Teaching Why We Fight in High School – Chris Blattman

My students love the book. One thing that jumps out is how clearly Blattman writes. For high school students who are encountering a big topic for the first time, clarity is incredibly important. The book really speaks to a wide audience. —Matt Cone, Carrboro High School, Carrboro, North Carolina I tried to make Why We […]

What the Numbers Say About PM Liz Truss and Prospects for Peace | Opinion

Liz Truss is the United Kingdom’s new prime minister—that brings the number of female leaders in the G20 to two. She enters world politics at a tense moment: Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine looks unlikely to end anytime soon, and tensions in the Taiwan Strait are greater than ever. The risk of a […]

Making The World A Safer Place

The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. Shankar Vedantam:This is Hidden Brain, I’m Shankar Vedantam. One of the first television crime dramas in the United States debuted in 1958.Audio/video:The same guys, wearing […]

Why the Conflict in Ukraine Won’t End Anytime Soon

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, few observers imagined that the war would still be raging today. Russian planners did not account for the stern resistance of Ukrainian forces, the enthusiastic support Ukraine would receive from Europe and North America, or the various shortcomings of their own military. Both sides are now dug in, and […]

Books of the Year I — chosen by our regular reviewers

Philip Hensher There were some very good novels this year, but they came from surprising directions. It is astonishing that one as original as Kate Barker-Mawjee’s The Coldest Place on Earth (Conrad Press, £9.99) couldn’t find a major publisher. A friend recommended this wonderfully controlled and evocatively written novel about a heart coming to life […]