Artificial Gravity: Cosmic Wheels and Hurtling Towers
Humans are creatures of gravity. We’re born into it. Life as we know it evolved to thrive in it. So what’s a gravitational organism to do in the low-gravity and zero-gravity expanses beyond Earth? You...
13 Juli 20171h 23min
Order out of Chaos: How to Create a Universe
Numerous mythologies speak to the birth of our universe out of darkness and chaos, but can humans follow in the footsteps of the gods? Can we create a universe in the lab? In this episode of the Stuff...
11 Juli 20171h 6min
Cultural Appropriation
We’ve all heard charges of cultural appropriation in everything from fashion and music to personal world view, but what’s actually at stake here? What is cultural misappropriation, when does it have n...
6 Juli 201756min
Sword of the Samurai
Appreciation for the katana cuts across cultures and genres, slicing into the hearts of history buffs, japanophiles, comic book fans and more. But what’s so special about the sword of the Samurai? In ...
4 Juli 201759min
Ticks, Mites and Mysterious Lone Star Illnesses
Ticks are, in the words of Pliny the Elder, 'the foulest and nastiest creature that be.' If these blood sucking arachnids and their mite brethren weren’t horrible enough, they’re second only to the mo...
29 Juni 20171h 9min
CRISPR and the Genetic Astronaut
In 1960, scientists Nathan Kline and Manfred Clynes envisioned a spacefaring cyborg, technologically augmented to endure the rigors of space travel. The subsequent six decades of space exploration lar...
27 Juni 20171h 7min
Extended Cognition: Brain, Fingers, Web and Krang
It’s easy to think yourself a mere brain within a human body -- a cognitive machine making sense out of all the incoming sense data from outside world. But what if other parts of the body and even obj...
22 Juni 20171h 10min
Name Thy Demons: The Roots of Human Violence
Is human civilization growing less violent? Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker argued the point in his 2011 book 'The Better Angels of Our Nature,' in which he also defined the 'five inner demons' that...
20 Juni 20171h 20min
