Life in plastic — not fantastic?
Much of our modern world is made of plastic, but as more signs point to its dangers to human health, what can we even do about it? Guest: Annie Lowrey, Atlantic writer and author of I fought plasti...
13 Aug 202529min
When waves go rogue
Towering walls of water sometimes appear in the ocean without warning or apparent cause. What drives their terrifying power? (First published in 2023) Guest: Ton van der Bremer, associate professor...
6 Aug 202528min
Good news for people who love bad news
Good news can be hard to find, especially when our brains — and the media — are biased against it. Guest: Bryan Walsh, senior editorial director of Vox, and author of the Good News newsletter This...
4 Aug 202528min
12 tiny worlds
If you went back 500 million years and re-ran evolution, would life be totally different today? Guests: Richard Lenski and Zachary Blount, evolutionary biologists at Michigan State University Fo...
30 Jul 202535min
How good was Michael Jordan, really?
It's easy to assume there is objective truth in basketball stats. A clear story of what happened in the past. But our friends at Pablo Torre Finds Out uncovered something that throws an entire era int...
28 Jul 202545min
One weird trick to get unlimited clean energy
Is a solution to climate change…pouring water on hot rocks? Guest: Dylan Matthews, Senior Correspondent at Vox's Future Perfect This episode was made in partnership with Vox's Future Perfect team. ...
23 Jul 202523min
Who taught beavers to build dams?
How does any animal know what to do? A neuroscientist argues it's not “instinct.” Something bigger is going on. (First published in 2022) Guest: Mark Blumberg, behavioral neuroscientist at the Univer...
21 Jul 202529min
The disease we let win
We have a cure for tuberculosis. Why does it still kill over a million people every year? GUEST: John Green, podcaster, YouTube creator and award-winning author of Everything is Tuberculosis and ma...
16 Jul 202532min
