Reading Time: 2 minutes A documentary on how rising real estate prices destroyed a tiny rock club that was more like a nightly happening, the kind of authentic creative endeavor that draws us to places such as New York.
Reading Time: 4 minutes A quiet movement aims to turn public universities into career mills, while transforming students into customers and professors into service deliverers.
Reading Time: 4 minutes For Memorial Day, we present paintings and other works of art from the last two centuries that express the horrors of war. (First published May 26, 2014)
Reading Time: < 1 minute In honor of JFK’s 99th birthday and Donald Trump clinching the Republican nomination, we envisioned what a debate between the two might look like.
Reading Time: 3 minutes When former pro footballer Steve Gleason learned he had a particularly horrible illness, he also found he was going to have a son. His story, in this documentary.
Reading Time: 3 minutes This year marks the 50th anniversary of the University of Texas Tower shootings. A creative new documentary brings the larger story to life.
Reading Time: 12 minutes Ed Curtin honors the extraordinary life of his friend, anti-war activist Daniel Berrigan, a deeply courageous man who was also magical, and full of surprises.
Reading Time: 2 minutes A documentary about some surprising people in our midst.
Reading Time: 4 minutes When WhoWhatWhy finally got around to attending the cultural extravaganza called South by Southwest, we were intrigued to see what’s driving the zeitgeist. We were a bit surprised at what we found.
Reading Time: 7 minutes Are you in pain from the IRS? Well, you’re in good company. Check out what these characters have to say about paying taxes — Al Capone, Albert Einstein, Dave Barry, Mark Twain, Mae West, and many others.
Reading Time: 3 minutes The NRA argues that keeping weaponized anthrax out of the hands of law-abiding Americans is a violation of the Second Amendment. Now it is doing something about it.
Reading Time: 3 minutes Dangerous new virus crosses the human-computer barrier. Are you at risk?
Reading Time: 3 minutes A surprising number of people actually claim that the entire mass shooting event at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was fabricated. They’re dangerously wrong — and this documentary proves it, while bringing some of the children back to life, if only for a moment.
Reading Time: 4 minutes How festival programmers choose which films to feature tells us a lot about tolerance (or lack thereof) for Deep Politics
Reading Time: 9 minutes In honor of Martin Luther King Day, WhoWhatWhy presents — through a fascinating collection of pictures — a brief history of American racism, a look at the kind of hatred, atrocities, and soul-searing humiliation that spurred King into action. Rather than the stuff of dreams, much of it was a living nightmare. We first published this piece in 2015, but it remains more relevant than ever — because we seem to be going backwards. We want you to see, with your own eyes, just how ugly it can get.
Reading Time: 2 minutes More than 80,000 US prisoners are held in solitary confinement. This video documents one man’s effort to trigger a change and give prisoners another chance.
Reading Time: 4 minutes Here’s a sampling of what we accomplished in 2015 —
with your help. It shows the power we all have, when we choose to exercise it. Exciting stuff!
Reading Time: 2 minutes What do you get somebody who has everything? Maybe the answer is… you don’t get anything for them at all. Instead, in their name, you could get something for….everybody. Here are a few of the more interesting from among untold good causes.
Reading Time: 8 minutes Scatter fairy dust with one-of-a-kind gifts that change lives: a job resumé secretly created with the help of a head-hunter; one lesson — guitar, surfing, photography, whatever — with a real pro; spooky gadgets from the Spy Store; toys for regressing adults, and more!
Reading Time: 2 minutes For Thanksgiving, King Donald invited the other Republican presidential hopefuls to a feast. And they acted pretty much true to form.