On The Gist, before Donald Trump’s headline-hogging presidency, things like bridge collapses made news for more than a few days.
In the interview, Cass Sunstein’s new book asks if the U.S. is fundamentally immune to authoritarianism, or whether president Trump has proved the opposite. His new book—Can It Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America—puts the question to more than a dozen leading writers.
In the Spiel, Betsy DeVos is totally incompetent, but at least that’s made obvious every time she speaks.
Donald Trump rolled out his approach to handling the opioid problem in the United States: treatment for addicts and execution for drug dealers. Cato's Jeffrey Singer says it's disappointing and almost entirely the wrong approach.
Donald Trump rolled out his approach to handling the opioid problem in the United States: treatment for addicts and execution for drug dealers. Cato's Jeffrey Singer says it's disappointing and almost entirely the wrong approach.
This week we’re heading to Wakanda, y’all! Black Panther's Erik Killmonger might be fine and fighting for black liberation, but does that make him a hero ? We invited Kara Brown and Aaron Edwards to help us decide: is Wakanda's rebel, good or bad for the Blacks ?
Trump begins publicly attacking Robert Mueller, only a few Republicans in Congress speak out, and Trump data firm Cambridge Analytica harvests data from 50 million Facebook profiles. Then Stoneman Douglas High School students David Hogg and Jackie Corin talk to Tommy and Jon about the upcoming March for Our Lives and their efforts to prevent gun violence.
What can we learn from other countries with mandated paid family leave? Why do so many prominent Republicans view the idea as a conservative one? Vanessa Brown Calder comments.
We are drawn to wildness and disorder, argues historian Bettany Hughes. She tells Andrew Marr about the attraction of Bacchus, the god of wine and fertility, and the subject of a new BBC Four documentary. Bacchus (also known as Dionysus) has been a symbol of excess ever since Roman maidens fled to the woods and drank wine in his name. Hughes follows the Bacchic cult through history, and argues that chaos has been as important to civilisation as reason and restraint.
The wood - scene of so many Bacchic revelries - comes to life in nature writer John Lewis-Stempel's new account, The Wood: The Life and Times of Cockshutt Wood. Through poetry, folklore and his own observations he asks what it is that draws us to magical spaces.
Today we revel in feelings of joy and wonder, but feelings themselves are a surprisingly modern invention, says cultural historian Rachel Hewitt. She looks back at the 1790s, the decade when men and women of learning first began to take emotions seriously. Hewitt explains how an Enlightenment interest in reason led us to explore our own chaotic moods.
There are Bacchic scenes in the music of Debussy, as biographer Stephen Walsh shows in a new study of the French composer. Away from his piano Debussy had to battle professional vendettas, but in pieces such as Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, Debussy created a world of rich woodland scenes and musical intoxication.
