Disrupted

The way people approach children’s books in the U.S. has changed a lot over time.

Philosopher John Locke helped popularize the idea that learning to read should be fun with his 1693 treatise Some Thoughts Concerning Education.

Fast forward 300 years and television series continued Locke’s legacy. Today's adults might remember the joy of reading being touted to young people through shows like Ar...

Studying oysters can help us understand how Connecticut’s shoreline is changing. Studying lizards can help us understand the history of life on our planet. Biologists research living organisms. And in doing so, they help us understand not only ourselves, but also the way our lives are intertwined with those of every other species.

This hour— Connecticut biologists tell us how their work helps u...

For students and families, navigating the world of higher education isn’t easy. Some of the challenges, like student loan debt, have been going on for years. Other challenges come from more recent changes in how the federal government approaches universities.

To explore these challenges, we're talking to John Maduko, who was appointed Interim Chancellor of the Connecticut State Colleges and Universit...

Being the first person to do something isn’t easy. There’s no blueprint for what you are doing, no conventional wisdom to fall back on when all else fails. There is also the pressure of expectations and all the people who are counting on your success. But it’s a way to show people what is possible. Being first means being a pioneer. And here in Connecticut, people are pioneering a wide ra...

When Tracy K. Smith served as Poet Laureate of the United States, she used her platform to bring people together. In 2018, she traveled the country for a series called American Conversations: Celebrating Poems in Rural Communities. At these events, she encouraged people to share their thoughts, regardless of their background. While Tracy’s two terms as poet laureate ended in 2019, she is still using ...

In Unrig the Game: What Women of Color Can Teach Everyone About Winning, author Vanessa Priya Daniel writes about the challenges that women of color face. She includes a satirical section formatted like a job description, where she details the duties of women of color leaders. They include “Be likable at all costs,” “Work with zero margin of error” and “Be a willing screen ont...

The United Nations General Assembly is celebrating the 80th anniversary of its founding this month. This hour we look at the status of the organization today, and the challenges it faces.

Plus, historian Thant Myint-U has a new book out about his grandfather, U Thant, who was the UN’s first non-European secretary-general, and a leading ambassador of peace during the Cold War. Myint-U joins us to talk...

This hour, we’re talking to a journalist and a member of the Biden administration to try to understand both sides of the press briefing podium.

CNN Senior Writer Matthew Vann tells us about how D.C. journalists are covering the current presidential administration. And former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre's new book is Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party...

For decades, legendary author, TV host, instructor and chef Jacques Pépin has spread his love for cooking across the world. He’s cooked for heads of state and on numerous public television shows, appearing alongside Julia Child in Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home. He’s also Executive Chairman of The Jacques Pépin Foundation. The foundation supports culinary training for adults wh...

From COVID-19 to protests to legal battles with the federal government, college and university leaders have been in the spotlight a lot in the last five years. Because of that attention, if we want to understand the news, we need to understand higher education.

Disrupted first aired five years ago this week. Thank you to our listeners for returning week after week and making these five years possible.

GUES...

For Black Americans, following the news can be a psychological challenge. 4 in 5 Black adults say they see or hear racist or racially insensitive coverage about Black people at least sometimes. That’s according to a 2023 Pew Research survey.

And coverage can be hard to watch even if it isn’t insensitive. While news about violence against Black people is important for communities to know, it can...

Being the first person to do something isn’t easy. There’s no blueprint for what you are doing, no conventional wisdom to fall back on when all else fails. There is also the pressure of expectations and all the people who are counting on your success. But it’s a way to show people what is possible. Being first means being a pioneer. And here in Connecticut, people are pioneering a wide ra...

Oral history preserves the past by recording people’s real voices. It’s not just about recording the stories people tell. It’s also about the way they tell them. Oral history is about memory and humanity. It’s a form of history that anyone can be a part of.

This hour, we’re returning to our conversations with two Connecticut residents about the stories they have preserved thro...

For years, Dr. Jonathan Metzl thought about gun violence as a public health issue. His approach treated it like an epidemic and treated guns as a health risk. But as he studied a mass shooting that happened near where he lives in Nashville, he realized he had been missing something crucial for years— the cultural power of guns. This hour, as we reflect on the gun violence that has shaken the U.S. in ...

According to Amnesty International, 15 countries used the death penalty in 2024. The United States was one of those countries. Capital punishment is illegal in 23 states and isn’t used in some of the states where it is legal. But the United States still executed 25 people last year.

We’ve surpassed that number already in 2025.

Capital punishment can be a contentious topic. And it’s a...

Listening to the news, it feels like there are more natural disasters than ever. This hour, as we reflect on 20 years since Hurricane Katrina, we return to conversations about why flooding and droughts are becoming so common and how the word "disaster" affects the way we view an event. First, Connecticut State Historian Andy Horowitz explains why understanding disasters involves looking at the decisions pe...

When people think of craft, certain images might come to mind, like knitting in a rocking chair by a warm fireplace. People often think of it as a quiet, solitary activity— one that doesn’t make much of a public statement. But crafts like knitting can be radical. The rocking chair by the fireplace isn’t just quiet and solitary— it can also be a site of real political change.

This ho...

Black Americans make up close to 14 percent of the US population. But only about three percent of U.S. businesses are Black-owned. That’s according to the 2023 Annual Business Survey, which is conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics.

August is National Black Business Month, so we are spotlighting some of the Black entrepreneurs right here in ...

On August 6th, 1945, the United States’ military dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima in Japan. Three days later, they dropped another bomb, this time on Nagasaki. According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, estimates of people killed by these bombs range from around one hundred thousand to more than two hundred thousand.

And the impact of the bombs isn’t limited to the peopl...