TWO REPORTERS

Dazzle friends with the grammar smarts you'll get from our second chat with Bryan Garner, one of America's language gurus. Finally , you're about to learn if you can - or cannot - end a sentence with a preposition; if you can use "like" instead of "as"; and if you can banish "whom" and "whomever" from your brain. Just wait until you hear Bryan...

...  we've never had so much fun debating it! Bryan Garner, one of America's grammar gurus, tells us where we're going wrong grammatically - and what we're getting right. You're sure to find (you'll surely find?) answers to some of your own burning questions, like (or is it "such as"?): should you feel bad about using adverbs? Or should you feel badly ? How...

As we post this episode, Trump has sent Marines and Army National Guard troops to the streets to try to quash protests by fellow citizens - the vast majority of them peaceful. Our guest Elizabeth Goitein, of the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, has warned us before that any U.S. president could wield dozens of sweeping emergency powers to dismantle democracy, some so secret that members of...

In this uplifting chat, John Marks joins us again to tell how Search for Common Ground created radio and TV programs from Africa to Asia - designed to help bring former enemies together. His case studies from Burundi, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo show how Search’s broadcasts helped soothe conflicts between warring groups, and reduced the scourge of rape by rampaging soldiers. The...

Trump has already shown that when he moves back to the White House, he's likely to use the strategies of dictators he admires, such as Viktor Orbán of Hungary: pack courts and agencies with ideological cronies, intimidate and harass the press, and continue to denigrate opponents as “evil,” “low IQ,” "vermin" and “enemies from within.” Harvard professor Steven Levitsky, co-author of...

John Marks says yes - and he and the organization he founded, Search for Common Ground, have made it happen. He tells us surprising stories about how they get people to listen to each other, across hard lines of hatred and suspicion: Russian and American intelligence officers, Iranians and Americans, Israelis and Arabs, Hutus and Tutsis in Africa -  and more. John's memoir, From Vision to Act...

Scientist Michelle Fournet and her colleagues from the University of New Hampshire hang out with humpback whales in Alaska, recording their daily communications - and then sending whale recordings back to the giant animals to see if and how they respond. Some of her latest findings could break new ground: she can identify individual whales by their sounds. Michelle tells us the moving story of how...

Four more have been murdered by a teen with an assault-style rifle - many more were injured - at Apalachee High School in Winder, GA. Still, this episode gives us a glimmer of hope: specialists in “behavioral threat assessment” have been quietly trying to spot potential killers for decades, in places from schools and companies to government agencies - and the latest carnage could probably have bee...

Lee Bollinger, who was president of Columbia University and the University of Michigan, predicts that the number of black students at many colleges will plummet to low levels they haven't seen since the 60s and 70s. He says Chief Justice John Roberts and the other Republican extremists on the Court misinterpret the Constitution. And as for the belief that under affirmative action, college off...

Trump, the Republican party and Project 2025 are echoing Orbán's autocratic playbook - along with strategies of other leaders who got elected democratically and then turned their nations into autocracies. Key steps: pack courts and agencies with their cronies, slander and intimidate the media, and denigrate their opponents as "evil" and "vermin." Harvard professor Steven L...

Sesame Street changed TV by using music to help kids learn how to spell and how to share. Singer-songwriter Anya Rose and the group Ants on a Log write social action songs to help children in primary school learn edgier lessons, about problems from environmental pollution to racist and sexist behavior - inspired in part by 60s satirist Tom Lehrer. After hearing these tunes, the 9-year-olds in your...

Now that Judge David S. Tatel has retired from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, he feels freer to warn us all: the Supreme Court is threatening America's democracy by inventing spurious legal doctrines and grabbing more power for itself. There are also lighter moments in this revealing interview, as David pulls the curtain aside and tells us how the judges on this powerful cour...

David Tatel - who retired recently from the U.S. Court of Appeals - has led what he calls a "braided life" that intertwines hardship and accomplishment. With his wife, Edie, he describes how he struggled to hide his gradual loss of sight from friends and colleagues alike - including tricks like counting rows and seats in a movie theater and following the clicks of high heels. Meanwhile,...

Lewis Simon's Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting, in collaboration with colleagues, helped spark an international scandal and topple a corrupt dictator in the Philippines; he tells us in this episode how they did it. Lew also gives us remarkable insight into how he could do his work - taking notes as people got beaten to death and blown up in front of him, in countries like Cambodia and Banglad...

Next time you hear details of the horrific wars in Ukraine and Gaza, think about how you're learning them: journalists are risking their lives to report from the front lines. Lewis Simons won the Pulitzer Prize during decades of reporting on the Vietnam war and other conflicts across Asia. He lived by a motto: "Whatever the threat or danger, I had to be there."

Now Trump and the Republican party are following their autocratic playbooks, whether by design or by instinct: pack courts and agencies with their cronies, slander and intimidate the media, and denigrate their opponents as "evil" and vermin. Harvard professor Steven Levitsky, co-author of How Democracies Die and Tyranny of the Minority , tells us why it could take many years to rescue Am...

When you learned about the American explorers who claimed to discover the North Pole, the answer seems to be, "Yes." In fact, the fabled drama of Robert E. Peary and Frederick Cook was an early example of how powerful newspapers - in this case The New York Times and New York Herald - spread fake news (although critics still debate whether the newspaper owners knew it was fake or didn&apo...

It could happen to you: police mistakenly suspect or arrest you, because an app's location data show you were near the scene of a crime. The ACLU's Nathan Wessler returns to explain how geolocation, voice recognition and other high-tech tracking methods - including the way you walk! - could disrupt your life in ways you hardly expect. 

America's surveillance network is nowhere near as pervasive and chilling as China's, but U.S. companies and government agencies are already using high-tech tools like facial recognition to track you more than you might think. As the ACLU's Nathan Wessler tells us, the facial recognition software sometimes goofs - and ordinary, innocent people like you end up in jail. 

Presidents have drawn up plans to wield sweeping emergency powers - and some of those plans are so secret that even Congress has never seen them. Elizabeth Goitein, of the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, has unearthed dozens of emergency presidential powers. Voters should understand the potential powers they could give any president, before they cast their ballot.

David K. Shipler (aka "Dave," our podcast co-host) is not only a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist: He's a poet, and just published his debut volume of poems, The Wind is Invisible . Given the grim news in the world, Dave's lovely poetry - glimpses of nature, reflections on family, moving insights about love - is a refreshing antidote. It's also (according to Danny) a surp...

Shekar Krishnan just got re-elected to the New York City Council with three times as many votes as the runner-up. And so far, he's showing how politics and government can actually make people's lives better. Shekar fights for immigrant taxi drivers, the LGBTQ community, and minorities who need good low-income housing; he went briefly to jail and got smeared by the Proud Boys, along the w...

As the horrific war between Israel and Hamas continues, US and Iranian officials are sending each other warnings, just as they have for decades: Back off. When you hear this episode, it will help remind you one reason why Iran's government learned to hate the US long ago: The US and Britain secretly ran the plot to topple its leader in the 1950s. Why? For Iran's oil. Filmmakers Taghi Ami...

As we publish this, Congressional Republicans have just elected their new Speaker - a right-wing extremist who led the fight, which many consider seditious, to overthrow Joseph Biden’s 2020 democratic election. So it’s more astonishing than ever to revisit the presidency of Republican Dwight D. "Ike" Eisenhower. His granddaughter, Susan Eisenhower, describes some of Ike's visionary...

Railroad supervisors ignore safety problems. Railroad executives lay off thousands of workers and see accident rates soar. Railroad corporations make record profits while their customers complain about lousy freight service. Marilee Taylor and Ron Kaminkow, veteran train engineers and labor organizers, have encountered those problems just about every day they've climbed aboard a locomotive -...