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THIS WEEK'S SHOW: October 1, 2026
AI Apocalypse?

"A juvenility of moral imagination that is at the core of this."

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February 24, 9 PM, 2022
Russian Invasion

Putin "doesn't understand the first thing about Ukraine."

Make what you can of the news from Ukraine: nobody’s calling it a Seinfeld crisis anymore, meaning a crisis about nothing, with a painless remedy at hand. Just what is...
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February 17, 9 PM, 2022
A Soldier’s Tale

"American military power is nowhere near as effective, as invincible, as we fancied."

This hour: the back-story of In Search of Monsters, our collaboration with the counter-punching think tank, the Quincy Institute. It’s the back-story of two men – two centuries apart – ...
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February 10, 9 PM, 2022
Nixon in China

A hinge of history.

It was the meeting, just 50 years ago this month, that changed more lives at more levels than any other political handshake in our lifetimes. The Trickster and the Monster,...
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January 27, 9 PM, 2022
The View from Ukraine

"Ukrainians unite when danger comes for their country."

The missing piece in the Ukraine crisis, you begin to notice, is that vast grain field and the 45-million people who live on it. The real players in the crisis...
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January 20, 9 PM, 2022
Into the Feel Tank

On our public and private moods.

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....
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:10 — 29.7MB)

January 13, 9 PM, 2022
Sensible Negotiation

A way out of the Ukraine crisis.

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...
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May 20, 9 PM, 2022
The Sackler Empire

On marketing and malpractice.

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...
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November 18, 9 PM, 2021
Darwin’s Successor

E.O. Wilson, scientist and humanist.

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. ...
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:50 — 116.4MB)

December 16, 9 PM, 2021
Say It Loud

On optimism and pessimism.

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...
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:52 — 116.4MB)

December 9, 9 PM, 2021
Blyth Unleashed

"We never trade future benefits for present costs."

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...
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November 4, 9 PM, 2021
The Nutmeg’s Curse

A choice between omnicide and vitalism.

Glasgow on the Clyde is not the end of the story, but you can see the end from Glasgow: it’ll be more “blah, blah, blah,” says Greta Thunberg, the merciless...
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:40 — 29.9MB)

October 28, 9 PM, 2021
A New Day for Boston

A different kind of mayoral election.

Boston politics has taken a turn. The Last Hurrah was 65 years ago – the classic obituary novel about those noisy Irish rascals who ran City Hall for much of...
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October 21, 9 PM, 2021
The CRISPR Challenge

Breaking codes.

This show was originally broadcast on March 11, 2021. The CRISPR challenge is back—first to grasp, then how to apply the biggest scientific breakthrough of our century so far. You...
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October 14, 9 PM, 2021
Prison Playwrights

"We were just determined to make their song heard."

Prison time can be the strangest interval in a long life: it is experienced, year by year, as a slow-burning hell on earth, often revalued later as productive, enlightening, redemptive...
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:43 — 28.2MB)

October 7, 9 PM, 2021
Franzen Comes Alive

America: "some hits, some misses."

Jonathan Franzen might just be the last of the fine-grained, big-book portraitists of “the way Middle America lives”—specially the intimate deceptions that family relations are made of. Franzen is a...