What if ancient myths are warnings for the future? Contemporary folklorist Lauren Fadiman explores how the Norse tale of Ragnarök may stem from real climate catastrophe, revealing how folklore preserves lessons of resilience and can...

Ada Lovelace, Daughter of Lord Byron, was somehow the first author of a computer program...even though she lived more than a century before the first modern computer.

In the 1920s, there was a blossoming of all kinds of art made by African Americans in the New York neighborhood Harlem. Let's call it a renaissance. While all the arts were having a great run, some extremely interesting things were...

As rates of chronic disease among children have skyrocketed over the past few decades, pediatricians have increasingly looked for solutions beyond the clinic. Sometimes that means actually prescribing time outside. Special correspondent...

When Boris Pasternak finished his novel ÐDr. ZhivagoÓ in 1956, Soviet authorities refused to publish the tale of an individuals struggle amid the Russian Revolution. A new book, ÐThe Zhivago Affair,Ó tells the story of how...

The FBI reports that hate crime violence in the U.S. is at a 16-year high. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, meanwhile, says the highest percentage of hate incidents since the 2016 election occurred in elementary and secondary...

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. discusses "The Bondwoman's Narrative," which is described as an autobiographical novel written in the 1850s by a female slave who called herself and her main character Hannah Crafts. The manuscript was found at an...

In her new book, "Leadership in Turbulent Times," presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin explores the trajectories of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, arguing that for all four of...

The U.S. is reportedly experiencing illegal immigration at the highest rates since 2007, with significant increases in the number of unaccompanied minors. It is these child migrants who are the subject of Valeria Luiselli’s book “Lost...

Book: Empire Falls

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. discusses "The Bondwoman's Narrative," which is described as an autobiographical novel written in the 1850s by a female slave who called herself and her main character Hannah Crafts. The manuscript was found at an...

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says the key factor for a judge's ruling is finding where the balance resides in a case. Margaret Warner interviews Justice Scalia about his new book, "Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal...

This has been a year of huge events and milestones, from the coronavirus

pandemic to the election of the first woman vice president. How will
2020
be remembered and analyzed in the years to come? Biographer and
historian...

In previous books like "The Devil in the White City" and "Isaac's Storm," bestselling author Erik Larson has used everyday people to chronicle historical events. But his latest offering, "The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill,...

Book: Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural

Journalist and historian Craig Fehrman has written a book called “Author in Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote.” He sits down with John Yang to discuss the long history of presidential writing, the...

Omar Ibn Said was 37 years old when he was taken from his West African home and transported to Charleston, South Carolina, as a slave in the 1800s. Now, his one-of-a-kind autobiographical manuscript has been translated from its original...

The backdrop of Saturday's violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, was a plan to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from the city's downtown. What̥s the story behind such monuments and why do we continue to struggle with...

The history of medicine is about two of our big questions: one, what is life? What makes it so special, so fragile, so… goopy!?

Two, how do we know what we know? Why should I take my doctor’s advice? Why are deep-fried Oreos bad...

What is a change of basis, and how do you do it?

What is a change of basis, and how do you do it?

TED curator Chris Anderson shares his obsession with questions that no one (yet) knows the answers to. A short intro leads into two questions: Why can't we see evidence of alien life? And how many universes are there?

In which John Green teaches you about Sub-Saharan Africa! So, what exactly was going on there? It turns out, it was a lot of trade, converting to Islam, visits from Ibn Battuta, trade, beautiful women, trade, some impressive...

English is a confusing language for many reasons. But the irregular verbs might be the most confusing part. Why is "told" the past tense of "tell" but "smold" isn't the past tense of "smell"? It turns out that the study of irregular...