In the time of COVID social-distancing, loneliness is all around us. Julianne Holt-Lunstad explains how isolation can make the pandemic worse, and how good relationships can protect our health.
The famed actress and activist says she’s learned a lot from getting arrested at her own climate rallies in D.C. last year. She fills us in on the need to address injustice while we fight global warming, how the COVID pandemic has changed her activism, and how individuals can step up when governments fail them.
Jacqueline Faherty from the American Museum of Natural History explains the mysteries of brown dwarfs — bigger than planets, smaller than stars — and reveals how she's improving STEM by making it more diverse.
What type of test should you get, and when? How much can you trust the results? And could rapid screening tests really help us reopen businesses and schools?
Eric Haseltine reveals how he used neuroscience to create best-selling toys and to protect U.S. troops from roadside explosives. He also shares some tips to help you (yes, you!) fix your suboptimal behaviors.
You'd never fall for a conspiracy theory, right? Yeah, keep telling yourself that. Psychologist Rob Brotherton explores the history of conspiracy theories — including a famous fake-news scare that was itself fake news — and explains why it's so hard to avoid them.
More than 99 percent of people who get COVID-19 recover. But many unknown chronic effects may await those people all the same.
It’s the most famous mass extinction of all time, but we’re only just starting to understand the impact that killed the (ancient) dinosaurs. Geophysicist Joanna Morgan takes us to the crater to imagine the day the asteroid hit and the nightmarish aftermath.
She’s famous for her science fiction movies (the “Star Wars” prequels, Thor , Annihilation ), but hard science runs through Natalie Portman’s veins. We discuss her early research in chemistry and psychology, her environmental activism, and her strategies to keep her kids’ curiosity alive during the pandemic.
Arne Duncan — former Secretary of Education under President Obama — walks us through what needs to be done for schools to reopen safely in the fall.
For decades, William McDonough has been leading the movement toward sustainable architecture. His goal is to create a garbage-free society through what he calls “cradle to cradle” design.
There are just eight species of bear on Earth — and when they do well, we do well, according to conservation ecologist Chris Morgan, host of The Wild .
Dr. Arturo Casadevall has been promoting “convalescent plasma” as a treatment for disease since before the pandemic took hold in the U.S. He explains what it is, how it helps with COVID-19, and why we need much, much more.
Nathan Myhrvold, the company's former Chief Technology Officer, has a plan to rebuild the electrical grid, re-engineer the climate, and ... make a scientifically perfect pizza.
Psychologist Angela Duckworth studies the ways some people muster grit — passion and perseverance — to overcome adversity. She joins Bill and Corey to answer your questions about how the same psychological techniques could change your own behavior ... for good.
Dr. Celine Gounder returns with wisdom gained from four months behind her personal protective equipment.
Randall Munroe, creator of the sciency webcomic, offers ridiculously complex ways to do simple things and indulges all our scientific “what-ifs.”
Erich Jarvis studies songbirds to understand how humans evolved speech. Along the way, he’s made discoveries about why we stutter, which animals can dance, and how to thrive as an underrepresented minority scientist. His research can be seen in the Netflix docuseries Babies .
It seems like every day brings a different prediction for how bad this pandemic will get. We set out to find what the data really say.
How we can help bring about the best-case scenario for the future of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci.
In most cases, the danger of transmitting COVID-19 makes avoiding large gatherings a no-brainer. Could the social changes the protestors are demanding lead to long-term health benefits that are worth the short-term risks?
If we want to achieve herd immunity to COVID-19, is the shortcut just to mingle without wearing masks, get a lot of us sick — and let a lot of people die?
The world is going to need billions and billions of vaccines. Who will make them, and where will they come from?
A key to staying safe from COVID-19 is contact tracing — breaking the chain of transmission from person to person. Kelly Driscoll, head of the Community Tracing Collaborative in Massachusetts, explains how contact tracing works and what it can do to block the spread of the virus.
We are definitely not out of the woods yet with COVID-19, but communities across the world have either eased their lockdowns already or are planning to do so within the next few weeks. Michael Osterholm, a professor of public health advising the state of New York on its reopening plan, explains how this pandemic will play out.
This isn’t the first pandemic humanity has faced. From the black death to Spanish flu, from AIDS to Ebola; we’ve been here before. But historian Mark Honigsbaum, author of The Pandemic Century , says that the complacency and hubris of scientific experts keep preventing us from learning from the past.
Researchers are moving at unprecedented speed, but they’re still struggling to understand this pandemic. What does the novel coronavirus do to our bodies? Virologist Dr. Angela Rasmussen answers questions about what happens when we get COVID-19, the role immunity and how small scientific discoveries will be the key to understanding this disease.
The hunt to find antiviral drugs has pressed on as we await a vaccine. Remdesivier is the latest treatment that has been touted to help patients suffering from COVID-19. But does this and other antiviral drugs really help cure patients? Scientist Derek Angus helps answer this and understand what role Antiviral drugs play in our community.
David Wallace-Wells has rung the alarm about climate change in the pages of New York Magazine and his book, The Uninhabitable Earth . Now he’s trained his sights on our latest all-encompassing challenge, covid19. Wallace-Wells tells us why climate change and pandemics are related, and he’ll examine humanity’s ability to solve existential crises.
There are billions and billions of planets out there. What could they be like? Could any of them be alive? Exoplanet-hunter and undergraduate MIT student Charlotte Minsky is helping to vet discoveries of possible planets outside our solar system. She tells us what she finds, and how she finds them.
