How Do We Fix It?

"This book is a message from autistic people to their parents, friends, teachers, coworkers and doctors showing what life is like on the spectrum," writes our guest, author  Eric Garcia  in  We're Not Broken . "It’s also my love letter to autistic people. For too long, we have been forced to navigate a world where all the road signs are written in another language.” Garcia, who...

Not long ago, most of us embraced social media as a life-changing opportunity to connect with friends and family all across the world. Today, public opinion, including members of Congress from both parties, has turned far more negative. Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube, and other tech giants are accused of corrupting our democracy, spreading disinformation, and fanning the fl...

As world leaders discuss the planet's future at  COP26  in Glasgow, climate change remains a massive challenge and a source of fierce debate. While  two-thirds of Americans think  that the government should be doing more, it's tempting to throw our hands up in despair and think: "There's nothing I can do." Climate scientist  Katharine Hayhoe  begs to differ.&nbsp...

Many millions of Americans are heading back to work — in person — for the first time since the pandemic hit. During this time of remote meetings and working from home, many of us learned new skills, and perhaps, forgot our old ways to work and successfully collaborate with colleagues. This episode is a timely and very personal reminder of how to make meetings better and develop  str...

From local school board elections to state legislatures, an impassioned nationwide debate has erupted over allegations that Critical Race Theory (CRT) is being taught in public schools. Anti-CRT bills have been passed in more than two dozen Republican-led states. What do we mean by Critical Race Theory? What are these laws aiming to accomplish? How will they affect schools in the US? We share a li...

Never before in living memory has America been as politically polarized as it is today. We are divided by our politics,  Facebook  and other social media sites, and by  news media .  Nearly half of us  have stopped talking with someone about political topics as a result of what they said in person or online. Our culture of contempt is dividing us all and making A...

Imagine a future where smart machines are more intelligent than humans. That future may be coming much faster than we think. The stark implications are considered in this podcast.  The former Chief Business Officer at Google X, Egyptian entrepreneur  Mo Gawdat  has long been at the heart of the artificial intelligence revolution, deeply involved in engineering, robotics, a...

This episode addresses a great problem of our age: How do we curb the enormous power of giant technology companies and limit the disruption caused by them and their products? 20 years ago, we lived in an era of digital utopianism when most people thought that the internet would give us new freedom to find information. But we didn't anticipate many of the most disturbing technological changes....

The line between our “civilized” lives and wild, unpredictable nature seems to have gotten a little thinner lately. Nature is great, but it can also be dangerous if we don’t show proper respect.  This show is about awkward encounters with bears, mountain lines, gulls and other wild creatures. We also discuss "killer trees" with best-selling science writer,  Mary Roach , author of the new...

"I now believe the 9/11 Truthers I encountered were canaries in the coal mines of American society," writes our co-host, Jim Meigs, in the current issue of  City Journal . In this episode we hear about conspiracy theories, those who believe in them, and the corrosive impact of paranoia on American political life. Richard interviews Jim about his work at  Popular Mechanics  in the ye...

Only  four in 10 Americans  say they have a lot of trust in the news media. That's a big problem for our democracy. While journalists are supposed to tell the truth and get the story right, just  35 percent  of right-of-center voters have some trust in what they see in the news. Democrats and independents are much more likely to trust journalists, but Americans of almost&n...

For much of its history, the United States kept the rest of the world at arm's length. What happened in the decades after the 1941 military strike on Pearl Harbor, and several years after the 9/11 attacks, could be seen as an aberration. The sudden, chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the  Taliban  takeover, and resulting humanitarian disaster may lead to another American foreign p...

Successful politicians on the right and left often use anger and resentment to build support for their campaigns. "A lot of our politics is dignity politics," argues Stanford political scientist, Francis Fukuyama , our guest in this episode. "It's one group saying, 'look, you are not taking us seriously. You disregard our rights and we demand a different kind of world.'" We discuss whether identit...

In this special episode, Richard and Jim have an extended conversation around six solutions to help us manage the pandemic more successfully, and improve responses to future public health emergencies. 1.  Have a more realistic view of the virus.  This includes understanding that the virus won't go away anytime soon. Clear, honest communication from the media and gover...

America is facing a reading crisis, and this has profound impacts on how we engage with the world. The number of adults who read books for pleasure  fell by more than 30%  in less than 15 years.  Researchers found  that Americans watch TV three hours a day, but spend less than 30 minutes reading.  "Reading is seeing the world through someone else's eyes," says our guest,&n...

Our relationship with our stuff is broken. What was once fixed is often tossed into landfills. Repairs today are more expensive than the prices of many new clothes, gadgets, and household appliances. The U.S. has 5% of the world's population, but consumes about 30% of the world's resources and creates almost a third of the world's waste.  Large manufacturers restrict the repair...

Democracies around the world are under threat from populist movements, demagogues, and dogmatic extremists who use disinformation, conspiracy theories, shaming, cancel culture, and other tactics to weaponize social media and challenge our ability to distinguish fact from fiction and truth from falsehood. In  his new book , our guest, best-selling author, journalist, scholar, an...

The spread of the Delta Variant is a  rapidly growing threat  to public health, especially in states with low vaccination rates. But cases of COVID-19 are still  holding steady  in regions where more than 60% of the adult population had at least one shot. The disparity comes at a time of triumph with increasing evidence that the vaccines offer extremely high rate...

Much of the West has just lived through one of the worst June heatwaves in decades. Many states could be in a drought all this summer. From California and Arizona to the mountain West, dangerous heatwaves are almost becoming the norm. The threat of more devastating wildfires prompted calls for reforms  of the nation's fire management policies, and are a clear sign that the impacts of climate...

" Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone " was a 2008 newspaper column that turned into a national campaign to help parents raise their children with less anxiety while pushing back against our culture that has become obsessed with kids' fragility. Our guest,  Lenore Skenazy , founded  free-range kids  in the years after she first described making the decision to le...

America's remarkable experiment in a pluralist democracy is under threat from  toxic polarization . In this episode, we discuss two current nationwide campaigns to tackle this crisis head-on, America Talks , on Saturday-Sunday, June 12-13, is a  powerful conversation event  that invites thousands of Americans to connect one-on-one on video across our political divides. By...

The word “peacebuilding” evokes a story we’ve all heard over and over: Violence breaks out, foreign nations react, peacekeepers and million-dollar donors come rushing in, warring parties sign a peace agreement, and, sadly, within months the situation is back to where it started—sometimes worse.  But peace can grow in the most unlikely circumstances. What are some strategie...

"We should be humble all the time," says  Veronique de Rugy  of her study of economics. "There's always something I realize that I didn't understand."   In this episode, we discuss the rigorous questions economists need to ask themselves when analyzing the likely impacts of public policies: Questions rarely asked by politicians and others in the public square. We look at t...

It's tempting to believe that our current moment is the most urgent of all. Yet despite the catastrophic pandemic, and threats from other urgent problems, humankind has faced worse calamities in the past— from global wars and plagues to economic collapse. In this episode, we look at age-old lessons from philosophy and discover how ancient wisdom can be our guide in modern times. Bes...

She lived in Seattle and covered science, climate change, and the environment for NPR for more than a decade. Most of her friends and colleagues were liberals or progressives. Then in 2018, journalist  Ashley Ahearn  made a big jump, moving with her husband to one of the most conservative counties in rural Washington State.   What did this public radio reporter learn from her d...