Rob Dunn, professor of applied ecology at North Carolina State University joins us to talk about why we prefer cooked food, the various ways we taste, and how our pursuit of a good meal might’ve led to starting the first fire.
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How Facebook A.I. Enables Misinformation
Karen Hao, senior artificial intelligence reporter with MIT Technology Review, joins us to talk about her profile of Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, who built Facebook’s wildly successful AI platform only to later struggle with the reality that he can’t tame the monster he created.
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It’s Time To Renovate How We Build Houses
Diana Lind is a housing fellow at the global nonprofit NewCities, and she joins us to talk about rethinking how and where we live, why homeownership shouldn’t be the most prominent way to create wealth, and how to find new ways to create community.
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Fatphobia And Covid Risk
Virginia Sole-Smith, a journalist and author of The Eating Instinct, joins us to talk about weight stigma in scientific research and subpar medical treatment attached to high BMI.
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Relax Late Bloomers, You’ll Be Fine
Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard counts himself among the group of “late bloomers”, and he joins us to talk about the scientific explanation for why so many of us make something of ourselves later in life.
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When Helping A Patient Means Ending Their Life
Katie Engelhart is a fellow at New America, and she joins us to talk about the doctors who assist patients with their own deaths and the tightrope they walk in doing so.
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Your Brain On Autopilot
This hour, we’ll talk with a sleep expert about how the mind uses dreaming to process day-to-day events and prepare us for the future; we’ll learn how seeing “ghosts” might actually be a by-product of processing grief; and we’ll explore ways to cultivate the mind in order to achieve peak performance.
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You’re Lying To Yourself – And That’s A Good Thing
Shankar Vedantam, host of NPR’s “Hidden Brain,” joins us to talk about the myriad ways we lie to ourselves on a daily basis and how that might actually help lead to a much happier life.
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Why Scientists Experiment With Demons (Yes, Really)
Jimena Canales of the University of Illinois joins us to talk about the scientific thought process of some of the world’s most brilliant minds, a wild journey into imagination, fear, and theory to make the impossible, possible.
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Your Ancestors Were Not Helicopter Parents
Michaeleen Doucleff, correspondent for NPR’s Science Desk, joins us to discuss her journeys with her daughter, from the Arctic to the Yucatan, to understand parenting best practices around the world and why American parents may be getting it all wrong.
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Can Hospitals Survive Covid?
Vivian Ho is James A. Baker III Institute Chair in Health Economics and director of the Center for Health and Biosciences at Rice University, and she joins us to talk about the knock-on effects of the pandemic, from possible health-care bankruptcies to staffing issues, that hospitals are bracing for after the storm.
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Why Is It Taking So Long To Get Your Covid Shot?
Kaiser Health News correspondent Rachana Pradhan joins us to explain the very complicated process of producing these vaccines – a process money or even executive orders can only do so much to speed up.
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