Viewpoints Radio
Award-winning reporting on current issues featuring America's leading experts.
If you were at a beach or barbecue this summer, there was probably a box of White Claw, Truly or Bon & Viv spiked seltzers somewhere in the vicinity. These canned, around 100-calorie alcoholic beverages have been the hottest drink craze of 2019 and beverage industry experts predict that the hype isn’t going to end anytime soon. Viewpoints spoke with Jim …
These days physical books have a lot of competition. From TV to smartphone use, it can be hard to switch it all off and dive into a new book. That’s why it’s so important to start a routine of reading and storytime from the get-go with your child. We discuss how children’s books have changed over the years and how to go about finding the best books for each …
Most of us point to McDonald’s as the founding of fast food as we know it. But the American staple actually began nearly a hundred years ago with two chains, White Castle and A&W. We speak with Adam Chandler, journalist and author of Drive-Thru Dreams: A Journey Through the Heart of America’s Fast-Food Kingdom about the events that fed into the rapid …
In the U.S., most women are always hoping to achieve a healthy glow or bronzed tan. But in much of the world and in many ethnic cultures, having lighter skin is widely preferred and is viewed as a status symbol of beauty and wealth. To achieve this look, millions of women use black-market whitening creams, pills and even IV drips filled with a myriad of …
Autumn is right around the corner, and with the changing of seasons comes several new movie releases that look promising.
It's back-to-school season, and while schools have put in place comprehensive anti-bullying campaigns, we seldom focus on making sure child bullies themselves get the help they need to deal with the problems that are causing them to act out in the first place. We still punish troubled kids with detentions, suspensions and from there it escalates onward. Many …
Around 10 percent of nurses today are men. As aging Americans place a greater strain on the healthcare system, the nursing industry faces a growing shortage and is responding by finding new ways to recruit nurses early on. We dispel some of the myths around the profession and some of the new medical technology in the works aimed at improving efficiency and …
We discuss the new debut album and band both called “Red Hearse”. The band is made up of musicians Jack Antonoff, Sam Dew and Mark Spears a.k.a. better known as Sounwave.
Parenting in the online era can be quite confusing. At what age should you let your kid have a Facebook or Snapchat account? How closely should you monitor what they view on the internet? We speak with Julianna Miner, author of Raising a Screen Smart Kid: Embrace the Good and Avoid the Bad in the Digital Age, to get the inside scoop on teaching kids how to …
Viewpoints Radio intern Annie Krall spoke with linguistic experts and psychologists about the prevalence of emojis today. How do emojis help us communicate what we really mean? Why do we use them so much? Listen in for a short clip from her interview.
Many of us throw an emoji or two in a text or social media message to help get our point across. But do you ever wonder how emojis came about and why we pick certain ones over others? We speak with three experts about their rise in popularity and reflection of different cultures and generations.
2019 is flying by. From the good to the bad to the so-so, we discuss movie trends so far this year and what we hope is coming in the second half of 2019.
Social media has become an all-consuming way of life for many. It’s hard to get away from unconsciously opening Facebook or Instagram throughout the day and scrolling through your feed. While social media can be positive, the unrealistic posts can also lead to damaging outcomes. We discuss its negative effects and the rise in the number of plastic surgery …
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.
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.
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.
In the social media era, the techniques bullies use are getting more public and crueler. We look at bullying, the shame it can cause, and how it can stick with us for life.
There are all sorts of myths about how we can avoid dementia or how to best brainstorm a new idea. We talk to a psychologist and author to get the inside scoop on how our minds really work, and why we just can’t resist the urge to watch cute animal videos online.
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.
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.
As apps like Spotify and Pandora have taken over, musicians have been forced to make their new albums into an “event.” We look at how they do that, and how streaming music impacts us as listeners.
Comedy is all around us: all over social media, in advertisements, even on church signs. Former Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings says that while it can be fun, it does come at a cost when jokes are made in arenas where they're inappropriate. We discuss the history and impact of jokes on our culture.
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.
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