What Makes Things Funny? With Peter McGraw, PhD
What is it about puns that tickles our funny bone? Or dad jokes? How about a person slipping on a banana peel? What could possibly tie all these very different things together under the heading “humor...
31 Mar 202140min
How the threat of disease has shaped human behavior, with Mark Schaller, PhD
The COVID-19 pandemic is a grim reminder that infectious diseases have been a danger throughout human history–so much so that the threat of infection has actually helped shape human evolution. Disgust...
24 Mar 202129min
What COVID-19 is teaching us about the importance of smell, with Pamela Dalton, PhD
Many people around the world have lost their sense of smell this past year due to COVID-19. Before the pandemic, scientists had already begun to gain a deeper understanding of how sophisticated our se...
17 Mar 202134min
How We’re Coping One Year into the Pandemic, with Vaile Wright, PhD
When the world shut down in March 2020, few people imagined how different things would still look one year later – or that more than 500,000 Americans and 2.5 million people around the world would die...
10 Mar 202124min
How meditation can help you live a flourishing life, with Richard Davidson, PhD
Meditation practices date back thousands of years and are a part of nearly every major religion. But it’s only in the past couple of decades that researchers have begun to use the tools of modern scie...
3 Mar 202131min
What studying twins can teach us about ourselves, with Nancy Segal, PhD
From movie plots to ad campaigns to viral videos, if they feature twins, they grab our attention every time. But it’s not only the general public who are fascinated with twins. Over many decades, twin...
24 Feb 202127min
How children's amazing brains shaped humanity, with Alison Gopnik, PhD
As a species, humans have an extra-long childhood. And as any parent or caregiver knows, kids are expensive—they take an extraordinary amount of time, energy and resources to raise. So why do we have ...
17 Feb 202145min
The science of relationships, with Gary Lewandowski, PhD
For psychologists, romance, attraction and love are not just the stuff of poetry – they’re also a subject for research. What are the qualities of a successful relationship? Why do some relationships e...
10 Feb 202123min
