Wonder Cabinet

Maps, whether drawn by hand or by satellite, reflect the time they were drawn for. How will the next generation of cartographers deal with challenges like a world being reshaped by climate change? 

Original Air Date: December 09, 2023

Interviews In This Hour:
Why are islands in the South Pacific disappearing? — Cartography in the age of Google Maps — This is your brain on maps — The mysterious music of the 'phantom islands'

Guests:
Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson, Mamata Akella, Bill Limpisathian, Andrew Pekler

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Human creativity — whether it’s solving a tough problem or writing a novel — is one of our defining traits. It’s also deeply mysterious. Where does that creative spark come from?

Original Air Date: February 09, 2019

Interviews In This Hour:
A Neuroscientist and a Novelist Put Creativity Under a Microscope — Is This The Price of Genius? — Alma Mahler: 'Malevolent Muse' or Early Feminist Composer? — Was The Art Worth All The Pain?

Guests:
Heather Berlin, Siri Hustvedt, Jim Holt, Mary Sharrat, Nathaniel Mary Quinn

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What can we learn from whales – and whales from us? Technology like AI is fueling new scientific breakthroughs in whale communication that can help us better understand the natural world. And, there’s an international effort to give whales a voice by granting them personhood.

Special thanks to Ocean Alliance and whale.org for some of the whale recordings heard on this episode.

Original Air Date: August 24, 2024

Interviews In This Hour:
Translating whale, with the help of AI — Searching for a whale alphabet — Giving a voice to the whale ancestors — Roger Payne touches a whale

Guests:
Shane Gero, Carl Zimmer, Mere Takoko

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How we live is indelibly intertwined with the care and empathy we give to each other. What if we put care into helping Americans find homes and build dwellings, into keeping their bodies and minds sound, and finding meaningful and well-paid work? In this three part series, "To The Best Of Our Knowledge" and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project bring you real life stories about economic struggle in our time, as well as ideas for solutions.

Original Air Date: November 19, 2022

Interviews In This Hour:
Do they need to know that I'm blind? — The work of care is vital. Why don't we pay like it is? — A sonnet for a lineworker — Barbara Ehrenreich on writing the American labor story

Guests:
Andrea Dobynes Wagner, Angela Garbes, Rodrigo Toscano, Barbara Ehrenreich

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How we live is indelibly intertwined with the care and empathy we give to each other. What if we put care into helping Americans find homes and build dwellings, into keeping their bodies and minds sound, and finding meaningful and well-paid work? In this three part series, "To The Best Of Our Knowledge" and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project bring you real life stories about economic struggle in our time, as well as ideas for solutions. 

Post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health challenges can push people into poverty. Meanwhile, the experience of financial desperation can also create even more trauma, even more suffering. How do you break the cycle? How do we truly care for people mentally and financially?

If you or someone you know are having mental health struggles, we wanted to make sure you are aware of some resources. The National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available 24 hours a day by calling 9-8-8. The National Alliance on Mental Illness reminds us that one in five people in the US has a mental health concern every year. You can find support and education at their web site, nami.org.

Original Air Date: November 12, 2022

Interviews In This Hour:
Trauma and poverty: The perfect storm experienced by U.S. veterans — Learning to cope when mental health care feels out of reach — More than one way to treat a mind — How harm reduction disrupts painful cycles of addiction

Guests:
Alex Miller, Katie Prout, Daniel Bergner, Maia Szalavitz

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How we live is indelibly intertwined with the care and empathy we give to each other. What if we put care into helping Americans find homes and build dwellings, into keeping their bodies and minds sound, and finding meaningful and well-paid work? In this three part series, "To The Best Of Our Knowledge" and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project bring you real life stories about economic struggle in our time, as well as ideas for solutions. 

In the first of three episodes of "Going For Broke" all about the care economy, we're thinking about housing. Many of us would consider it a basic human right. But in America, it can be hard to come by.

Original Air Date: November 05, 2022

Interviews In This Hour:
When the walk home from school keeps changing — Creating a compassionate geography — More supportive housing can start with sharing space. And upending assumptions. — The infrastructure of care

Guests:
Bobbi Dempsey, David Harvey, Annabelle Gurwitch, Justin Garrett Moore

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It can be hard to enjoy the natural world these days without anxiety. You notice a butterfly on a flower and wonder why you don’t see more. How’s the monarch population doing this year? And shouldn’t there be more bees? The challenge is to live in this time of climate change – but still find joy and refuge in it. 

Original Air Date: July 27, 2024

Interviews In This Hour:
Ecologies of love: Heather Swan’s stories of insects and the web of life — Becoming edible: Philosopher Andreas Weber’s mystical biology

Guests:
Heather Swan, Andreas Weber

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Our lives are so rushed, so busy. Always on the clock. Counting the hours, minutes, seconds. Have you ever stopped to wonder: what are you counting? What is this thing, that’s all around us, invisible, inescapable, always running out? What is time?

Original Air Date: November 18, 2023

Interviews In This Hour:
Time, loss and the Big Bang — Finding solace in the vastness of space — Carlo Rovelli's white holes, where time dissolves

Guests:
Marcelo Gleiser, Marjolijn van Heemstra, Carlo Rovelli

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Most Americans take their sovereignty for granted - the nation’s right to make its own laws and govern its own people. The same rights we recognize in other sovereign nations, with one glaring exception — the Native nations and tribes who were here first. For Native Americans, sovereignty is not some abstract idea. It’s an ongoing, daily struggle. 

Original Air Date: July 13, 2024

Interviews In This Hour:
The battle over tribal rights in Bad River — Quannah ChasingHorse’s two worlds – Native activist and supermodel — Are Indian casinos the key to tribal sovereignty? — No more Native American 'trauma porn'

Guests:
Mary Mazzio, Quannah ChasingHorse, Steven Andrew Light, David Treuer

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Categories: tribal sovereignty, sovereignty, native american, land, land back

It’s easy to get caught up in the hype about how psychedelics might revolutionize the treatment of mental illness. But there are also lots of ethical concerns. And probably none are so troubling as the charges of exploitation and cultural appropriation. The fact is, the knowledge about many psychedelics — like magic mushrooms and ayahuasca — comes from the sacred ceremonies of Indigenous cultures. But over the past century, Western scientists and pharmaceutical companies have been going into these cultures, collecting plants and synthesizing their chemical compounds.

Even if science is all about building on the knowledge of earlier discoveries, what is the psychedelic industry's ethical responsibility? Can psychedelics be decolonized?

Original Air Date: October 21, 2023

Interviews In This Hour:
The Tragic Story of Maria Sabina's Sacred Mushrooms — Empowering Indigenous voices in the psychedelic industry — The long history of psychedelic theft — Spirit Medicine: Yuria Celidwen's vision for an ethical psychedelics

Guests:
Michael Pollan, Dennis McKenna, Erika Dyck, Katherine MacLean, Sutton King, Rachel Fernandez, Lucas Richert, Yuria Celidwen

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