith.

Poetry is back! Elegy for a Dead World; Narrator-in-residence at the Pfister Hotel; A Poet's Glossary; The Poet Laureate of Twitter; Veterans Day.

Welcome to the next generation of African writers.  They’re young, multi-lingual, and breaking out of all the old literary boxes.  This hour, why Africa has one of the most exciting literary scenes on the planet. New African Literature; Somali-American Fantasy; Nigerian Science Fiction; South African Crime Fiction; Dangerous Idea: A Palace of Unbuilt Roads; On Our Minds: The Poetry of Race.

Short stories can be harder to write than novels, but just as great. This week, four writers who’ve mastered the art of the short story join us to celebrate the form and share new work.

Celebrate Halloween with this spooky hour full of ghost stories from our wonderful listeners, and real-life tales of the paranormal.   Haunted houses, near-death experiences, and spectral raccoons...  so many ways to be un-dead. Being Terrified by Ghosts; A Listener Ghost Story: "The Lake"; Spectral Raccoons - Need We Say More?; A Listener Ghost Story: "Presidential Phantasm"; A Ghost in Your Own Life; A Listener Ghost Story: "You Are What You Eat"; My Life in Pursuit of the Afterlife.