Culture
Whose Century Is It?
July 17, 2017
At a time when a surprising number of young Americans say it's not important to them to live in a democracy, when honest journalists are accused of pedaling fake news, while purveyors of actual fake news are too often taken seriously, spare a thought for a man who thought democracy, freedom of speech and a just society are so worth fighting for, he spent four terms in Chinese prisons and work camps, and died in custody, of liver cancer. Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is being remembered for his tenacity and principled focus, and for believing in the power of peaceful protest and the possibility of change, in the face of authoritarian repression.
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Culture
This apocalyptic Korean Christian group goes by different names. Critics say it's just a cult.
PRI's The World
July 11, 2017
The Shinchonji Church of Jesus was founded in South Korea back in 1984 by a man whose followers call him, "the promised pastor." The group has grown in its home country and expanded into Western nations. But not without notoriety.
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Culture
Here's why you should care if you don't have any black friends
The Takeaway
August 28, 2014
The conversation about events in Ferguson involves race, but maybe not in the way you think. While a new study showed that most white Americans don't have non-white friends, many people say it shouldn't be taken as an indicator of personal racism but rather large-scale issues that deserve the real attention.
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Culture
Seeking the long-lost 'City of the Monkey God' in dense Honduras jungle
PRI's The World
January 04, 2017
A new book tells the story of the treacherous scientific expedition that re-discovered a lost civilization.
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Culture
How a massacre of a village's Jews by their neighbors in WWII Poland is remembered — and misremembered
Whose Century Is It?
March 24, 2017
Updated
Memory can be slippery, especially when there's incentive to forget, or misremember. In the Polish village of Jedwabne, residents long said Nazis were responsible for the massacre, one hot day in July 1941, of hundreds of Jews in the village. Then evidence emerged that the villagers of Jedwabne had killed their own neighbors.
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Culture
Why every Korean kid knows not to keep the fan on over night
PRI's The World
November 04, 2014
There's a superstition that Korean parents tell their kids: If you go to sleep with an electric fan running in your room, you might die.
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Culture
Guess what? Shakespeare didn't start the theater scene in England.
PRI's The World
March 02, 2017
Shakespeare's London theater was only one of many open at the turn of the 17th century. A new project is aiming to rediscover some of those forgotten masterpieces.
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Culture
Fighting to put a woman on the $20 bill
The Takeaway
March 18, 2015
Updated
It's time, one group says, to end the monopoly of men on US paper currency. President Barack Obama thinks it's about time, too.
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Culture
How did English become the language of science?
The World in Words
October 06, 2014
It's Nobel Prize season. While scientists throughout the world will be awarded this prestigious prize, there's a good chance all of their research was written up in English. Michael Gordin, a professor of the history of science at Princeton, wrote a new book, "Scientific Babel" that explores the intersection of the history of language and science.
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Culture
The 'alt-right' and white outrage around the world: An explainer
PRI's The World
November 25, 2016
The US alt-right is a mishmash of people dissatisfied with the Republican establishment and focused on the prosperity of white people.
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Culture
Meet the last native speakers of Hawaiian
The World in Words
July 28, 2016
Hawaiian is often offered up as a language revitalization success story, a model for other endangered languages to follow. But language revitalization isn’t so simple. While activists are reviving the Hawaiian language, opening up pre-schools, teaching thousands of second language learners, there still is a small group of native speakers who have never lost the language, a group of native Hawaiians from the island of Niihau.