Big Brains
Episodes
What Makes Music Go Viral—From AI to Taylor Swift
11 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The internet and social media have transformed the way in which we hear and understand music today—and online communities and platforms from YouTube...
How Wearable Tech Will Heighten Our Senses and Abilities, with Pedro Lopes
24 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Can you imagine a world in which a wearable device, like a smartwatch, could move your fingers to strum the guitar or play the drums? That kind of tec...
Why Are More Women Saying No To Having Kids? With Peggy O'Donnell Heffington
13 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
More and more women in the United States are saying no to motherhood. In 2023, the U.S. fertility rate reached the lowest number on record. But the id...
How Full-Body MRIs Could Predict Your Long-Term Health, with Daniel Sodickson
30 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to see beneath the surface — of the human body, the brain, or even the universe itself? In his new book, The Future of Seeing: How...
Is There Such A Thing As A Psychopath?
16 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Few ideas have gripped the public imagination quite like the idea of the “psychopath.” From Hollywood thrillers to true-crime podcasts, popular cu...
Why We Haven’t Solved Brain Disorders—And How To Fix It, with Nicole Rust
02 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, neuroscience has promised breakthroughs in treating conditions like depression, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer’s. Yet despite powerful te...
Life On Mars: Is It Possible For Humans? with Edwin Kite
19 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Billions of years ago, Mars may have looked less like the barren red desert we know today and more like Earth—with a blue sky, flowing rivers, and e...
How To Use Nature To Restore Your Focus, with Marc Berman
04 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We’re living in an attention economy—and most of us are broke. But what if the secret to restoring your focus, improving your mental health, and e...
Could Plants Unlock Quantum Medicine’s Potential? with Greg Engel
21 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve long marveled at how efficiently plants convert sunlight into energy—but no one guessed they were using quantum mechanics to do it.In this e...
How Microplastics Are Invading Our Bodies, with Matthew Campen
07 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
You’ve heard of plastic polluting oceans. But what if it’s polluting you—your brain, your reproductive system, even your unborn children?In this...
Why We Get Stuck—And How to Finally Move Forward
24 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Hello listeners…we're re-releasing one of our favorite Big Brains episodes—an incredibly insightful conversation with psychologist Adam Alter. If ...
Inside the AI Debate: Hope, Hype, Or Harm? A Big Brains Panel Weighs In
10 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
One of the benefits of producing this podcast at the University of Chicago is that there are often events on campus that bring in not just one Big Bra...
Are Your Medications Safe And Effective?, with Jerry Avorn
26 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For a more than a century, the Food and Drug Administration has worked to protect public health. In his research, Harvard University physician-researc...
Are We Making AI Too Human?, with James Evans
12 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Prof. James Evans, a University of Chicago sociologist and data scientist, believes we’re training AI to think too much like humans—and it’s hol...
Inside The Disease That Changes Your Personality, with Bruce Miller
29 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When someone we know or love starts to develop psychological issues, we don't often associate it with a form of dementia. However, this trait is one o...
Meet The ‘Planet Hunter’ Searching For Alien Life, with Jacob Bean
15 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The search for life beyond Earth is no longer science fiction—it takes a lot of data, powerful telescopes and a bit of cosmic detective work. And at...
How To Stop Gun Violence Before It Starts, with Jens Ludwig
01 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Despite decades of policy ideas, pouring millions of dollars into the problem, and a slow pace of gun control measures, the United States hasn’t mad...
Can Your DNA Predict Your Future?, with Dalton Conley
17 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What if a single number, derived from your DNA, could predict your income, education level or even who you're likely to marry? In his new book “The ...
Can You Really Die of a Broken Heart? The Hidden Dangers of Grief, with Mary Frances O'Connor
03 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When we lose someone, we love, we often say we have a broken heart—but what if that’s not just a metaphor?In her new book “The Grieving Body: Ho...
The Science Behind Raising Successful Kids, with Ariel Kalil
20 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
New federal data paints a stark picture: American children are falling behind in reading and test scores, with the gap between advantaged and disadvan...
Do Animals Understand Death?, with Susana Monsó
06 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to understand death? For centuries, philosophers have argued that only humans can truly comprehend mortality. But what if they’re ...
Why Measles Is Resurging—And The Rise Of Vaccine Hesitancy, with Adam Ratner
20 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2000, the United States declared that measles had been eliminated. But just 15 years later, the disease made a comeback—and it hasn’t gone away...
The Little-Known Secrets To A Good Life, with Shigehiro Oishi
06 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What makes a good life? For decades, psychologists have debated whether true fulfillment comes from happiness—a life of comfort and joy—or meaning...
How Bioelectronics Could Heal Our Bodies And Minds, with Bozhi Tian
23 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine a future in which Band-Aids talk to your cells, pacemakers are powered by light and your gut microbiome gets a tune-up—all thanks to tiny bi...
Could A Fungal Pandemic Be “The Last of Us?", with Arturo Casadevall
09 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Five years after COVID became a global pandemic, could another health crisis be on our horizon? According to scientists who study diseases, the possib...
The "Magic Words" That Turn Resolutions Into Reality
02 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As we step into 2025, many of us are thinking about how to turn our New Year's resolutions into lasting changes. But what if the secret to success lie...
What’s The Truth About Alcohol’s Benefits And Risks? with Tim Stockwell
19 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We have long heard the claims that a glass of red wine is good for your heart, but it turns out that the research that fueled this wisdom was actually...
What Happens When We Die? with Sam Parnia
05 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For centuries, death has been seen as a final, inescapable line—a moment when the heart stops and the brain ceases to function. But revolutionary re...
The Illusion of Moral Decline
21 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This year’s election might have been the most contentious in modern memory. It's not just that politics have changed, but it seems that people have ...
Can We Predict The Unpredictable? with J. Doyne Farmer
14 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What if we could predict the economy the way we predict the weather? What if governments could run simulations to forecast the effects of new policies...
Unlocking The Secrets Of ‘SuperAgers’, with Emily Rogalski
31 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
https://haarc.center.uchicago.edu/We used to think aging inevitably led to memory loss, but a small group of people—known as SuperAgers—are defyin...
2024 Nobel Laureate Explains What Makes Countries Fail Or Succeed, with James A. Robinson
17 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On Big Brains, we get to speak to a lot of groundbreaking scholars and experts, but some conversations we walk away knowing we’ve just heard from so...
Why Can’t Scientists Agree On The Age Of The Universe? with Wendy Freedman
03 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How old is the universe—and how fast is it expanding? These are part of one of the biggest—and most contested—questions in science, and the answ...
What Are We Getting Wrong About Young Voters?, with Cathy Cohen
19 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
One of the biggest questions of every election is: What’s going on with young voters? There is endless speculation on the news about what young peop...
Why Are More Women Saying No To Having Kids? With Peggy O'Donnell Heffington
05 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
More and more women in the United States are saying no to motherhood. Alarmingly, in 2023, the U.S. fertility rate reached the lowest number on record...
How Homeownership Shaped Race In America, with Adrienne Brown
22 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Race has played a huge role in the creation of mass homeownership in the United States. Discriminatory housing practices including redlining, exclusio...
Fighting Back Against AI Piracy, with Ben Zhao and Heather Zheng
08 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If you’ve spent any time playing with modern AI image generators, it can seem like an almost magical experience; but the truth is these programs are...
The Bioelectric Future of Regenerative Medicine
25 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the near future, birth defects, traumatic injuries, limb loss and perhaps even cancer could be cured through bioelectricity—electrical signals th...
Is Mindfulness The Secret To Health?
11 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Can you heal faster just by tricking your brain? Could you lose weight with only a change of mindset? Could you think yourself into being younger? If ...
Feeling Stuck? Here’s How To Achieve a Breakthrough, with Adam Alter
27 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We've all been stuck at some point in our lives — whether we've been stuck at a job and wanting to make a career change, stuck in a location and wan...
What Makes Something Memorable (or Forgettable?) with Wilma Bainbridge
13 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There is a science to what we remember and what we don't. For instance, why do we remember certain pieces of artwork, some brands’ logos, or even pe...
Learning To Speak To Whales Using AI, with David Gruber
30 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If aliens landed on Earth tomorrow, how would we talk with them? Well, we already have a kind of creature on this planet we could attempt to talk to f...
Storm Warning: Why Hurricanes Are Growing Beyond Measure, with Michael Wehner
16 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We all know that extreme weather events like hurricanes are getting worse due to climate change, but what scientists would really like to know is: By ...
How To Manifest Your Future Using Neuroscience, with James Doty
02 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We've all heard the phrase "Manifest Your Destiny" when it comes to wanting that new promotion, figuring out a new career path or just trying to achie...
Why We Die—And How We Can Live Longer, with Nobel Laureate Venki Ramakrishnan
18 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
They’re perhaps the oldest questions in the science: Why do we die? And could we find a way to live forever? But for decades, anti-aging research wa...
What Dogs Are Teaching Us About Aging, with Daniel Promislow
04 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Every dog owner has faced the hard realization that their dog won’t live as long as they do, but we’ve all probably wondered: Why do some dogs liv...
Where Has Alzheimer’s Research Gone Wrong? with Karl Herrup
21 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For more than a century, scientists have been studying Alzheimer’s disease and developing theories about its underlying cause. The leading theory f...
Why Breeding Millions of Mosquitoes Could Help Save Lives, With Scott O'Neill
07 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Mosquito-borne diseases are one of the greatest global health threats, infecting around 700 million people every year with Zika virus, dengue fever, m...
Why Shaming Other Countries Often Backfires, with Rochelle Terman
22 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How do you stop a government from continuing to commit human rights abuses? You could take them to an international court of justice, or file a compla...
Can Trump Legally Be President?, with William Baude
06 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Supreme Court’s decision on whether Colorado can take former President Donald Trump off the ballot in the 2024 election may be one of the most c...
What Our Hand Gestures Reveal About Our Thoughts, with Susan Goldin-Meadow
25 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Language shapes our world. But when we speak, there is actually a secret conversation happening beyond our words. It’s happening not with our mouths...
Psychedelics Without Hallucinations: A New Mental Health Treatment? with David E. Olson
11 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The United States is facing a real mental health crisis. In the last few years, one possible treatment has gotten a lot of press: psychedelic drugs. B...
The Science Of Happiness
28 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Big Brains team is taking some time off during the holidays but for all those travelers out there heading home, we wanted to make sure you still h...
Do We Really Have Free Will? With Robert Sapolsky
14 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Here’s the question you’re going to be asking for the next 30 minutes: Did I freely choose to listen to this podcast, or did I actually have no ch...
A Radical Solution To Address Climate Change, with David Keith
30 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Climate change can feel like an impossible crisis these days. Every week there is some new report about the irreversible damage we’re doing to our p...
How PFAS “Forever Chemicals” Are Harming Our Health, with Linda Birnbaum
16 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
By now, you've probably heard about the dangers of PFAS “forever chemicals.” These chemicals are all around us—they're in waterproof hiking boot...
Are We Worse People Than We Used To Be? With Adam Mastroianni
02 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How many times have you heard this phrase: “Back in the day, people were nicer” or “People aren’t as kind as they used to be?” Most of us ha...
Freakonomics’ Steven Levitt On The Secret To Making Tough Choices
19 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Of the academic books that have become household names, “Freakonomics” must be at the top of the list. The 2005 book by University of Chicago scho...
Will Political Violence Destroy Our Democracy?, With Robert Pape
05 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Since the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, University of Chicago Prof. Robert Pape has been closely observing the threats to our democracy. No...
Defending Campus Free Speech In A Polarized Age, with Paul Alivisatos and Tom Ginsburg
22 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Free speech is probably one of the most polarizing public topics of debate. And those arguments only become more intense when it comes to free express...
Why The Secret To Health Lies In The Mind-body Connection, with Ellen Langer
07 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Can you heal faster just by tricking your brain? Could you lose weight with only a change of mindset? Could you think yourself into being younger? If ...
Phonics Vs. Whole Word: The Science Of Reading, With Adrian Johns
24 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Reading is one of the most significant practices in the modern age of information, but it has a complicated history. Scientists began studying reading...
How AI Is Transforming Scientific Research, With Rebecca Willett
10 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
One of the first areas to be affected by AI has been science. Researchers have already started to integrate these new technologies into their work, bu...
How AI Could Change The Law
27 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
AI promises to change every part of our society, but one area that has already started to be affected is law. And AI may do more than just upend the p...
How AI Can Predict Future Scientific Discoveries
20 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Science is facing a perplexing problem. Although there are far more scientists today than ever before, publishing research at a faster and faster pace...
The Uncovered History of Space Travel & Its Privatized Future
13 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Everyone is talking about the upcoming summer blockbuster, Oppenheimer. We are always incredibly captivated by behind the curtain looks at some of the...
The Health Costs of Air Pollution
06 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Many cities in the US have been experiencing smoky and hazy skies lately. Some of you have probably been affected by poor air quality due to the ongoi...
How Your Brain Benefits From Music, With Larry Sherman
29 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Music plays an important role in all of our lives. But listening to music or playing an instrument is more than just a creative outlet or hobby — it...
Magic words: Can What You Say Help You Get Your way? with Jonah Berger
15 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Everyone wishes they had a superpower. Well, it turns out you’ve had a secret power since you were a child, you just don’t know how to use it yet....
Providing Basic Health Insurance For Every American, With Katherine Baicker
01 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
If there is something both sides of the political aisle can agree on, it’s that there is something deeply wrong with health insurance in the United ...
Why We Fight, With Christopher Blattman
25 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Why do we fight? It’s a seemingly simple question, but it turns out the answers are surprising, deep and crucial to understanding our world. Conside...
The Hidden Truths About Sexuality And Gender In The Medieval World, with Roland Betancourt
11 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We often think our debates around sexuality and gender are a modern phenomenon. Some people argue that identities like trans and non-binary have only ...
How We Could Regrow Limbs And Organs, with Michael Levin
27 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the near future, birth defects, traumatic injuries, limb loss and perhaps even cancer could be cured through bioelectricity—electrical signals th...
A Nobelist’s Controversial Approach To Solving Inequality, With James Heckman
13 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Over his distinguished career, Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman has dedicated his research to understanding and solving the problem of ineq...
How The Food Industry Created Today’s Obesity Crisis, With Marion Nestle
30 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In today's grocery stores, you can find more sugary snacks, artificial ingredients, and ultra-processed packaged foods. At the same time, the United S...
Why Your Gut Health Is So Important, With Cathryn Nagler And Eric Pamer
16 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Link to the advertised Chicago Booth Review podcast: https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/podcast?source=cbr-sn-cap-camp:podcast23-20230320 Hoste...
Why Mourning Is Essential To Our Well-Being, With Jonathan Lear
02 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Mourning is an inevitable part of our human existence. But what exactly does it mean to mourn, and why is it an essential part of our well-being and s...
The History of Black Cinema Re-examined, With Jacqueline Stewart
16 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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The Scientific Secret To A Happy Life, With Marc Schulz
02 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What is the key to living a happy and fulfilling life? The answer is actually quite simple, according to the two scholars behind the longest scientifi...
Unraveling Sleep’s Greatest Mysteries: The Day Tomorrow Began
19 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Almost a century ago, the origins of sleep science research began at the University of Chicago with the opening of the world's first sleep laboratory....
Is The U.S. Headed Toward Another Civil War? Feat. William Howell
05 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As we approach the second anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, we wanted to reflect on a few questions that many Americans are asking...
Follow Through On Next Year's Resolutions Using Science With Katy Milkman
22 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As we head into 2023, many of us are setting our new year's resolutions and new goals for the year. It can be hard to stick to these resolutions or ac...
Why Quantum Tech Will Change Our Future: The Day Tomorrow Began
08 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the last few years, we’ve witnessed the birth of an entirely new field of science: quantum technology. With the power to create unbreakable enc...
Fighting Global Hunger Through Genetics With Chuan He
24 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We’re taking the week off to spend the holidays with our families, but we think this is a perfect moment to re-release one of our most important epi...
The Origins Of Civilization And The Future Of Archaeology: The Day Tomorrow Began
10 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When you name your special series The Day Tomorrow Began, you inevitably have to ask yourself: just how far back are we going to go? If there’s one ...
Can We Predict Your Capacity To Focus? With Monica Rosenberg
28 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It can seem like our culture is obsessed with our ability to focus. Why can’t we focus, how we can focus better, why is our lack of focus ruining so...
The 'Legendary' Discovery Of Black Holes: The Day Tomorrow Began
13 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sometimes the biggest moments in scientific history happen in the most unlikely places. There’s no better example than the story of Nobel Prize-winn...
Celebrating Our 100th Episode
29 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This episode marks the official 100th episode of the Big Brains podcast. To celebrate this milestone, our Senior Producer Matt Hodapp joins host Paul ...
The Science Of Speech & Identity With Katherine Kinzler
22 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Hello Big Brains listeners! Our podcast is coming up on an important milestone … our 100th episode! As part of the month-long celebration, we’re l...
Life’s Mysterious Origins With Jack Szostak
15 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Hello Big Brains listeners! Our podcast is coming up on an important milestone … our 100th episode! As part of the month-long celebration, we’re l...
The Afterlife Of Mass Incarceration With Reuben Jonathan Miller
08 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Hello Big Brains listeners! Our podcast is coming up on an important milestone … our 100th episode! As part of the month-long celebration, we’re l...
The Imbalance In Our Society With Raghuram Rajan
01 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Hello Big Brains listeners! Our podcast is coming up on an important milestone … our 100th episode! As part of the month-long celebration, we’re l...
Does Welfare Reduce Crime? With Manasi Deshpande
18 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
There have been myths and tropes about welfare since it was created. We often hear critics say that welfare discourages people from working — but ar...
The Crucial Race To Build A Better Battery With Shirley Meng
04 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Batteries have revolutionized our lives, especially the invention of rechargeable batteries, which have enabled us to have cellphones, laptops, and el...
Do Animals Dream? With David M. Peña-Guzmán
21 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Do animals dream? If you’re a pet owner, it may seem obvious that your furry friends dream. Most of us have seen dogs running in their sleep or cats...
Extreme Heat Waves: Why Are They Surging? with Noboru Nakamura
07 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It’s not your imagination, summers have been getting hotter and hotter with extreme heatwaves occurring earlier and more frequently. But why is this...
Why Air Pollution Is Cutting Years Off Our Lives, With Christa Hasenkopf And Anant Sudarshan
23 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We can’t always see the consequences of air pollution around us, but it’s costing us years off our lives. According to a new Air Quality Life Inde...
How Tax Dodging And Corporate Secrecy Found A Home In Delaware, With Hal Weitzman
09 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When you think about corporate secrecy, nefarious shell companies and conspiratorial tax dodging, the state of Delaware probably doesn’t come to min...
Why Countries Choose War Over Peace, With Chris Blattman
26 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
War is costly, deadly and destructive. So, why do we do it? In his new book Why We Fight: The Roots of War and The Paths to Peace, Prof. Chris Blattma...
How Death In America Is Changing With Shannon Lee Dawdy
12 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What does our relationship with the dead tell us about the living? Anthropologists learn about ancient cultures by studying their burial sites, but co...