Over time, the meaning of words often changes. The history of these changes suggests they're inevitable and that some of us (like our host) could be a little more relaxed about it and a little less peevish.
Older people, says Mo Rocca, have better stories. And he tells many of them – stories of people as different as Colonel Sanders and Henri Matisse – in his new book Roctogenarians – older people who even in their 90s have achieved great things.
Alan and Executive Producer Graham Chedd chat about and play excerpts from Alan's conversations with some of the guests in the new season, beginning next week. Guests include author Roger Rosenblatt, word maven Anne Curzan, and TV and radio personality Mo Rocca.
Most creatures play– even octopuses, pigs, crows and bees. But play is much more than fun and games. Play teaches life skills and empathy – even morality. And it may help shape evolution. Want to play?
An astrophysicist brings the universe down to earth. In brief captivating videos she tells the stories of how everything our world is made of – including ourselves – was created in cataclysmic explosions and collisions far out in space.
When we experience things that seem beyond explanation, are they evidence of the supernatural? Or instead, a quirk of our brains? A skeptical but open-minded psychologist has some entertaining answers.
Sharing her experiences of three space missions – including 159 days as the only woman on the 6-person crew of the International Space Station – Cady Coleman also shares lessons about getting along:valuable insights for the rest of us down here on earth.
Alan and the author of a new book called Supercommunicators share their thoughts on what makes a great conversation. The result? A great conversation!
The world of the very small is very different from the one we are familiar with. (Gold for instance turns red.) Chad Mirkin and Robert Langer’s skills in crafting this bizarre micro-world into medical breakthroughs earned them the 2024 Kavli Prize in nanotechnology.
He is searching space for planets that are something like ours. She is searching brains to discover how we recognize things. They are both 2024 Kavli laureates – Charbonneau awarded the prize for astrophysics, Tsao for neuroscience.
That was the question two determined astronomers set out to answer. A frustrating five-year search revealed that Pluto, long thought to be a small, lonely planet on the outer fringes of the solar system, is in fact part of a huge ring of debris left over from the solar system’s birth.
Between them these two neuroscientists changed the way we think of our brains. Their insights are now opening new ways to tackle the problems our brains face as they age, including neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
Once sworn enemies in TV appearances and on social media, Fred Guttenberg and Joe Walsh got together privately and realized there is much that unites them. They are now on a tour of college campuses hoping to share their success in bridge-building with others divided by hate.
Aboard his 100 ft sailboat, the geneticist famed for his work deciphering human genes spent 15 years sailing the world’s oceans, discovering millions of unknown genes in the microbes that live there – genes that could lead to new sources of energy, food and medicine.
After a successful career as an award-winning magazine editor, Adam Moss decided to put it all aside to pursue a passion for painting. He became pretty good; but something was missing. His struggle to understand what that something was led him to his new book, The Work of Art.
Should we be planning to establish settlements on the moon and Mars? To many, including a couple of billionaires, the idea has become almost an obsession. An unlikely husband and wife duo has spent years digging deeply into plans to colonize space. Their conclusion: not so fast.
We exist because of the moon. Rebecca Boyle relates the amazing story of how the moon, born of a cataclysmic collision with an infant earth, has shaped our history, our evolution, and even our very existence.
Her new book tracks the momentous events of the 1960s when her husband, Dick Goodwin, worked closely with both JFK and LBJ, and Doris worked with LBJ, as the two very different presidents shaped the future.
Alan and Executive Producer Graham Chedd chat about and play excerpts from Alan's conversations with some of the guests in the new season, beginning next week. Guests include newspaper editor Adam Moss; science journalist Rebecca Boyle; and writers Kelly and Zach Weinersmith.
Stephen Dubner, host of Freakonomics Radio, has long been fascinated by the great physicist Richard Feynman. As has Alan. Stephen has devoted a year to making a remarkable podcast series on Feynman, and Alan has played Feynman on the stage for a year. They compare notes on what they’ve come to learn about him.
In this special episode of Clear and Vivid we reflect on Frans’ life-long commitment to revealing how much we humans have in common with our primate cousins.
When interpreting the Constitution, the dangers of relying solely on the words and what they meant at the time, without taking into account the purpose and values expressed in those words.
A leading physicist herself, Shohini Ghose has wonderful stories about the trials and triumphs of the many mostly unsung women whose work helped open up the universe.
We can get used to things to the point where even something we once thought wonderful can lose its luster. More sinister, we can also get used to the drip, drip of falsehoods till we become dulled to their danger. How to overcome habituation, and even take advantage of it.
The intriguing stories behind the often weird and baffling origins of punctuation and other symbols we use to communicate. And it’s not just commas, colons and periods. There are pilcrows, octothorps, interrobangs and a whole menagerie more.
The Irondale Ensemble Project, a theater company rooted in improvisation, created a program to help police and community build trust and mutual understanding through theater games.
You may think you were free to choose that chocolate ice cream over the vanilla. But maybe the choice was made for you before you were even born – that the free will you believe you are exercising in your everyday decisions is an illusion.
And what a book it is, a rich sprawling novel called The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece, which Tom himself describes as a “primer on the long slog of bringing an idea from somebody’s head to a theater near you.”
Why can’t AI bots be made to be good, to be moral, so they’ll help us and not do harmful or terrible things? But just whose moral values would we want them to have? And what if they become too moral?
He was for many years the CEO of Google where he had a bird’s eye view of the dramatic evolution of artificial intelligence. And while he is alarmed by the many dangers of AI, especially its ability to create fake people in this election year, he is also enthusiastic about the huge opportunities he sees for AI benefitting medicine, education and the tackling of global problems like climate change.
