TED Radio Hour

Using ancient philosophy to cope with your modern problems

the thing that ultimately got Socrates killed, but which was his real power, was that he gave young people a moral imagination. Like they would have thought along with their parents that there was kind of only one way Athens could go. There's like only one way the world works. And Socrates, by asking them questions, by teaching them philosophy, helped them realize they had a lot more options than they might've believed they had based on who was in power.

Fresh Air

The hidden history of blackface in America

Ironically, it's a huge success of the civil rights movement. Civil rights activists protested against blackface and tried really hard to strip it from the school curriculums and everyday performances where it was really common currency. And by doing so, they turned blackface into something that was culturally taboo. And so it became so taboo, in fact, that the history of it is no longer taught.