In the years after World War One, more than 100,000 Jews were murdered in pogroms across Ukraine. Jeffrey Veidlinger is an acclaimed historian who says this targeted violence sowed the seeds for the Holocaust that would arrive two decades later.

Authoritarian impulses are rising in the United States and around the world. Gary Hart argues that the very ideals of America’s founding–including a commitment to the will of the people–can redeem American democracy and keep the light of freedom burning for all the world to see.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to free speech. The Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms. Mike McIntire documents what happens when those two rights clash and the chilling effect open-carry laws are having on protest and public assembly across the United States.

When Pope Pious XII died, the Catholic Church sealed his documents until 2020. David Kertzer was among the first to gain access to those documents when they were unsealed, and his new book reveals what the Pope knew and did while World War II ravaged Europe.

Science is under assault—on social media, on our airwaves, and sometimes even around our dinner tables. Holden Thorp discusses the role science can and should play in an era of profound challenges, like climate change, pandemic disease, and profound changes in technology’s relationship with humanity.

Since the fall of 2022, the women of Iran have confronted the authority of the Islamic Republic of Iran after one young woman died in the state’s custody. Ali Kadivar views the advocacy of those brave women through the broader struggle for democracy around the world.

In an age of fake news and so called “truthiness,” the world sometimes feels untethered from reality. Today’s guest uses her reporting and storytelling to ground her audience in science, even while her words reconnect us to our shared humanity and our relationship to the natural world. She’s Alanna Mitchell, this week on “Story in the Public Square.”

The American revolution had many fathers. But Stacy Schiff paints a picture of Samuel Adams—the cash-strapped publisher and political leader from Boston—as, perhaps, the essential founder whose spirit and maneuvering shaped so many of the seminal events of the revolutionary era.