Evicted: Profit and Poverty in the American City by Matthew Desmond
The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford
The Big Short by Michael Lewis (or many of his other books)
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil Degrasse Tyson
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
Cosmos by Carl Sagan
The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic - And How It Changed Science Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson (audiobook available on Hoopla)
The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum (audiobook available on Hoopla)
Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Inequality by Cathy O’Neil
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
Malcolm Gladwell’s books: Outliers, The Tipping Point, Talking to Strangers, David & Goliath, etc.
Articles from news websites, online scholarly journals, etc.
Longer articles from sources such as The Atlantic or The New Yorker or Time Magazine
Listen
Podcasts
Floodlines by The Atlantic
Freakanomics Radioby Steven Dubner
Invisibilia by NPR
Jolted by VT Public Radio
The Lifehack Show
Marketplace from NPR
More Perfect by RadioLab and WNYC
Ologies by Allie Ward
Outlandish by The U.S. Forest Service
Patient Zero: Lyme Disease by NH Public Radio
Planet Money from NPR
RadioLab by WNYC Studios
Serial by This American Life
Stranglehold by NH Public Radio
The Sound of Economics by Bruegel
The Story Collider
Techathlon by Popular Science
This Podcast Will Kill You
The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week by the Editors at Popular Science
Who Makes Cents
It Was Said
Watch
Movies
Just Mercy (2019 movie)
Snowpiercer (2013 film or 2020 TV show)
On Streaming Services
Kanopy is a free streaming service accessible through your library card. They add a good rotation of documentaries to their service, and instructions for accessing it are in the next tab of this website.
The National Parks: America’s Best Idea docu-series by Ken Burns (Amazon Prime)
Our Planet (Netflix Documentary available for free on Netflix YouTube)
Chasing Coral (Netflix 2017)
Planet Earth or any of the other BBC Nature series (Discovery+)
Performances such as Shakespeare on the Common (be on the lookout-The Hanover Theater did a similar event in Worcester last summer)
Any other cultural experiences new to you/outside your comfort zone, such as attending an orchestra concert or theater production when you’ve never been before