Richard Grinker, professor of anthropology and international affairs at George Washington University, joins us to talk about how we are on the cusp of accepting a spectrum of neurodiversity and why it’s taken so long to shed stigma.
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How A Girl Becomes A Woman
Melissa Febos joins us to talk about the flawed ways we ask children to shape their identities from puberty and her own coming-of-age story as she worked to find her voice and set boundaries.
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What Your Voice Says About You
New Yorker staff writer John Colapinto joins us to talk about the experience of losing his voice and how it led him to look into how the sounds we create are so integral to our identity.
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When Mom Left, Thank God For Grandma
Danielle Henderson, TV writer and cohost of the film podcast “I Saw What You Did,” joins us to discuss her experience being raised by her grandmother after her mother abandoned her – and about how her love of horror movies taught her to have faith in herself.
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Texas Cities Can’t Keep Frackers Out
Elizabeth Shogren, climate change reporter, joins us to discuss the tens of thousands of school-age children who are within half a mile of active wells and why city officials are pushing back against laws that prioritize drilling permits.
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The Tension Between Public Health and Individual Liberty
Ed Yong received a Pulitzer Prize for his Covid coverage in The Atlantic, and he joins us to talk about how the pandemic is forcing the CDC to rethink its mission as it struggles to protect the greater good in an era of unchecked individualism.
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The Boy Who Survived A Men’s Prison
Ian Manuel joins us to discuss his crime, his quest for forgiveness, and why, he believes, we should not judge an entire life based on one’s worst day.
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Your Personality Isn’t Set In Stone
Christian Jarrett, a cognitive neuroscientist and deputy editor of Psyche, joins us to talk about the five types of personalities and how we can become a better version of our current selves.
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What Does A Depressed Brain Look Like?
Simon Lewsen joins us to discuss why researchers looking into the origins and biology of depression have such a hard time collecting complete data to build a brain modeling system to help diagnose disease.
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The Unintended Consequences Of Vaping
Health and science journalist Laura Beil joins us to talk about how a pair of graduate students created the Juul vape pen in hopes to end smoking. Instead, they created another health hazard more attractive to teenagers than the one they were trying to end.
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Imagine If Every Weekend Was A Three-Day Weekend
Joe Pinsker, staff writer for The Atlantic, joins us to discuss why productivity needn’t rely on a traditional five days of work — and how some companies have cut office hours and found a boost in output and morale.
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The Link Between Opioids And Alzheimer’s
Science journalist Lauren Aguirre joins us to talk about the amnesia opioid addicts sometimes suffer from, new breakthroughs in understanding Alzheimer’s, and her own experience with temporary memory loss.
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