Inquiring Minds
461 episodes - English - Latest episode: 10 days ago - ★★★★ - 821 ratingsEach week we bring you a new, in-depth exploration of the space where science and society collide. We’re committed to the idea that making an effort to understand the world around you though science and critical thinking can benefit everyone—and lead to better decisions. We want to find out what’s true, what’s left to discover, and why it all matters.
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Episodes
Capitalizing on The Neurodiversity Edge with Maureen Dunne
April 09, 2024 01:00 - 33 minutes - 30.6 MBGlobally recognized neurodiversity expert, thought leader, and public policy professional and champion, Maureen Dunne, joins Indre today to discuss the evolving perceptions of neurological diversity within our society. Centering their discussion around Maureen's recent publication, The Neurodiversity Edge, they delve into the profound benefits of welcoming neurodivergent individuals into workplaces and educational settings. Bolstered by insights into Gen Z's growing acknowledgment of neurodiv...
Making the Mundane Magic with Dan Winters
March 29, 2024 00:30 - 29 minutes - 20.2 MBIn this latest installment of Inquiring Minds, Indre explores the intricate world of photography with the renowned Dan Winters, whose career spans the realms of celebrity portraiture, scientific documentation, and beyond. Winters' journey from a childhood captivated by the narratives of Star Wars to his status as a National Geographic Explorer and award-winning artist underscores his unique ability to see beyond the lens, using photography to explore the world and connect with subjects on a d...
Why We Die with Venki Ramakrishnan
March 12, 2024 07:00 - 43 minutes - 29.9 MBAmong his many achievements, the esteemed Venki Ramakrishnan has been knighted by Queen Elizabeth, served as the President of the Royal Society, and shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Today, he adds being a special guest on the Inquiring Minds podcast to this impressive list of accomplishments as he joins Indre to tackle the age-old question: Is there a biological limit to human lifespan? Drawing upon information from his latest book, Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest...
“X”-amining the Battle for the Bird with Kurt Wagner
March 04, 2024 08:00 - 39 minutes - 36.1 MBJoin Indre and guest Kurt Wagner, renowned business and technology journalist and author of Battle for the Bird: Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, and the $44 Billion Fight for Twitter's Soul, as they embark on an insightful exploration of Twitter's evolution. From Jack Dorsey's humble beginnings to the platform's global prominence, pivotal themes of visionary leadership and the balance between profit and purpose emerge, offering invaluable insights into the intersection of technology and entrepreneur...
Revealing Why We Remember with Charan Ranganath
February 20, 2024 08:00 - 48 minutes - 33.6 MBWelcome back to Inquiring Minds, where, after a brief hiatus, host Indre Viskontas returns with yet another memorable episode, this time featuring Charan Ranganath, Director of the Memory and Plasticity Program and a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of California at Davis. Over his illustrious career, Dr. Ranganath has received innumerable distinguished awards, edited major neuroscience journals, consulted for neuroscience research funding agencies across the w...
Don’t Panic, but Robert Sapolsky Says There’s No Free Will
October 18, 2023 05:45 - 48 minutes - 44 MBThis week we talk to Robert Sapolsky—MacArthur “Genius” Fellow and professor of biology, neurology, and neurosurgery at Stanford—about his new book Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will.
The Science of Allergies and Why We Have Them
October 12, 2023 01:27 - 44 minutes - 40.7 MBThis week we talk to medical anthropologist and science writer Theresa MacPhail about her new book Allergic: Our Irritated Bodies in a Changing World.
Why It’s Important to Know What’s Actually in Your Clothes
September 26, 2023 09:59 - 36 minutes - 33 MBThis week we talk to journalist and sustainable fashion expert Alden Wicker about her book To Dye For: How Toxic Fashion Is Making Us Sick—and How We Can Fight Back.
How You Could Have Survived History’s Disasters
August 10, 2023 07:12 - 30 minutes - 28.3 MBThis week we talk to writer Cody Cassidy about his new book How to Survive History: How to Outrun a Tyrannosaurus, Escape Pompeii, Get Off the Titanic, and Survive the Rest of History's Deadliest Catastrophes.
How to Stop Your Brain from Falling for Lies
July 21, 2023 07:50 - 45 minutes - 41.3 MBThis week we talk to psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris about their new book Nobody's Fool: Why We Get Taken In and What We Can Do About It.
How Society Created “You”
June 22, 2023 05:29 - 45 minutes - 47.2 MBThis week we talk to social psychologist and Stanford professor Brian Lowery about his new book Selfless: The Social Creation of “You”. In it, he proposes that what you think of as “you” is actually a social construct created by your relationships and affected by every interaction you have.
The Science of Silo with Hugh Howey
June 02, 2023 21:21 - 37 minutes - 34 MBThis week we talk to Hugh Howey, author of the bestselling Silo series of books and executive producer of the new Apple TV+ series of the same name.
Improbable Experiments That Changed the World
May 18, 2023 11:04 - 43 minutes - 39.6 MBThis week we talk to accelerator physicist Suzie Sheehy about her most recent book The Matter of Everything: How Curiosity, Physics, and Improbable Experiments Changed the World.
The Perilous Combination of Brain Wave Data and Generative AI
April 18, 2023 02:30 - 43 minutes - 39.6 MBOn the show this week we talk to Nita A. Farahany, distinguished professor of law and philosophy at Duke University and the founding director of the Duke Initiative for Science & Society, about her new book, "The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology." Many people choose to give up unprecedented levels of privacy in exchange for convenience. So why not give up your brain data too? Is it really that different? While the proposition may seem ...
Everything you need to know about that fusion breakthrough
April 04, 2023 07:20 - 36 minutes - 33.4 MBLast December, a team of scientists made history by creating a fusion reaction that—for the first time ever—gave off more energy that it took to start. It’s a groundbreaking milestone. We talked to two researchers who were part of that team—Sabrina Nagel and Matthias Hohenberger—about what exactly happened, why it’s been decades in the making, and why it’s such a big deal. This is everything you need to know about their team’s fusion breakthrough.
Art can make you live longer
March 22, 2023 05:06 - 42 minutes - 38.6 MBThis week we talk to pioneering art & science researcher Susan Magsamen along with vice president of design for hardware products at Google, Ivy Ross, about their new book Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us. While sometimes considered opposites, art and science are unequivocally linked in ways we’re still figuring out. Not only does our way of thinking and living impact our art, but art also has an impact on how we think and live.
Plants have been listening to us this whole time
March 10, 2023 07:53 - 1 hour - 56.3 MBThis week, with guest co-host Majel Connery, we talk to author and researcher Karen Bakker about her new book The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants. The book explores stories of nonhuman sound and the often overlooked impact our own sound has on the natural world. Plus, things like: What do plants hear? How likely is interspecies communication? Will we one day be able to talk to dolphins? More info on Majel Connery, our guest...
How is it possible that we can’t yet explain consciousness?
March 02, 2023 03:25 - 46 minutes - 42.9 MBThis week we talk to neuroscientist and author Patrick House about his new book Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness. The book explores the complexity of consciousness and how it’s possible that it has thus far eluded explanation. To do so he examines one single study about consciousness nineteen different ways. It’s unorthodox, accessible, and remarkable.
The Science of Why You Fall in Love With Music
December 24, 2022 03:18 - 49 minutes - 45.1 MBThis week we talk to cognitive neuroscientist and multi-platinum record producer Susan Rogers about her new book This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You. In this episode: The science behind how we perceive and process music and how it can affect our emotions and sense of self How our brains develop the ability to process sound and how formal music training can help us become "auditory athletes," or people who can analyze sound on a deeper level The concept of...
The Powerful Ways Secrets Shape Your Life
December 09, 2022 06:15 - 39 minutes - 36.2 MBThis week we talk to behavioral scientist Michael Slepian about secrets: keeping them, telling them, and the powerful ways in which they influence our lives. His new book is The Secret Life of Secrets: How Our Inner Worlds Shape Well-Being, Relationships, and Who We Are.
The Psychology of Getting Conned
November 25, 2022 02:06 - 38 minutes - 35.3 MBThe show this week features an interview with science writer Maria Konnikova about her book The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It . . . Every Time. We recorded this interview back when the book first came in out in 2016, but it is, perhaps depressingly, still as relevant as ever. While it hasn’t always involved pillow salesmen and crypto billionaires, there have always been people trying to con you. So there’s no better time than right now to brush up on all the ways people get conned, the...
Understanding the Biggest Ideas in the Universe Without Being a Physicist
October 31, 2022 13:00 - 28 minutes - 26.5 MBThis week we welcome back theoretical physicist and philosopher Sean Carroll to talk about how his most recent book, The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, and Motion, attempts to bridge the gap between how scientists talk about physics and how they usually go about explaining it to non-scientists. The goal is to help you understand what physicists are talking about—equations and all—without needing to know much more than some algebra.
The Overlooked Gifts of Visual Thinkers with Temple Grandin
October 19, 2022 05:55 - 32 minutes - 30 MBThis week we’re joined by returning guest, animal behavior scientist, and autism rights advocate Temple Grandin to talk about her latest book Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions.
Up to Date | Nanoparticle toothbrushes and a promising Alzheimer's drug
October 10, 2022 18:03 - 25 minutes - 23.3 MBThis week: new research into using nanoparticles and programmable magnets to clean your teeth; a potentially breakthrough study on a drug for Alzheimer's disease featuring the first positive trial ever for a disease of aging; recapping NASA’s recent Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission; and a look into how much control you actually have over what Youtube decides to show you.
These Numbers Explain the Nature of Reality
October 03, 2022 12:00 - 35 minutes - 32.2 MBThis week we talk to theoretical physicist and cosmologist Antonio Padilla about his new book Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them: A Cosmic Quest from Zero to Infinity. It’s a book about nine unusual numbers that, once understood, can help you grasp how the universe actually works—from black holes, to gravity, to the passing of time itself.
The Science of How Your Dog’s Brain Works
September 27, 2022 04:11 - 43 minutes - 39.8 MBThis week we talk to Alexandra Horowitz from the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College about her new book The Year of the Puppy: How Dogs Become Themselves. Horowitz’s book examines how a dog’s brain works and develops—how it dramatically changes during their first 12 months of life, her shifting perspective on dog cognition, and the vast differences between humans and dogs that we tend to overlook. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds
The Neuroscience of What Makes You You
August 10, 2022 14:41 - 41 minutes - 38.5 MBThis week we talk to cognitive neuroscientist Chantel Prat about her new book The Neuroscience of You: How Every Brain is Different and How to Understand Yours. The book is the result of Prat’s decades of work on the biological basis of individual differences in cognition—what makes you you. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds
What do animals dream about?
July 17, 2022 16:23 - 50 minutes - 46.5 MBThis week we talk to philosopher and animal ethicist David Peña-Guzmán about his new book When Animals Dream: The Hidden World of Animal Consciousness. David explores the idea that there really is a subjective world—a dream world—that lights up when animals sleep, what that actually looks like, and its moral implications. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds
The Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion
July 05, 2022 06:02 - 51 minutes - 47.1 MBThis week we’re joined by podcaster, journalist, and author David McRaney to discuss his latest book How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion. It’s a deep look at what we know about what it takes to change someone’s mind and why it’s more complicated than you might think. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds
The language of food, science, and critical thinking with J. Kenji López-Alt
June 29, 2022 05:56 - 57 minutes - 52.9 MBThis week we welcome back James Beard award winning food science writer J. Kenji López-Alt. He talks about growing up around science, studying architecture at MIT, and how, strangely enough, both subjects pertain to cooking. Kenji is the author of the bestselling The Food Lab and the recently released The Wok: Recipes and Techniques. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds
Derek Gow Is Turning His Farm Into an Ark for Lost Species
June 01, 2022 04:27 - 41 minutes - 37.9 MBYou might not be aware of it, but the UK is experiencing a wildlife crisis. Ecologist Derek Gow joins us this week to talk about what we ought to do about it and how he’s trying to rewild the country with his farm-turned-wildlife breeding center. Gow wrote the bestselling Bringing Back the Beaver and will soon release his latest book Birds, Beasts and Bedlam: Turning My Farm into an Ark for Lost Species. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds
Wild but Delicate: What Hawks Can Teach Us About Nature, Life, and Love
May 24, 2022 04:15 - 44 minutes - 40.6 MBOn the show this week we’re joined by naturalist, author, and returning guest Sy Montgomery. Throughout her career, Montgomery has repeatedly shown an incredible ability to understand, befriend, and interact with animals. We last heard from her in episode #128 where she talked about her 2016 book The Soul of an Octopus, but she’s written about everything from tigers to snakes to hummingbirds. In this episode we explore her latest book, where she covers her perhaps most challenging animal yet...
Can Fish Count? What Animals Reveal About Our Uniquely Mathematical Minds
May 17, 2022 02:22 - 42 minutes - 39.4 MBOn the show this week we’re joined by Brian Butterworth, emeritus professor of cognitive neuropsychology and author of the new book Can Fish Count? What Animals Reveal About Our Uniquely Mathematical Minds. He’s spent his career looking at the genetics and neuroscience of mathematical ability—and not just in humans. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds
The Science of Creativity and How It Can Help You
May 03, 2022 07:46 - 48 minutes - 44.4 MBHow do you feel fear and be creative anyway? How is letting your mind wander key to coming up with, and following through on, creative ideas? Returning to the show this week is journalist Matt Richtel, winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for a series on distracted driving, and author of numerous books. His latest book, Inspired: Understanding Creativity: A Journey Through Art, Science, and the Soul, is devoted to a deeper understanding of creativity and he joins us this ...
The Misunderstood Nature of Pain with Haider Warraich
April 19, 2022 06:20 - 47 minutes - 43.6 MBHow do you define how painful something is? On the show this week we welcome back physician, writer, and clinical researcher Haider Warraich to talk about his new book The Song of Our Scars: The Untold Story of Pain. Warraich explores the idea that far from being something objective and easily defined, pain is complex, misunderstood, and culturally influenced. The book delves into the history of pain and explains how our understanding of it has been “shaped not just by science but by politic...
The Untold Story of the Neuron
April 04, 2022 06:30 - 33 minutes - 31 MBThis week we’re joined by Benjamin Ehrlich, author of The Brain in Search of Itself: Santiago Ramón y Cajal and the Story of the Neuron. It’s a book about the discoveries and life of Spanish neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal, who has been called the ‘father of modern neuroscience.’ While today relatively unknown outside of his field, Cajal’s discoveries about the brain changed the field of neuroscience forever. In 1906 he won a Nobel Prize for his pioneering work on neurons, which he c...
The Untold Story of the Neuron with Benjamin Ehrlich
April 04, 2022 06:30 - 33 minutes - 31 MBThis week we’re joined by Benjamin Ehrlich, author of The Brain in Search of Itself: Santiago Ramón y Cajal and the Story of the Neuron. It’s a book about the discoveries and life of Spanish neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal, who has been called the ‘father of modern neuroscience.’ While today relatively unknown outside of his field, Cajal’s discoveries about the brain changed the field of neuroscience forever. In 1906 he won a Nobel Prize for his pioneering work on neurons, which he ...
Updates on Cell Adaptation, Creativity Measurement, and Visual Perception
March 17, 2022 06:30 - 24 minutes - 22.9 MBThis week, Indre is joined by Adam for a new Up-to-Date segment, in which they check out the latest science in the news that has captured their interest. First up, Adam introduces a recent article published in Nature about the discovery that certain types of cancer cells may have the potential to allow us to better understand how cells adapt to the intracellular environment. Indre then discusses how she and her students have recently been working on methods of measuring creativity, and finall...
Up to Date | Cell Adaptation, Creativity Measurement, and Visual Perception
March 17, 2022 06:30 - 24 minutes - 22.9 MBThis week, we examine a recent discovery that certain types of cancer cells may allow us to better understand how cells adapt to the intracellular environment (and explain what the intracellular environment is). Indre discusses how she and her students have recently been working on methods of measuring creativity. And we look at some new research focusing on the hunting method used by archerfish in order to study aspects of visual perception. Inquiring Minds website Support the show: https...
How to Make Use of Our Limited Time in This Tiny Part of Space with Sean Carroll
March 07, 2022 08:12 - 40 minutes - 37 MBDuring the pandemic, one thing we’ve had a little more of--at least sometimes--is time. Time to panic and stress and worry, but also time to think and reflect. This week, in the spirit of reflection, we’re revisiting a conversation with theoretical physicist Sean Carroll recorded back in 2016. At the time he had just written a book called The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself, which explores questions about purpose and belief and meaning. Today, in 2022, ...
Why You Can’t Know What It’s Like for a Bat to Be a Bat with Jackie Higgins
February 25, 2022 07:30 - 36 minutes - 33.1 MBWe can never know what it’s like for a bat to be a bat. Or even if there is something that it is like for a bat to be a bat. But if there is something, we would speculate that the bat has some kind of consciousness or sentience. That’s the argument Jackie Higgins makes in her new book Sentient: How Animals Illuminate the Wonder of Our Human Senses, in which she takes us on a deep dive into the sensory experience of many different animals, from fish to owls, to moles, to cheetahs. Jackie is a...
How Animals Illuminate the Wonder of Human Senses with Jackie Higgins
February 25, 2022 07:30 - 36 minutes - 33.1 MBWe can never know what it’s like for a bat to be a bat. Or even if there is something that it is like for a bat to be a bat. But if there is something, we would speculate that the bat has some kind of consciousness or sentience. That’s the argument Jackie Higgins makes in the premise of her new book Sentient: How Animals Illuminate the Wonder of Our Human Senses, in which she takes us on a deep dive into the sensory experience of many different animals, from fish to owls, to moles, to cheetah...
Exploring the Extended Mind with Annie Murphy Paul
February 17, 2022 07:30 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBOne of the fascinating things about neuroscience is that it gives us something tangible to study in the biology of the brain that can tell us something about the mind, which is so intangible. But what if that approach leaves us missing a big piece of the puzzle? What if the mind actually extends far beyond the biology of the body? Today, Indre is joined by Annie Murphy Paul, an acclaimed science writer, who makes this claim in her new book The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the...
Space Rocks, Star Stuff, and Tom Selleck's Mustache with Greg Brennecka
February 10, 2022 07:30 - 37 minutes - 34.4 MBMore than a hundred million people watched the Netflix movie Don’t Look Up, which focused on our fear that something could crash into our planet from space and destroy it. But what if things that come from space don’t just have the potential to destroy life but also to create it? That’s Greg Brennecka’s argument, and he joins Indre on today’s episode to talk all about it. Greg is a staff scientist and cosmochemist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, whose research has appeared in Scie...
Defining and Treating Addiction with Carl Erik Fisher
January 28, 2022 07:30 - 42 minutes - 38.7 MBIn this week’s episode, Indre revisits a topic that has been covered a couple of times on the podcast: addiction. This time, she’s joined by addiction physician and bioethicist Carl Erik Fisher, Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University. Carl works at the intersection of law, ethics, and psychiatry and has had his own struggles with addiction, which he documents in his new book, The Urge: Our History of Addiction. He discusses this fascinating book and so much more in...
2021 Wrap-Up
December 28, 2021 00:33 - 27 minutes - 24.8 MBIn this last episode of 2021, Adam Bristol joins Indre to talk about the major highlights of 2021, one being the journey through COVID. They map out the key episodes of Inquiring Minds throughout 2021, talk through their personal highlights, and recommend books to read. Recapping episodes touching on the history of quarantine, food and science, the interaction between nature and humans, and quantitative approaches to human dating, today’s episode wraps up 2021 in a neat bow, providing an ex...
The Evolution of Life and the ‘Dead Species Walking’ with Henry Gee
December 20, 2021 08:30 - 48 minutes - 44.4 MBThe holidays are a time for storytelling, and what better story to re-experience than the greatest one of all: the history of the universe and life on Earth. In today’s episode, Indre is joined by writer and editor Henry Gee to discuss this most epic of all stories and how it’s depicted in Henry’s new book, A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth. Henry is a senior editor at Nature and the author of several books, including Jacob’s Ladder, In Search of Deep Time, and The Accidental Species. ...
Sizing Up the Notion of Tailoring Your Brain with Emily Willingham
December 13, 2021 08:30 - 33 minutes - 30.9 MBIn this episode, Emily Willingham joins Indre to talk about tailoring the brain, a subject on which she’s an expert and about which she writes extensively in her book The Tailored Brain: From Ketamine, to Keto, to Companionship, A User's Guide to Feeling Better and Thinking Smarter. Emily is a journalist, a science writer, the author of previous books, including Phallacy: Life Lessons from the Animal Penis, a coauthor of The Informed Parent: A Science-Based Resource for Your Child's First Fo...
Updates from the Past and the Future
November 25, 2021 08:00 - 22 minutes - 20.8 MBIn today's up to date episode, Adam Bristol is back to highlight three scientific papers that have caught his eye lately. The first two are about our evolutionary history of life on this planet, filling in some of the holes in the fossil record, and making some unexpected discoveries along the way. The third paper has us looking at potential biosecurity concerns in the distant future, which may actually arise earlier than expected given humans' exploration of planets. From the distant past t...
Inside the Race to the Coronavirus Vaccine with Brendan Borrell
November 15, 2021 08:00 - 44 minutes - 40.9 MBIn early 2020, experts predicted the development of the COVID-19 vaccine would take 12 to 18 months. Fast forward to today and there are at least five vaccines approved by the World Health Organization. Joining Indre today is Brendan Borrell, a health scientist and business journalist who’s written for The Atlantic, National Geographic, Wired, and The New York Times. He also happens to be the author of a new book, The First Shots: The Epic Rivalries and Heroic Science Behind the Race to the ...