Journalist Elizabeth Kolbert argues that human vices are just as important as human virtues in shaping evolution.More
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Science and Technology
When Jane Willenbring was a young scientist working in Antarctica, she was the target of constant hazing by her team leader. Years later, she filed a complaint. David Marchant was recently found guilty of sexual harassment by Boston University.More
Women are underrepresented on Wikipedia. So Emily Temple-Wood recruited people to write more articles about notable women. In return, she got rape and death threats. Now, every time she's trolled, she writes a new Wikipedia bio of a female scientist.More
"Natto" is gaining popularity with home fermentation enthusiasts. Producer Erik Lorenzsonn heads to the Reedsburg Fermentation Fest to ask why, as well as ponder other fermentation mysteries.More
What if we could harness nature to grow clothing for us? London-based fashion designer Suzanne Lee explains how.More
At the University of Colorado, microbiologist Rob Knight is exploring a new frontier — the human microbiome.More
Sauerkraut, kimchee, kefir, kombucha — Sandor Katz calls himself a "fermentation fetishist."More
Take a big slab of shark meat, bury it in a pit and let it rot. Then dig it up and hang it in a windy shack for four months. No wonder the Vikings took to sea.More
To The Best Of Our Knowledge producer Doug Gordon explains what it’s like to live with obsessive compulsions.More
One person’s bubble can be another person’s safe space — a place where you don’t have to pretend and where you can feel supported and understood. For many black Americans, that place is Twitter. Media scholar Meredith Clark explains why.More
What's it like to host a talk show in virtual reality? We talk avatars with Will Smith, host of “The Foo Show.”More
The story of one famous mathematician’s obsession with the ancient and mystical and numerical world of the Kabbalah, from Shlomo Maital of the podcast "Israel Story."More
Frank Wilczek is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist at MIT. He's kind of obsessed, in his own way, with understanding the universe. Specifically, he’s interested in what he calls “the beautiful question." Is the universe naturally, inherently beautiful?More
What if the geometric structure of the universe has been hidden, for centuries, in crochet? Margaret Wertheim can help you get there with a ball of wool, a crochet hook, and some non-Euclidean geometry.More
If you think you haven't seen any movies based on Philip K. Dick's work, you're probably wrong. David Gill talks about Hollywood's adaptations of Dick's work.More
The central question of Philip K. Dick's fiction is "What is reality?" Literary critic Umberto Rossi explains that Dick's work often contains many possible realities.More
Robots that clean the bathroom, cars that drive themselves, computers that diagnose disease. They may sound appealing, but technology writer Nicholas Carr warns that the new age of automation could mean we'll lose basic life skills.More
Androids may seem like a modern idea, but there were life-size androids in the 18th century — beautiful robot women who could look around and even play the harpsichord. Historian Heidi Voskuhl tells this remarkable story.More