Inquiring Minds
Activity Overview
Episode publication activity over the past year
Episodes
61 George Church - Hacking Mosquitoes to Fight Malaria
21 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
On the show this week guest host Cynthia Graber talks to George Church—a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and the author of Regenesis...
60 Paul Bloom - Babies and the Origins of Good and Evil
14 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
On the show this week we talk to cognitive scientist Paul Bloom about the morality of babies. Most of us think of babies as selfish, impulsive, and f...
59 David Grinspoon - The Science of Interstellar
07 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
On the show this week we welcome guest host David Corn, political journalist and Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones. Corn interviews astrobiolog...
58 Adam Savage - Live on Stage in San Francisco
31 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
On the show this week Indre talks to Adam Savage about the future of science communication (and why it’s terrifying TV networks), why he’s worried...
57 William Gibson - The Future Will View Us as a Joke
24 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
On the show this week we talk to author William Gibson about time travel, cronuts, and his new 22nd century novel.We also talk to infectious disease d...
56 Steven Johnson - Innovations That Made the Modern World
17 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
On the show this week we talk to Steven Johnson, author of the new book How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World. In it, Johnson ...
55 Daniel Levitin - The Organized Mind
10 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
On the show this week we talk to cognitive psychologist, neuroscientist, musician, and writer Daniel Levitin about his new book The Organized Mind: Th...
54 Steven Pinker - The Science Behind Writing Well
02 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
San Francisco! Come see us interview Adam Savage live on Oct. 28!http://www.bayareascience.org/event/im-story-collider/On the show this week we talk t...
53 Naomi Klein - Climate Changes Everything
26 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Come see us interview Adam Savage live in San Francisco on Oct. 28!http://www.bayareascience.org/event/im-story-collider/On the show this week we talk...
52 Al Gore - The Politics of Climate Change
17 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
On the show this week we talk to former Vice President Al Gore. He shares his thoughts on President Obama's global warming record, the upcoming United...
51 Brendan Nyhan - Will Facts Matter in the 2014 Election?
12 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
On the show this week we talk to Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan, who has focused much of his research on employing the tools of social sc...
50 William Poundstone - Understanding Randomness
05 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
On the show this week we talk about randomness with science writer William Poundstone, author of the new book Rock Breaks Scissors.Poundstone explains...
49 Arie Kruglanski - The Science of What Makes a Terrorist
29 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
"Its Islam over everything."So read the Twitter bio of Douglas McAuthur McCain—or, as he reportedly called himself, "Duale Khalid&quo...
48 K Clancy, R Nelson, J Rutherford, & K Hinde - The Epidemic of Harassment in Scientific Field Work
22 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most difficult parts of getting a Ph.D. is finishing your dissertation. Beyond the mountain of work a dissertation requires, graduate stude...
47 Anthony Ingraffea - The Science of Fracking
15 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
On the political right, it's pretty popular these days to claim that the left exaggerates scientific worries about hydraulic fracturing, or "frac...
46 David Casarett - The Science of Death
08 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
On the show this week we talk to University of Pennsylvania professor of medicine David Casarett about his book Shocked: Adventures in Bringing Back t...
45 Barb Oakley - The Science of Learning
31 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Charles Dickens, perhaps the greatest of the Victorian novelists, was a man of strict routine. Every day, notes his biographer Claire Tomalin, Dickens...
44 David Epstein - The Science Behind the World's Greatest Athletes
25 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
What makes a great athlete? Talent? Training? Or is mostly genetic?On the show this week we get some answers from sports writer David Epstein while di...
43 Naomi Oreskes - The Collapse of Western Civilization
18 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
You don't know it yet. There's no way that you could. But 400 years from now, a historian will write that the time in which you're now living is the &...
42 Arthur I. Miller - How Science Is Revolutionizing Art
11 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
On the show this week we welcome Arthur I. Miller—physics Ph.D., science historian, philosopher—and an art aficionado to boot. We talked to Miller...
41 Amy Stewart - The Science Behind the World's Alcohol
04 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
It's the 4th of July, and you love your country. Your likely next step: Fire off some small scale explosives, and drink a lot of beer.But that last wo...
40 Zach Weinersmith - Baby Catapulting and Other Great Terrible Hypotheses
27 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
There's nothing quite as satisfying as a really good joke. Someone has made a clever new connection between two mundane things that we've all encounte...
39 Jordan Ellenberg - Why Math Is The Ultimate BS Detector
20 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Chances are that when you think about math—which, for most of us, happens pretty infrequently—you don't think of it in anything like the way that ...
38 Sam Kean - These Brains Changed Neuroscience Forever
13 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
We've all been mesmerized by them—those beautiful brain scan images that make us feel like we're on the cutting edge of scientifically decoding how ...
37 Raychelle Burks - Zombie Repellent and Other Awesome Uses for Chemistry
05 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Remember those stick-figures of chemical compounds you were forced to memorize in high school? Remember how useless it seemed at the time? Can you sti...
36 Harry Collins - Why Googling Doesn't Make You a Scientific Expert
30 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Remember "Climategate"? It was the 2009 non-scandal scandal in which a trove of climate scientists' emails, pilfered from the University of ...
35 Richard Alley - West Antarctica Is Melting and We Can't Stop It
22 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
If you want to truly grasp the scale of the Earth's polar ice sheets, you need some help from Isaac Newton. Newton taught us the universal law of grav...
34 John Oliver - This World Will Be a Ball of Fire Before It Stops Being Funny
15 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In late April, former Daily Show correspondent John Oliver kicked off his HBO news-satire program, Last Week Tonight. Oliver, who spent nearly eight y...
33 David Amodio - The Science of Prejudice
09 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
When the audio of LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling telling his girlfriend not to "bring black people" to his team's games hit the Internet,...
32 Katharine Hayhoe - Climate Science and Christianity
02 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, an evangelical Christian, has had quite the run lately. A few weeks back, she was featured in the first episode of...
31 Mary Roach - The Science of Your Guts
25 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Mary Roach has been called "America's funniest science writer." Master of the monosyllabically titled bestseller, she has explored sex in Bo...
30 Jared Diamond - The Third Chimpanzee
18 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Jared Diamond, author of a suite of massive, bestselling books about the precarious state of our civilization (including the Pulitzer-winning Guns, Ge...
29 Neil Shubin - Your Inner Fish
10 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
We all know the Darwin fish, the clever car-bumper parody of the Christian "ichthys" symbol, or Jesus fish. Unlike the Christian symbol, the...
28 John Hibbing - The Biology of Ideology
04 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Thomas Jefferson was a smart dude. And in one of his letters to John Adams, dated June 27, 1813, Jefferson made an observation about the nature of pol...
27 Ethan Perlstein - Scenes from the Postdocalypse
28 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
How do you become a scientist? Ask anyone in the profession and you'll probably hear some version of the following: get a Bachelor's of Science degree...
26 Phil Plait - Just After the Big Bang
21 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
We all heard the cosmos-stretching news this week. On Monday, a team of researchers working with a special telescope at the South Pole confirmed that ...
25 Neil deGrasse Tyson - Finally, Science Is Cool
14 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, Fox's and National Geographic's new Cosmos series set a new milestone in television history. According to National Geographic, it was the l...
24 Jennifer Ouellette - Is The Self an Illusion, or Is There Really a “You” In There?
07 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Who are you?The question may seem effortless to answer: You are the citizen of a country, the resident of a city, the child of particular parents, the...
23 Edward Frenkel - What Your Teachers Never Told You About Math
28 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
As Edward Frenkel sees it, the way we teach math in schools today is about as exciting as watching paint dry. So it's not surprising that when he brin...
22 Jennifer Francis and Kevin Trenberth - Is Global Warming Driving Crazy Winters?
21 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Just when weather weary Americans thought they'd found a reprieve, the latest forecasts suggest that the polar vortex will, again, descent into the he...
21 Steven Novella - No, GMOs Won't Harm Your Health
14 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
With historic drought battering California's produce and climate change expected to jeopardize the global food supply, there are few questions more im...
20 Maria Konnikova - How to Make Your Brain Work Better
07 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
You're a busy person. Keeping up with your job, plus your life, is the very definition of multitasking. It doesn't help that when working, you're dist...
19 Kari Byron - How to Safely Blow Stuff Up When You're Pregnant
31 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Most expecting women ask their doctors whether it's okay to eat blue cheese, or have the odd glass of wine, while they're pregnant. Or maybe whether t...
18 Eugenie Scott & Ann Reid - The Assault on Science Education
24 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In recent decades, there have been countless infringements, and attempted infringements, upon accurate science education across the country. The "...
17 Michael Pollan - The Science of Eating Well (And Not Falling For Diet Fads)
16 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The Paleo diet is hot. Those who follow it are attempting, they say, to mimic our ancient ancestors—minus the animal-skin fashions and the total lac...
16 Deborah Blum - The Science of Poisoning
10 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
As a writer, Deborah Blum says she has a "love of evil chemistry." It seems that audiences do too: Her latest book, The Poisoner's Handbook:...
15 Mark Ruffalo - Our 100 Percent Clean Energy Future
03 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
For Mark Ruffalo, environmental activism started out with something to oppose, to be against: Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. It all began when the...
14 Carolyn Porco - Why Seeing Earth From Space Matters
27 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
On Valentine's Day 1990, from more than four billion miles away, the Voyager 1 spacecraft snapped our photo. From that distance, there wasn't much to ...
13 Ara Norenzayan - Why Do Atheists Exist?
20 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Americans don't like atheists much. It's something we get reminded of every December, as Fox News commentators decry a secularist "war on Christm...
12 Joshua Greene – The New Science of Morality
13 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
It's an old distinction: Science tells us what the world is like, but it can never tell us how we ought to behave in such a world. That's the realm of...
11 Maryn McKenna - Our Scary Post-Antibiotic Future
06 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
It's flu season. And we're all about to crisscross the country to exchange hugs, kisses and germs. We're going to get sick. And when we do, many of us...
10 Simon Singh - How the Simpsons Have Secretly Been Teaching You Math
22 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Simon Singh isn't exactly your average fan of Fox's The Simpsons. He has a Ph.D. in particle physics from Cambridge, and made an award-winning documen...
9 Michael Mann - From Computer Geek to Political Giant Slayer
15 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
On the show this week we talk to climate researcher Michael Mann about how he, as a self-described math and computer nerd working in an esoteric field...
8 Alison Gopnik - We All Start Out as Scientists, But Some of Us Forget
07 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
This week we feature a conversation with psychologist Alison Gopnik, recorded live at the 2013 Bay Area Science Festival. Gopnik talks about her lates...
7 George Johnson - Why Most of What You've Heard About Cancer is Wrong
01 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we speak with veteran science journalist George Johnson, whose new book The Cancer Chronicles: Unlocking Medicine's Deepest Mystery helps t...
6 Jonathan Haidt - This is Why Your Political Opponents Hate You
25 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Why is America so polarized? Why are our politicians so dysfunctional? Why do they sometimes even seem to downright hate each other?In this episode of...
5 Dan Kahan and Stephan Lewandowsky - How Do You Make People Give a Damn About Climate Change?
18 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
As two top researchers studying the science of science communication—a hot new field that combines psychology with public opinion research—Dan Kah...
4 Randy Schekman - This 2013 Nobel Laureate Says College Is Way Too Expensive
11 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
This week we talk to Randy Schekman, the University of California-Berkeley cell biologist who was just awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in medicine for hi...
3 Sylvia Earle - Why the Oceans Are Not Too Big to Fail
04 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
This week we talk to scientist and explorer Sylvia Earle, a woman who has spent almost a year of her life under water. She explains why the oceans are...
2 Alan Weisman - Can We Finally Have a Serious Talk About Population?
27 Sep 2013
Contributed by Lukas
This week, Chris Mooney talks to environmental journalist Alan Weisman, who explains why, following on his 2007 New York Times bestseller The World Wi...
1 Marsha Ivins - What It's Like To Spend 55 Days in Space
20 Sep 2013
Contributed by Lukas
There aren't many people on Earth who have spent more of their life in space than Marsha Ivins. A veteran of five space shuttle missions, Ivins has sp...