Open Source with Christopher Lydon

Into the Feel Tank

This show first aired on August 12, 2021. This mood we’re in: stuck, anxious, alone, desperate for an exit ramp, even to another bad stop on the same old highway. COVID, climate, chaos—or is it ...

Sensible Negotiation

Vladimir Putin’s threat to invade Ukraine is the first headline crisis of the new year. The headlines and the ‘crisis’ word come almost automatically when the story is Russia and its wily autocrat. We see ...

The Sackler Empire

This show first aired on May 20, 2021. The opioid epidemic, still rampant, still deadly, turns out to be a family story at its root. Empire of Pain is Patrick Radden Keefe’s account of the ...

Darwin’s Successor

This show first aired on November 18, 2021. The grand master of bug biology E.O. Wilson has always had a way of seeing the big picture in his microscopic science.  Looking at a wall-size projection ...

Write Like the Russians

This episode was first broadcast on February 18. 2021. The invitation this hour, or maybe the dream, is to learn how to write short stories with the poignancy and power of the old Russian Masters, ...

Say It Loud

There’s a friendly hour’s conversation here about racial matters and moods. It’s been going on in a bookstore for about 35 years. What’s new this time, late in the portentous year of 2021, is first, ...

Blyth Unleashed

Mark Blyth is the butcher’s son from Dundee, now the American professor of political economics, still with the Sean Connery burr in his voice. Sounds like a working stiff; seems to think like one. Not ...

A New History of Humanity

Giant questions this hour, and a slew of fresh answers: Where do we humans come from? Who are we, after all? Where are we going? Was our pre-history a Garden of Eden, or a nasty ...