Elise Hu: The Beauty Ideal

Whether you love or hate fashion, we all have to get dressed in the morning. And the industry affects us in complex ways. This hour, the outrageous, environmental and seedy sides of fashion. Guests include designer Machine Dazzle, supply chain expert Aparna Mehta, journalist Aman ... Show More

A second glance can change everything. This hour, TED speakers will make you think twice about robots, history lessons and even wine bottles. Guests include artists Agnieszka Pilat and Tavares Strachan, chemical engineer Franziska Trautmann and musician Mike Posner. TED Radio Hou ... Show More

From the bugs in our backyards to prehistoric reptiles, animal biology and behavior are full of puzzles and conundrums. On this episode, we hear from experts solving the mysteries of the animal kingdom. Original broadcast date: July 14, 2023.Guests include paleontologist Dean Lom ... Show More

Humans have always been captivated by beauty, and for almost as long, we've been marketed products and new technologies to help us achieve certain beauty standards. Elise Hu is a journalist and the author of "Flawless: Lessons in looks and culture from the K-beauty industry." In ... Show More

This time of year, folks are being inundated with messages about how to become more beautiful. But beauty is an ever-changing goalpost that has everything do with race, class and power. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy 

“Beauty isn’t all about just niceness, loveliness. Beauty is about more rounded, substantial becoming.” Beloved Irish poet John O’Donohue on beauty’s true grit, and finding it in the transformational edges of our daily lives. Find more at onbeing.org/becoming-wise. 

The value society places on physical appearance has never quite made sense to blind presenter Lyndall Bywater and yet she's intrigued to discover why it matters so much to those of us in the sighted world. How much of an advantage is it to be beautiful? And what is physical beaut ... Show More

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss beauty and its qualities."Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."That was John Keats' emphatic finale to his Ode on a Grecian Urn. It seems to express Plato's theory of aesthetics, his idea that an a ... Show More

When NPR host Elise Hu moved to South Korea to be an international correspondent, she ended up getting a crash course on Korean beauty and the country's billion-dollar cosmetics industry. She explains the rise of the industry, its appeal, and the high standards it sets for appear ... Show More

Big beauty has spent well over a century using fear-mongering to marketing its products to us. Even if today it is more sophisticated in its methods and use of media, the mainstream industry is still telling us we are not good enough or beautiful enough. In effect, it is telling ... Show More

These days, beauty is a moral imperative, an ideal to live by, and one according to which we judge ourselves and others. As a result, we increasingly shape our identities around our bodies – and not just our actual bodies with their lumps and bumps, but our imaginary future bodie ... Show More