Intro What does it mean to be free? Sometimes it means two wheels and an open road. This episode is a love song to and a celebration of the bicycle–from a dead-end American suburb, to a trail in Quebec, to a train station in Amsterdam. This is a story about how a few spinning gears …
Dear Bicycle: A Love Letter to the World’s Most Elegant Machine Read More »
Description How do we live in dark and difficult times? There are lots of places that people look to answer those questions. One place I find wisdom is J.R.R. Tolkein’s classic story, The Lord of the Rings. In today’s episode how these stories became so much more than a fantasy escape, what they have to …
How Lord of the Rings Taught Me to Hope in Dark Times Read More »
Intro Look I know what you’re thinking … You’re thinking, “Are you kidding? Textbooks are the dullest, most lifeless, deepest vortexes of soul-suck known to humankind. Their suck goes down to the sub-atomic level. You’re thinking about how you hated your chemistry textbook so much that you literally threw it out the window . . …
Intro Who invented first grade? Or second and third for that matter? Someone had to. Someone had to decide that it was a good idea to put all of the kids of the same age in one room and have one person teach them for a year before passing them on. But why? Today, story …
The Forgotten Alternative to Age-Based Education Read More »
Email us: ben@iheartthispodcast.com Our Website: www.iheartthispodcast.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@IHeartThisPodcast Intro This is the story of positive deviance . . . the story of how a simple, counterintuitive approach transformed the lives of children suffering from malnutrition, empowered their families, and changed the way that aid agencies work all over the world. In this episode, that story …
How One Simple Rule Transformed Child Nutrition in Vietnam Read More »
In 1960, one woman was all that stood between American families and a medical disaster of epidemic proportions. In this episode, the story of how that woman saved untold numbers of children and how all of us today are better off for her mostly-forgotten legacy. References Erick, M. (n.d.). Frances Kathleen Oldham Kelsey. National Women’s …
ow A “Petty Bureaucrat” Saved America from Thalidomide Read More »
Glowing balls of energy appear out of nowhere only to vanish a few seconds later. Ball lightning is strange, rare, and unexplained. In this episode, we explore the mystery, prod at the boundary between folklore and science and ask how, when evidence is scarce, we can figure out what is true. Check out our YouTube …
Intro Sometimes it seems like the world would be better off without the internet. What do we do when the technologies that promised to connect us, divide us instead? What do we do when the internet spawns trolls and bullies and misinformation? What would it take to make the internet … kind? In today’s episode: …
Vlogbrothers: How Nerds Brought Kindness to the Internet Read More »
Intro Language is impossibly complicated. And yet, nearly everyone uses it with ease. Where does it come from? In this episode we look for clues to answer this question in the story of the world’s newest language, how it arose, and what it tells us about what it means to be human. I’m Ben Lord. …
Nicaraguan Sign: How Schoolchildren Invented the World’s Newest Language Read More »
Tourists are obnoxious…unless you’re one of them. We all want adventure, but every adventure happens in someone else’s backyard. Hawai’i knows this better than anyplace. This episode is part two (of a two-part series) about what I learned from my travels in Hawai’i. In it, I ponder, “How can we visit paradise without paving it?” …
Death by Aloha: Travel, Tourism, and The Hawaiian Islands (Part 2) Read More »
