Last May, protestors took the streets in Pakistan to support Imran Khan, the populist prime minister tossed from office and into the slammer. Now, in a rebuke to the military and political establishment, voters put more candidates from Khan’s circle in parliament than from any other party. But they fell short of a majority last month in an election marred by vote-rigging. Siva speaks with an anthropologist in Karachi who parses the state of Pakistani politics and the country’s prospects for real democracy.

Unique, mesmerizing and hypnotic.

Last year, there were 645 mass shootings in the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive. In the latest major tragedy, at the Kansas City Super Bowl parade, one person was killed and 22 others — half of them children — suffered gunshot wounds. But here’s something you may not know: since then, there have been another 26 mass shootings. Historian Andrew McKevitt and sociologist Jennifer Carlson join Will for a conversation about the history, politics and economics of America’s deadly gun culture.

This season we’ve adopted walls as our loose theme, and architectural historian Louis Nelson joins Will and Siva to help frame the idea. At the University of Virginia, wavy brick walls enclose beautiful gardens. But as Nelson explains those walls once served a more sinister purpose. Drawing on this lesson from the past, our guest and hosts grapple with the meaning and function of walls in a democracy — along borders, in cities and in people’s hearts and minds.

Missy Raines stopped by WTJU to go track by track through her latest album, Highlander, out now on Compass Records. Missy Raines is a trailblazer in bluegrass. She is the most awarded bass player in the history of the International Bluegrass Music Association.

It can move you to tears.

Before the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949, Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists played a key role in fighting the Japanese during World War II. In the decades after, China’s role as an ally to the West was largely erased from its domestic politics — and all but forgotten everywhere else. Lately, Chinese leaders are revisiting “the Good War” and reframing that past to serve new interests. On this Season 8 debut, Harvard scholar Rana Mitter reminds us that history is always about the present.

One of the leading Spanish composers of the "Beautiful Age".

Banjo legend Alan Munde stopped by WTJU to go track by track through his new album, Excelsior, out now on Patuxent. In addition to background on the album, Alan also chatted with WTJU Folk Director Peter Jones about what first got him into banjo when he was growing up in Norman, Oklahoma as a child.

Its iconic opening became a Classical hit.