Viewpoints Radio
Award-winning reporting on current issues featuring America's leading experts.
Hank Green has a massive internet presence as a podcaster, vlogger, tweeter, and more. Now, he’s become an author. His new book, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, deals with internet fame and our reactionary culture head-on. He joins the show to discuss these issues, and whether is the internet is good.
We know so much about the men of the Civil War, but the women from the war are all but forgotten in our history. Historian Karen Abbott decided to change that. She tells the story of several women who helped their sides during the Civil War.
There’s a long history of soldiers processing their experiences through poetry. We talk to Adam Gilbert, a war historian and author of A Shadow on Our Hearts: Soldier-poetry, morality, and the American war in Vietnam about the history and future of these soldier poets.
American Animals is a film that tells the true story of four college kids who stole millions of dollars in rare books from a library in broad daylight. I first saw the trailer in March and it has been on my radar ever since. I was intrigued to see a stylish heist movie starring some exciting up and comers like American Horror Story’s Evan Peters and …
We have all heard of polygraph machines or ‘lie detectors.’ But are they truly reliable? Their results are inadmissible in court and yet some investigation agencies still use them. We talk to historian and author John Philipp Baesler about the polygraph’s history and its questionable use in our modern world.
Though Apollo 11 gets all the fame and Apollo 13 was made into a thrilling Ron Howard movie, author and historian Jeffrey Kluger says the Apollo 8 mission was a foundational trip for American space exploration. He takes us through the mission and examines what it meant for NASA moving forward.
We grow up with visions of creative genius: the divine power to create stories from whole cloth and write symphonic masterpieces. But is that how it really works? We look at the creative process, and why it may not be as romantic as some of us imagine.
When people discuss “the immigrant narrative,” you may picture Ellis Island. But what is that process like today? We talk to two writers about the more modern immigrant journey.
We all love a good theater performance. But are theater and performance good strategies to affect social change? Our guest thinks so. He’s a performer, writer and educator who uses serious play and theater to help change people’s minds and change society for the better.
A new documentary from HBO, Come Inside My Mind, explores the life of actor Robin Williams as told by his friends and family. The documentary is cleverly narrated by the actor himself using audio from earlier interviews.
Christopher Nolan’s landmark superhero epic, The Dark Knight was released a decade ago this week, but its effects on our culture are still being felt.
America is facing a literacy problem: according to surveys, fewer than 50% of American schoolchildren are highly proficient readers. We talk to several experts who suggest that we may simply be teaching the skill incorrectly.
It’s a topic that has been in the news lately: how our government detains groups of people. We look back at history to see what really happened in World War II Japanese internment camps, and how we can avoid similar shame now and in the future.
Spider-Man movies have been done and redone several times now, but a new animated movie about the web-slinger is coming out in December, and it will finally tell the story from a fresh perspective.
Teamwork is seen as a premium in our culture. We believe that two is better than one. But entrepreneur and author Shane Snow says that we often don’t use our groups and teams to their fullest potential. He gives us the science behind why, and how we can improve our communities.
Bringing a new baby home is exciting... and chaotic. The last thing parents want to worry about is their work life. But for many dads, the stigma and financial burdens of trying to stay home means they have little time to bond at home. We talk to Josh Levs, a journalist who took the fight for paternity leave head-on.
The #MeToo movement has been getting headlines for months now. The movement was started by women, but what men still have a role to serve in the fight for equality and in the elimination of sexism and misogyny.
Hamilton is over 3 years old, but it still tops the iTunes and Spotify charts every few weeks or so thanks to the “Hamildrops,” where creator Lin-Manuel Miranda releases new Hamilton-adjacent material every few weeks or so.
Chef Alison Roman joins the show to give advice on cooking at home to make sure you can eat deliciously even without spending a night out or losing track of your diet.
Politicians have always stirred up controversy, but no politician has ever done it as often, or as well as Donald Trump. We talk to two experts about the attraction to these politicians.
Movie criticism these days typically boils down to numbers and general consensus. But when Roger Ebert was alive, he cultivated a following that considered his perspective above all else.
Author Marc Perrusquia joins the show to tell the story of Ernest Withers, a Civil Rights photographer and a spy for the FBI, and helps us parse through what it all means.
The recent shooting in Parkland, Florida has ignited a public debate over gun reform, but what are the real facts about gun violence in America? And, who is actually researching the phenomenon? Researcher Adam Pah says one thing missing from the gun reform debates are the essential data points that should be informing future policy decisions.
Scholar Martin Puchner takes us through the history of writing stories down, and how those written accounts have become so important to our understanding of the world.
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