The Study Podcast

In this episode Carolin Duttlinger opens up a longer lens for us to look at the relationship between attention and distraction. What cultural and historical moments can we study to see changes in attention and distraction? How did individuals and societies use techniques and emerging psychological insights to work on attention? What was at stake at these inflection points, given what was happening...

Documentary filmmaker Lynn Novick joins Tayo in The Study for a conversation about the development of America's criminal justice system, the subject of a new four-part PBS series titled  Crime and Punishment in America. What is the relationship incarceration and punishment, the penal system and justice, and punishment vs. rehabilitation? Who has been incarcerated over the past 250 years and for wh...

Joining Tayo in The Study for this episode is Roger Berkowitz, author of the book A World We Share: Hannah Arendt and the Power of Friendship in a Broken World.  Berkowitz argues that practicing friendship—dialogue, respect, and honest conversation among people who disagree--is just what we need to reinvigorate the health of democracy today. This conversation explores the experience of mass loneli...

Sasha Sagan joins Tayo in the Study today in advance of her appearance in North Dakota for an upcoming Brave Conversations events. What is the basis of our beliefs? Outside of a particular religious tradition, how can we mark the passages and shared experiences in our lives? How might the truths and wonders science reveals serve as the basis for communal, familial, and individual rituals and worth...

In this episode of The Study Podcast, Ari King and Tayo Basquiat discuss their reading of the short story “The Garden of Forking Paths” by author Jorge Luis Borges as well as some of the larger themes and impact of Borges’ work. Is life or our experience of reality more like a maze or a labyrinth, one clear path or forking paths? What does Borges have to say about the commonly held notion that eac...

In this episode of The Study Podcast, Bill Macauley shares his experience and insights from both his career teaching writing and his mindfulness practice. What happens when the work of writing shifts conceptual from product to process, or, as Bill puts it, from a noun to a verb? What are practices from mindfulness that can help writers do what they want to do? How might mindfulness increase a pers...

In this episode of The Study Podcast, Tayo welcomes Chip Hauss to discuss how we all can be engaged in the work of building peace where we live--in our relationships, workplace, neighborhood, communities. What is peace? What does it mean to practice peace-building? Is peace even possible? What are some practical steps we can take to change our approach to difficult relationships and conflict?  Cha...

In this episode of The Study Podcast, Serge Danielson-Francois offers some thoughts and questions on the idea of justice, work that he’s pursuing through close readings of philosophers Emmanuel Levinas and Plato but also as a teacher at the upper school of Academy of of the Sacred Heart in Michigan. What are the hallmarks of a just community? How do we overcome the wounds of past injustices and ri...

Joining Tayo in The Study is Colleen Shogan for a discussion of the National Archives, as she was the 11th archivist of the United States, and her current project called "In Pursuit" with an organization called More Perfect. How does a person get that job, Archivist of the United States? What kinds of records are kept at the NARA? How can the public make use of the archives? And then Colleen field...

The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora, ND opens July 4, 2026, and in this episode of The Study Podcast we talk with Marcie Woehl, manager of public programming and education at the library. Marcie shares her own educational story, her vision for the creating innovative and experiential educational opportunities at the library, and the kind of public intellectualism she is hoping to...

Commander William C. Spears visits The Study to talk about his book  Stoicism as a Warrior Philosophy . What makes Stoic philosophy such a good fit for those serving in the military? How might this philosophy help someone discern their duty and to reconcile the demands of many different roles or duties in their life? What would be the key philosophical message he'd offer to those just starting the...

Today's guest in The Study is Rebecca Clarren, author of the book  The Cost of Free Land.  Rebecca helps us think about the stories we tell and don't tell in history, how histories push and pull against one another, and how one finds the courage to face the truth. She fields questions about reparations, the Land Back movement, and immigration, allowing her journey in this book to speak to our curr...

In this episode of The Study Podcast, author Kent Krueger discusses his use of the mystery/crime genre as a framework for exploring deeper human questions about justice, spirituality, morality, relationship, loss, and change; his commitment to creating a vivid sense of place for readers and to craft stories that are true to real life, that can help readers navigate and understand their own experie...

Human beings are mortal. Intellectually, we know this to be a certainty. Having been born, we will die. In this episode, writer and philosopher H.L. Hix visits The Study to talk about his novella, The Death of H.L. Hix , in which he writes the story of his own death, using Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich as his prompt. What was this experience like? Why did he write this story? How did writ...

In this conversation with poet Lauren Camp, she shares some of the experience of writing her newest collection, Is Is Enough, poems that emerged from attending to her father's decline and death from Alzheimer's disease.  She talks about writing as ritual, how her poetic practice helps her anchor the experience and hold on to her father, and her hopes for what this collection might do for others go...