IdeaSphere: A Platform for Today's Voices

Series produced by Guy Rathbun

Series image

This weekly show is devoted to political, social, economic, ecological, philosophical and religious ideas.

This series has been broadcast on public radio, and podcast on National Public Radio for the past 10 years, and has included such luminaries as Robert Reich, Chris Hedges, Michael K. Hudson, Vincent Buligosi, Richard Heinberg, and many more.


561 Pieces

Order by: Newest First | Oldest First
A Body Undone: Living on After Great Pain
From: Guy Rathbun
Series: IdeaSphere: A Platform for Today's Voices
Caption: Professor Christina Crosby
On an early October evening in 2003, Christina Crosby was on a 17-mile bike ride. Nothing unusual for this athletic professor at Wesleyan Universi...

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  • Added: Apr 05, 2016
  • Length: 29:00
  • Purchases: 1
Boy With a Knife
From: Guy Rathbun
Series: IdeaSphere: A Platform for Today's Voices
Piece image
Twenty-four hundred years ago Romans understood the difference between the mind of a child and that of an adult. Somehow, America forgot that basic...

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  • Added: Apr 14, 2016
  • Length: 29:00
  • Purchases: 1
Democracy or Oligarchy
From: Guy Rathbun
Series: IdeaSphere: A Platform for Today's Voices
Caption: Dr. Roslyn Fuller
Try to find a true democracy anywhere in the world and you’ll be challenged. What you’ll find instead is a nation ruled by the few, with the majori...

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  • Added: Apr 21, 2016
  • Length: 29:00
  • Purchases: 1
Far & Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change
From: Guy Rathbun
Series: IdeaSphere: A Platform for Today's Voices
Caption: Andrew Solomon
What we least understand we fear the most. The way to overcome our personal insecurities is to interact with the world - Andrew Solomon

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  • Added: Apr 28, 2016
  • Length: 29:00
  • Purchases: 1
Deadly River: Cholera & Cover-Up in Post Earthquake Haiti
From: Guy Rathbun
Series: IdeaSphere: A Platform for Today's Voices
Caption: Epidemiology Professor Ralph Frerichs
A controversy involving United Nations Peacekeeping forces, the World Health Organization, and scientists --- not to mention the people of Haiti -...

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  • Added: May 02, 2016
  • Length: 29:01
  • Purchases: 2
It's Even Worse Than It Was
From: Guy Rathbun
Series: IdeaSphere: A Platform for Today's Voices
Caption: Norman J. Ornstein
Congress is at a standstill. They have been for several years. In 2010 political insiders Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein began searching for the c...

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  • Added: May 11, 2016
  • Length: 28:59
  • Purchases: 1
Incarceration Nation
From: Guy Rathbun
Series: IdeaSphere: A Platform for Today's Voices
Caption: Professor Peter Enns
America’s prison population has grown by leaps and bounds over the past 40-years. The “land of the free” has the dubious distinction of handing dow...

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  • Added: May 18, 2016
  • Length: 29:01
  • Purchases: 1
The Box: A Memoir
From: Guy Rathbun
Series: IdeaSphere: A Platform for Today's Voices
Caption: Edward Schultz
This is a personal story of the Vietnam War with Lynne Lorine Ludwick author of The Box.

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  • Added: May 24, 2016
  • Length: 28:55
  • Purchases: 1
Dilemmas of Educational Ethics
From: Guy Rathbun
Series: IdeaSphere: A Platform for Today's Voices
Caption: Professor Meira Levinson
This is about our kids, our future generations. Ask any grade school teacher, and they’ll tell you the job is very challenging.

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  • Added: Jun 01, 2016
  • Length: 28:59
  • Purchases: 1
The Gene: An Intimate History
From: Guy Rathbun
Series: IdeaSphere: A Platform for Today's Voices
Piece image
You’d have to go back more than 160-years to land upon the beginning of the story of the gene.

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  • Added: Jun 06, 2016
  • Length: 29:01
  • Purchases: 1
Breaking Rockefeller
From: Guy Rathbun
Series: IdeaSphere: A Platform for Today's Voices
Caption: Peter B. Doran
Oil is one of the earth’s coveted substances. We love it and we hate it. Yet, it surrounds our lives every day.

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  • Added: Jun 14, 2016
  • Length: 29:00
  • Purchases: 1
Makers & Takers
From: Guy Rathbun
Series: IdeaSphere: A Platform for Today's Voices
Caption: Rana Foroohar
Award winning business journalist Rana Foroohar explores the provocative question that is at the top of mind of today's business leaders: Is Wall S...

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  • Added: Jun 21, 2016
  • Length: 29:00
  • Purchases: 2
Valiant Ambition
From: Guy Rathbun
Series: IdeaSphere: A Platform for Today's Voices
Caption: Nathaniel Philbrick
It’s been more than 240 years since the war of America’s independence began. Yet, the name Benedict Arnold still evokes any number of negative resp...

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  • Added: Jun 27, 2016
  • Length: 29:00
  • Purchases: 2
Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon
From: Guy Rathbun
Series: IdeaSphere: A Platform for Today's Voices
Caption: Larry Tye
More books have been written about Bobby Kennedy than most public figures in our history. Although he’s remembered as a fiery liberal, we easily ...

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  • Added: Jul 07, 2016
  • Length: 29:00
  • Purchases: 1
Curing Medicare
From: Guy Rathbun
Series: IdeaSphere: A Platform for Today's Voices
Caption: Dr. Andy Lazris
Although Medicare is not going bankrupt, at the very least, it faces financing challenges. According to Dr. Andy Lazris, there are some straightfo...

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  • Added: Jul 11, 2016
  • Length: 29:00
  • Purchases: 2
Tactical Performance
From: Guy Rathbun
Series: IdeaSphere: A Platform for Today's Voices
Caption: L.M. Bogad
At one time, all of us have witnessed a protest that is also theatrical. Whether it’s a sit in for equal rights in the 1960s, or the Yes Men infilt...

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  • Added: Jul 19, 2016
  • Length: 29:00
  • Purchases: 1
The Highest Glass Ceiling
From: Guy Rathbun
Series: IdeaSphere: A Platform for Today's Voices
Caption: Ellen Fitzpatrick
Since the late 1800s four women have run for the office of US president.

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  • Added: Jul 26, 2016
  • Length: 29:00
  • Purchases: 2
The Fractured Republic
From: Guy Rathbun
Series: IdeaSphere: A Platform for Today's Voices
Caption: Yuval Levin
Americans appear frustrated today. The economy that was supposed to bounce back following the recession nearly a decade ago, remains sluggish and s...

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  • Added: Aug 02, 2016
  • Length: 29:00
  • Purchases: 1
Spatializing Blackness: Architectures of Confinement and Black Masculinity in Chicago
From: Guy Rathbun
Series: IdeaSphere: A Platform for Today's Voices
Caption: Professor Rashad Shabazz
Imagine a large population of Americans living in prison-like-conditions. That’s what it’s like in the so-called Black Belt of South Side Chicago.

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  • Added: Aug 09, 2016
  • Length: 29:00
  • Purchases: 1
The Boys in the Bunkhouse: Servitude and Salvation in the Heartland
From: Guy Rathbun
Series: IdeaSphere: A Platform for Today's Voices
Caption: Dan Barry
In the winter of 2009, a social worker with the Iowa Department of Human Services, received an anonymous tip: A couple dozen disabled men were liv...

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  • Added: Aug 15, 2016
  • Length: 29:00
  • Purchases: 1

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