Viewpoints Radio
Award-winning reporting on current issues featuring America's leading experts.
Streaming services are multiplying, and none of them carry everything. Many people are finding that satisfying their TV viewing desires through streaming services is getting as expensive as cable.
Gardeners always seek to get the most out of their plants, but some are finding that their plot of land doesn’t produce the way it used to because of wildly changing, extreme conditions—torrential rain, then draught, heat then cold. We talk to two experts who explain ways to increase your garden’s productivity, and how it can help combat climate change.
Hearing voices in your head comes with an unfortunate stereotype that you must be mentally ill. However, experts tell us the “voices in your head” can be used to talk to, and about, yourself in a healthy, productive way. In fact, most people hear voices in their head and already use inner speech on a daily basis. We discuss tips and techniques to use …
Netflix’s new show, Russian Doll is an ethical, mysterious, funny drama modeled after the Groundhog Day “waking up in the same moment” plot. It’s an especially great binge-watch.
These days, there is data on just about everything. Our social media presence, our careers, our web search history- it’s all crunched into data points. And author Seth Stephens-Davidowitz says all that data can shed plenty of light on the truth about who we really are underneath all of our social formalities.
Reshma Saujani is a lawyer, a former political candidate, an author and the founder of Girls Who Code. She says our society puts too much pressure on women to be perfect, which means girls are afraid to explore their true passions for fear of failure. She’s hoping to change that, and to teach girls that it’s okay to try something that you might not succeed …
Between Alexa, Google and Siri, artificial intelligence is here. But looking forward, AI will only get more and more intelligent. Author and researcher James Rollins discusses why AI has long scared scientists and storytellers, and what the future of our technology could look like if we aren’t careful.
Throughout history, stories have been told but sometimes preserving them for future generations has proven difficult. We examine the ways stories have been passed down, and the role the written word has played in shaping our civilizations.
We talk to the parent and the doctor of a transgender child to discover what science says about gender transitions and how one family navigated the issues associated with having a child you suddenly don’t fully understand.
We’ve all seen how our fiction portrays cybercrime, but what does it really look like? Jonathan Lusthaus, the director of the Human Cybercriminal Project at the University of Oxford, joins the show to talk about the real crimes committed online and what, if anything, we can do to protect ourselves.
We know about the planets within the Milky Way Galaxy, but what about planets outside of our neighborhood? We talk to Dr. Donald Goldsmith about “exoplanets” and where science stands on the issue of life thriving somewhere else in the universe.
We all sleep, it’s human evolution. But the amount of sleep we get and the quality of that sleep can vary greatly. We talk to Matthew Walker, a professor at California-Berkeley, who says sleep in the single biggest thing we can do to help our physical and mental health both in the short-term and long-term.
It used to be that when you were watching sports, you were only watching with the people in the same room as you. Now, sports have become the gold-standard for entertainment that demands a second-screen.
As technology evolves, more and more of us are relying on credit cards, debit cards and even apps like Venmo or Zelle to make payments. Gone are the days of physically cashing your check, now almost all of us use all direct-deposit. So what is the future of cash? We talk to one expert who lays out some of the nefarious uses of bills and coins.
Thanks to online shopping, internet banks and social media, our information has never been more vulnerable to theft. We explore what exactly is in all of those privacy agreements we often agree to without reading, and how we can try to reclaim our privacy in a digital world.
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.
With all of our technology many schools are phasing out some handwriting lessons like teaching cursive. We talk to two experts about whether that’s a good idea.
With all of our technology and reliance on computers, many schools are phasing out some handwriting lessons. Specifically, schools have stopped teaching cursive. We talk to two experts about whether that’s a good idea.
Netflix and Amazon are go-tos for many Americans looking for a movie to watch. But how can people watch classics like The Maltese Falcon or Singin’ in the Rain in this new world?
Science enables us to know much more than ever before. We can be aware of what disorders we could pass on to our kids and we can conduct screenings on children to discover irregularities in their genes. Such screenings can help doctors catch issues early but they can also put a huge burden on families.
When it comes to social media, who owns what information, and how do we assert the rights we do have? We talk to a professor of law about the legal issues associated with online profiles.
When a high school student isn’t accepted into the college of their dreams, it can be devastating. But we look at whether college choice really matters as much as we may think.
Often during a budget crunch music education is the first thing to go yet there are many benefits learning music can have on our brains and child development.
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