Science and Technology

Lulu Miller

Lulu Miller's latest project is a "Radiolab" podcast series for children: "Terrestrials." She explains for how nature and child-like sensibility can help adults rediscover a sense of wonder.More

an online number going up

When producer Angelo Bautista was growing up, he dreamed of being in the internet. Not on the internet, but inside of it. Now, he's torn about social media. He's still addicted to scrolling, but posting about his own life — that's another story. But if nobody sees you on the internet, do you exist? More

Just over 200 years ago, a group of renegade German writers and philosophers came together in a small town and forever changed who we think we are. Andrea Wulf tells this story in her book “Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self.” More

Infinity comes in different sizes. The idea of a world with more than one kind of infinity is glorious and also incomprehensible. Can you add, subtract and divide with infinity? More

The Netflix documentary “A Trip to Infinity” is a wild ride, filled with animated shorts by artists from 11 different countries illustrating the concept of infinity and where to find it.More

Michelle Thaller and Andrew Booth were a NASA space research power couple for 26 years. When Booth died of a rare brain cancer, Thaller turned to the universe for solace — finding comfort, meaning, and a new perspective in the infinite.More

Albert Einstein shaped much of our understanding of the space-time continuum, but few know he had a deeply spiritual side. Einstein believed in both math and mysticism, and saw the human mind as a mirror of the infinite.More

A great horned owl

Jennifer Ackerman writes in her new book "What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds" about how owls are cryptic, hard to find, and difficult to understand. Speaking to Shannon Henry Kleiber, she said that’s part of the attraction.More

Birdwatching gear

Mark Obmascik tells Anne Strainchamps about the biggest competition in North American bird-watching and how he got drawn into the quest.More

A hummingbird drinks nectar

Christopher Benfey tells Anne Strainchamps why there was a hummingbird craze in 19th century Massachsetts, how artists and poets used them as symbols, and why they seem like winged jewels.More

Journalist Sebastian Junger had nearly died when reporting from war zones around the world, but nothing prepared him for the ruptured aneurysm that almost killed him. He's now trying to explain a mysterious encounter he had with his dead father.More

Steve Paulson conducting an onstage interview with Dr. Sam Parnia.

Scientists are revolutionizing our understanding of life and death. It’s now possible to revive patients hours after they’ve been declared clinically dead. Dr. Sam Parnia talks about these advances and the new science of near-death experiences. More

These are tough times for people who care about insects. Roughly 40 percent of insect species face extinction. Poet Heather Swan is haunted by this specter of ecosystem collapse, but she’s also determined to live with love and even hope in a perilous time.More

Biologist and philosopher Andreas Weber says life is all about eating and being eaten, which may sound gruesome, but to him, it’s a miraculous process. He’s the author of “Being Edible: Toward a Mystical Biology.”More

Samoan journalist Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson was born and raised on the island of Savai'i. Rising sea levels washed away the small barrier islands that protected her home, eventually, forcing people to move — just one example of climate change disappearing islands in the South Pacific.More

Anne's mental map.

Bill Limpisathian is a professor of cartography and specializes in a brand new field – map cognition, or how we use and see and think about maps in the brain. More

At a small think tank in Italy, scientists and philosophers debate the nature of intelligence. Dartmouth neuroscientist Peter Tse traces the evolution of human intelligence — and says our imagination is both our greatest gift and deadliest weapon. More

A group of scientists, philosophers and writers discuss and debate the many different kinds of “intelligence” — and why we’re still grappling with our understanding of sentience in plants, animals and AI. Is a robot dog actually smart?More

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