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
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Interviews By Topic
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
At the Galileo Museum in Florence, there’s a dazzling collection of old scientific instruments, including the telescope Galileo used to discover new moons. Cosmologist Marcelo Gleiser explains how Galileo revolutionized the scientific worldview.More
Astrophysicist Adam Frank says there’s an emerging science of “planetary intelligence,” which regards the Earth itself as sentient. It’s a radical idea, with far-reaching implications, and it may just help save the planet. More
A Maori conservationist in New Zealand, Mere Takoko is arguing for granting personhood for whales, who she says are her Indigenous Polynesian ancestors.More
Scientists at Project CETI exploring the sounds of whales have found a “sperm whale phonetic alphabet.” Carl Zimmer, author and science writer for The New York Times, puts the latest whale communications research and news into perspective.More
Marine biologist Shane Gero has spent decades listening to whale conversations. Through Project CETI, he’s found recent success using technologies like artificial intelligence to better understand what whales are saying. More
Roger Payne revolutionized the science of whale biology by discovering the songs of humpback whales. In this 1995 interview, Payne (who died in 2023) described the thrill of touching a whale, and why he fears for the future of whales.More
Time may be a fundamental quality of the universe, but physicists still can't explain what time is. That hasn't stopped theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser from devoting much of his life to studying the origins of time and the formation of the cosmos.More
Marjolijn van Heemstra is the poet laureate of Amsterdam. As her anxiety about climate change and other problems ratcheted up, she found solace in the larger cosmos and became a "dark sky" activist.More
Physicist Carlo Rovelli travels to the core of a black hole, where the arrow of time reverses and a white hole is born. More
During their visit to Addis Ababa, Anne and Steve caught a show put on by a household name in Ethiopia — the boundary-crossing, border-hopping jazz virtuoso Meklit Hadero.More
Valmont Layne grew up under apartheid in South Africa. Music, along with protest movements, radicalized him. He tells Anne and Steve that South African jazz became a musical current that’s traveled across oceans, spreading ideas about freedom.More
Political repression and censorship forced a generation of Black jazz musicians out of South Africa and into clubs in Europe and the US. But jazz critic Gwen Ansell says some musicians remained, and they left a legacy of unforgettable music.More
David Kessler is a world-renowned grief expert. He argues that as a nation, Americans are dealing with a lot of unacknowledged post-pandemic grief.More
Drew Gilpin Faust, historian and author of “The Republic of Suffering,” draws compelling parallels between the grief experienced after the American Civil War and the mourning process following the COVID-19 pandemic.More
Lauren DePino started singing at funerals as a child. As a professional funeral singer, she thinks of her work as a form of alchemy — a way to transmute grief into something bigger.More
“Bad River” is Mary Mazzio’s documentary about a small tribe, the Bad River band of Lake Superior Chippewa, and their legal battle to get rid of an oil pipeline. She examines the conflicting ideas we have about how to live on the land and even whether it can be owned.More