Plot Synopsis

Hosted by Jim Cotter, THE ARTICULATE HOUR is a three-part documentary series that brings together artists, scholars, and other great creative thinkers to explore the big ideas that shape our world. Each one-hour episode examines a single topic through a lens of arts, culture, and science, showing not only the different perspectives that each angle provides, but also the overlap where our lives actually take place. Plus, Cotter talks with poets, musicians, neuroscientists, dancers, historians, playwrights, and others about how we live our lives and navigate our complex world. Conversations with the show's guests lead to unexpected insights into our common humanity from evolutionary adaptations in our brains and the way we make music, to how we think about our past. These inclusive discussions surprise and delight as they reveal the broad ties that unite us in an often-fractious world. The three episodes are:

"Partial Recall" (Friday, May 5, 2023 at 9pm ET): Memory is the amazing ability of our brains to store and access skills, information, and emotions. Artists and scholars discuss the reliability of our recall and the surprising ways our memories fuel creativity. Notable guests include Simone Dinnerstein, pianist; Ben Folds, singer-songwriter; Lisa Genova, neuroscientist and novelist; Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize-winning psychologist; and Gregory Pardlo, poet and Pulitzer Prize-winner.

"Together/Alone" (Premieres Friday, May 5, 2023 at 10pm ET): As modern humans, we crave both connection to others and our own solitude. Artists, scholars, and other great creative thinkers explore these contrasting impulses. In the second episode, Mahzarin Banaji, Harvard professor and psychologist; Lee Child, best-selling author; Sebastian Junger, filmmaker and journalist; and Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi, folk musicians, join host Jim Cotter.

"Marking Time" (Premieres Friday, June 30, 2023 at 10pm ET): So much of human behavior is governed by our sense of time, yet questions about time's fundamental nature remain unanswered. Artists and experts -- Valerie June, singer-songwriter; Lera Boroditsky, cognitive scientist; Akram Khan, dancer and choreographer; David Henkin, historian; Helene Grimaud, pianist; Rasheedah Phillips, interdisciplinary artist; Satchin Panda, biologist; Christopher Deviney, percussionist; Angela Zator Nelson, percussionist; and Dean Buonomano, neuroscientist -- discuss the tension between scientifically measured, socially constructed, and individually perceived time.