“Laïcité,” or secularism, the principle that separates religion from the state in France, has long provoked heated dispute in the country. It has intensified recently, when a teacher, Samuel Paty, was beheaded after showing his class caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
We look at the roots of secularism and ask whether it works in modern, multicultural Fran ... Show More
Yesterday
Why the Ebola Outbreak Has Been Nearly Impossible to Stop
At the front lines of the Ebola crisis in Central Africa, badly equipped health workers with little outside support are losing the fight against one of the worst outbreaks in history. Declan Walsh, a New York Times correspondent covering the outbreak, takes us to the epicenter of ... Show More
30m 32s
Jun 2
How Elon Musk Engineered the World’s Biggest I.P.O.
SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite maker, is set to go public and begin selling shares as soon as next week. Ryan Mac, who reports on business, explains the plan for the company’s expected record-shattering debut on the stock market, and how it is changing the rules for inv ... Show More
30m 37s
Jun 1
Inside Trump’s Mad Dash to Renovate Washington
In the lead-up to America’s 250th anniversary, President Trump is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a major renovation of the nation’s capitol. David A. Fahrenthold, who has been investigating how the projects have come together, takes listeners on a walking tour of the ... Show More
36m 31s
Nov 2020
French secularism and the resurgence of terror
<p>Over the last few weeks, Islamist terror attacks in France, and then Austria shook Europe, and the world. In response, the UK has also raised its terror threat level to "severe". But the French President Emmanuel Macron's response to the attacks has sent ripples ... Show More
30m 7s
Oct 2020
Danielle Haque, “Interrogating Secularism: Race and Religion in Arab Transnational Art and Literature” (Syracuse UP, 2019)
In many popular accounts of contemporary “Western” society there is an inherent contradiction between the principles underlying liberal secularism and Islam. This type of binary discourse about “religion” and “secular” naturalizes these differences and promotes the seeming rigidi ... Show More
56m 8s