How to Make Meetings Less Terrible (Ep. 389 Rebroadcast)

A language invented in the 19th century, and meant to be universal, it never really caught on. So why does a group of Esperantists from around the world gather once a year to celebrate their bond? Hos...

26 Sep 201730min

We explore votes for English, Indonesian, and … Esperanto! The search for a common language goes back millennia, but so much still gets lost in translation. Will technology finally solve that? Hosted ...

21 Sep 201741min

There are 7,000 languages spoken on Earth. What are the costs — and benefits — of our modern-day Tower of Babel? Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our...

14 Sep 201743min

John Urschel was the only player in the N.F.L. simultaneously getting a math Ph.D. at M.I.T. But after a new study came out linking football to brain damage, he abruptly retired. Here's the inside sto...

7 Sep 201747min

By some estimates, medical error is the third-leading cause of death in the U.S. How can that be? And what's to be done? Our third and final episode in this series offers some encouraging answers. Hos...

31 Aug 201748min

How do so many ineffective and even dangerous drugs make it to market? One reason is that clinical trials are often run on "dream patients" who aren't representative of a larger population. On the oth...

24 Aug 201745min

We tend to think of medicine as a science, but for most of human history it has been scientific-ish at best. In the first episode of a three-part series, we look at the grotesque mistakes produced by ...

17 Aug 201744min

Standing in line represents a particularly sloppy — and frustrating — way for supply and demand to meet. Why haven't we found a better way to get what we want? Is it possible that we secretly enjoy wa...

10 Aug 201736min