There’s currently a debate in America about what students should be learning about U.S. history. Some say we don’t revere American exceptionalism enough. Others say we're giving ourselves an A+ by excluding the tests we failed. Humorist Alexandra Petri says both sides are wrong. We just don’t know enough about the things we need to know, such as how inventor Nikola Tesla fell in love with his pigeon or about the secret tapes of Nixon yelling at his dog Checkers. This hour, an irreverent look at how we teach, learn and remember U.S. history. GUESTS:  Alexandra Petri is a humoris ..read more

This hour: invisibility. We learn about the science of invisibility and whether we’re getting close to having the technology to turn invisible. We also talk about invisibility in pop culture and science fiction and debate questions we all have about what would happen if someone could turn invisible. GUESTS:  Gregory Gbur: Author of Invisibility: The History and Science of How Not To Be Seen, and a Professor of Physics and Optical Science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte Lisa Yaszek: Regents Professor of Science Fiction Studies in the School of Literature, M ..read more

In record producer and neuroscientist Susan Rogers’s This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You, she writes, “The music that delivers the maximum gratification to you is determined by seven influential dimensions of musical listening.” Those seven dimensions are authenticity, realism, novelty, melody, lyrics, rhythm, and timbre. This hour, we talk with Rogers about some of those seven dimensions, the role of the listener in music, and why we are drawn to some songs and not others. GUEST: Susan Rogers: Multi-platinum record producer, cognitive neuroscientist, and co-au ..read more