social science

Twenty years ago, Richard Louv helped us begin to think differently about childhood and nature.Now, he's asking a related but perhaps even more provocative question: what happens when we really notice the world around us? What do we experience in terms of attention, awe, loss, and what it means to love a very complex world?

For years, comedy thrived on cynicism. The world was a mess, people were selfish, and anyone who believed otherwise was the punchline.But from Ted Lasso, to Paddington, to Come From Away, some of our most beloved stories are finding humor, heart, and even heroism in empathy, earnestness, and human decency.This summer, Lyric Repertory Company is producing Gutenberg! The Musical! It’s a delightfully ridiculous show about two aspiring theater makers who are convinced they have created a masterpiece. They haven't, but their unwavering enthusiasm is part of what makes the show so charming.And it's not the only production in Lyric's season that seems interested in the power of human decency.

In the United States, we tend to celebrate people who pick a destination, set a goal, believe in themselves, and refuse to quit until they get exactly where they always knew they’d be.But real life is messier than that. Dreams change. and sometimes careers stall — we get relegated to something less than what we dreamed of.That's what happened to Todd Smith, a part-time sports writer and full-time landscape supplier.Then he found himself watching an English football match between a billion-dollar giant and a club that most people, even in England, have never heard of, and he fell down a rabbit hole.

If one of the most important roles of science fiction is that it makes unfamiliar ideas emotionally legible, what are the ideas that we need to be reading about right now?

In workplaces everywhere, the most engaged employees often become the go-to for extra work. It feels logical, but management scholar Sangah Bae believes that instinct might be backfiring — a lot. Her recent work shows that intrinsically motivated workers are disproportionately assigned additional tasks, often at a cost to their performance, satisfaction, and long-term retention. The reason isn’t just that they’re capable—it’s that managers assume they’ll actually enjoy the extra work.

We’ve long found different ways to explain that the world is made up of haves and have-nots. We live in the developed world or the developing world. There are those who are advantaged and those who are disadvantaged. And then, of course, there’s the one percent and everyone else. But under global warming, the climate journalist Jeff Goodell thinks, there may be a new way of describing this dichotomy: The cooled and the cooked.

Ten years after publishing This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, activist and writer Ashton Applewhite reflects on what a decade of living inside her own argument has taught her about aging, identity, and the quiet power of adaptation.

Our guest for the hour today is scholar, author, philanthropist, and USU College of Humanities and Social Sciences graduate Dr. Mehdi Heravi. Dr. Heravi was born in Tehran, Iran and moved to Logan, Utah, for high school and remained in Logan to continue his education

Could the liberal arts be the future of the digital world?

How much do your personal choices affect climate change? Does promoting the use of energy efficient light bulbs take away from pushing for bigger policy…