Thinking Aloud

Charity Tillemann-Dick, opera singer and recipient of two separate double-lung transplants, joins the show to discuss her life, career, family, and new memoir, The Encore. —Original Airdate: 12/28/2017 8:00:00 PM

Robert Costanza, one of the foremost proponents of ecological economics, discusses how his field broadens and nuances our understanding of human prosperity and well-being. —Original Airdate: 7/7/2017 8:00:00 PM

Our guests on Thinking Aloud today are two food and nutrition scientists who have researched the ways in which crickets are actually a terrific source of protein. It turns out that crickets are easy to grow, much cheaper to raise than cows, produce far less environmental waste, and, this is the kicker, contain protein that is of the same nutritional quality as beef. —Original Airdate: 5/29/2017 8:00:00 PM

Tonight on Thinking Aloud, host Marcus Smith will visit with acclaimed science writer Dava Sobel about her new book, The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars. Learn about how these incredible women took astronomy by storm on tonight's Thinking Aloud. —Original Airdate: 5/18/2017 8:00:00 PM

Marcus Smith visits with Leo Braudy, exploring the history of monsters like witches, vampires, and zombies and trying to understand what these monsters have to say about the fears of the culture who created them. —Original Airdate: 6/21/2017 8:00:00 PM

Classicist Kyle Harper joins the show to discuss his new book, "The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire," which introduces two new characters in the narrative of Rome's decline: climate change and infectious disease. —Original Airdate: 1/29/2018 8:00:00 PM

BYU linguistics professor Alan Manning joins guest host Lisa Valentine Clark to discuss his research into evidence pointing to a Mormon girlfriend in Mark Twain's past.

Trebbe Johnson, writer and founder of Radical Joy for Hard Times, discusses our fractured relationship with the environment and how to find joy and connection in damaged places. —Original Airdate: 4/23/2018 8:00:00 PM

Historian Benjamin Madley joins us to tell the chilling story of the government-sanctioned genocide of California's Indians in the nineteenth century. —Original Airdate: 9/27/2017 8:00:00 PM

Langston Hughes is often erroneously accused of being an opponent of religion, but an understanding of the religious culture of Hughes's Harlem and his religious poetry shows otherwise. Wallace Best, author of "Langston's Salvation: American Religion and the Bard of Harlem," joins the show. —Original Airdate: 12/7/2017 8:00:00 PM

Kori Schake discusses why the transition from British toAmerican hegemony was so peaceful, and why we probably can't expect thenext transition to follow that example. —Original Airdate: 2/22/2018 8:00:00 PM

Stanford history professor Priya Satia discusses how war, imperialism, and Britian's thriving gun trade acted as the real engine of the Industrial Revolution. —Original Airdate: 6/20/2018 8:00:00 PM

Whether you think it's on its way out or a permanent fixture in our culture, there's no denying that we're fascinated with books. Poet and scholar Amaranth Borsuk joins the show to explore the limits and possibilities of the book as object, as content, and as idea. —Original Airdate: 6/8/2018 8:00:00 PM

Randall Stephens, professor of history and American studies, traces the history of Christian rock from its beginning as "the devil's music" to a billion dollar industry. —Original Airdate: 6/15/2018 8:00:00 PM

Joseph Crespino, the Jimmy Carter Professor of History at Emory University, traces the origins and evolution of Atticus Finch, the iconic patriarch from Harper Lee's seminal novel. —Original Airdate: 6/18/2018 8:00:00 PM

Marcus Smith visits with a literature expert to explore the phenomenon of reading aloud as a social activity in the eighteenth-century home. —Original Airdate: 1/25/2018 8:00:00 PM

Sociologist Neda Maghbouleh joins the show to discuss her research into how second-generation Iranian Americans navigate the paradox between being legally classified as white and socially perceived as nonwhite. —Original Airdate: 6/14/2018 8:00:00 PM

Political scientist Jeremy Teigen explores the history of military service and the U.S. presidency and discusses how the status of being a veteran has helped or hindered presidential hopefuls. —Original Airdate: 6/11/2018 8:00:00 PM

The Virgina Company. The Fourteenth Amendment. Dodge v Ford Motor Co. Ralph Nader. Mitt Romney. UCLA law professor Adam Winkler talks through the characters and cases that helped business corporations gain rights under the Constitution. —Original Airdate: 6/7/2018 8:00:00 PM

British archaeologist Alexander Langlands joins the show to talk about his new book, "Craeft: An Inquiry Into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Craft." —Original Airdate: 1/31/2018 8:00:00 PM