The Rise of Bad Medicine and Anti-Vaxxers: Co...

In the last episode of 2025, Assembly Required is focusing on our audience. Stacey reflects on the lessons learned this year and answers listener questions about everything from how to defeat authoritarianism to what her favorite books were. We also hear stories from listeners wh ...  Show more

The internet was originally seen as a tool of progress and innovation, but the reality has turned out to be economically, politically, and morally fraught. The question isn’t whether technology is good or bad. It’s who it serves, who it harms, and who profits. Our dependence hasn ...  Show more

When Morley Safer traveled to West Virginia in 1975 to report on a fight over books in schools, he couldn't have known how that conflict would help lay the blueprint for many contemporary challenges over what students are allowed to read. In our first "second look," we revisit a ...  Show more

Back to Black is the Amy Winehouse biopic out this week and directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson. James is Percival Everett’s retelling of Mark Twain’s 1884 novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, narrated by the enslaved Jim. The Wallace collection spotlights Ranjit Singh, the Maharaja ...  Show more

This week, Meghan talks with legal scholar, former law professor, and legendary free speech advocate Nadine Strossen.

Nadine was president of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1991 to 2008 and she's the author of many books, including Defending Pornography, which ...

Reginald Dwayne Betts spent more than eight years in prison. Today he's a Yale Law graduate, a MacArthur Fellow, and a poet. His nonprofit works to build libraries in prisons so that more incarcerated people can find hope.