The Laff Box

What started as Emily Nussbaum’s “guilty pleasure” of watching Big Brother became a deeper dive into the world of reality TV, leading to her book, Cue the Sun: The Invention of Reality TV. From its ea...

24 Sep 202435min

This is the ninth official episode, breaking down the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Power Broker by our hero Robert Caro. This week, Roman Mars and Elliott Kalan sit down with Majora Carter, a...

20 Sep 20242h 32min

Karen MacDonough had paid her mortgage for years, raised her family, and lived a quiet life in her Quincy, Massachusetts home—until one day, a group of strangers appeared on her lawn, claiming her hou...

17 Sep 202433min

Once considered the most dangerous city in the world due to drug cartel violence, by the early 2000s Medellin had reinvented itself. But gentrification is allowing criminal gangs to reap large profits...

10 Sep 202433min

The impacts of climate disasters are often measured in terms of property damage. But in places like Phoenix, Arizona, and in hot places all over the world, climate change is wreaking a very different ...

6 Sep 202441min

Most of the stories in this series have been about places that are ill-prepared for the extreme weather that is coming their way. But this story is about a place that managed to get the kind of infras...

3 Sep 202448min

All across the country thousands of people are living in locations that regularly flood, and many of these places will only get more flood-prone as the climate continues to change. Residents who live ...

30 Aug 202448min

Insurance companies are not climate activists, but they know more about climate risk than just about anyone. And as storms get more extreme and unpredictable a lot of insurers are running the numbers ...

27 Aug 202449min