The University of Impossible-to-Get-Into...

How did a freshly looted Egyptian antiquity end up in the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Why did it take Kim Kardashian to crack the case? And how much of what you see in any museum is stolen? (Part 1 of “Stealing Art Is Easy. Giving It Back Is Hard,” first published in 2023.) SOURC ... Show More

Angela Buchdahl was the first Asian American to be ordained as a rabbi, and now she is among the most influential rabbis in the world. She and Stephen Dubner talk about boundary-crossing, the aftermath of October 7, and whether you can be a good Jew without believing in God. If y ... Show More

Former S.E.C. chair Gary Gensler has had a front-row seat to numerous financial booms and busts. How does he feel about America’s massive bet on A.I.? “Something has to give.” SOURCES: Gary Gensler, professor of the practice of global economics, management, and finance at M.I.T. ... Show More

Why are "good colleges" often the ones that accept the fewest students? Exposing the harmful consequences of society's obsession with highly rejective (and expensive) universities, educator Cecilia M. Orphan asks us to rethink what makes institutions "prestigious" and consider di ... Show More

Sam Harris speaks with Michael Roth about the state of higher education in the U.S. They discuss whether concerns about wokeness were overblown, how colleges should handle campus protests, where universities should draw the line on extreme political views, DEI, why Jews should be ... Show More

It’s that time of the year when students typically descend upon university campuses around the country — moving into dorm rooms, filling up stadiums, cramming into classrooms and swelling small towns to capacity. Unfortunately, that is not the college scene this year. After the c ... Show More

 We are living in an age of fascism where you have political leaders who disregard democratic process and are going full steam ahead in shaping the world the way they want it to look like. And this world includes a depleted higher education sector that they see as enemy number on ... Show More

Can universities make their sums work?   As students nervously receive their A-level results, many of the universities they'll enrol in are facing their own concerns over what's next...       Academics have warned that years of underfunding and a lack of lucrative international s ... Show More

More and more Americans feel like college isn’t a good deal anymore. One state thinks it’s found a way to turn things around. This episode was reported and produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Matt Collette with help from Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard with help from ... Show More