"Disgustologist" Valerie Curtis talks about a powerful driver of human emotion.More
Exploring the Deeper End of Ideas
Science and Technology
Biologist Merlin Tuttle braves crocodile-infested rivers, dark caves, and even bandits to find rare bats.More
Maybe time has its origins in grief and longing for people we've lost. That idea certainly resonates with theoretical physicist Ron Mallett. He's spent a lot of his career studying time — which he traces back to the tragedy that marked his childhood.More
Around 2 million years ago, it’s believed our hominin ancestors settled down and adopted a more communal style of living centered around...More
Even as you read this very sentence, you may be an unwitting victim of the attention merchants — those sneaky and subversive salespeople who attract your attention and then resell it for a profit.More
We don't always consider the small changes in our influences, thinking and communication that occur directly as a result of those wasted seconds bouncing between emails, Facebook posts and Reddit threads, but conceptual artist and professor Kenneth Goldsmith argues there's opportunity in those precious clicks and darts from page to page.More
Biologist Carin Bondar has devoted her career to exploring the myriad ways animals mate in the wild, and shared a few of the ingenious ways animals find each other, breed, and rear offspring.More
Can you fall in love with anyone? Maybe, if you ask the right questions.More
Psychologist Lisa Diamond offers a radical new understanding of sexual orientation, arguing that it’s much more fluid than previously believed.More
Evolutionary biologists Jeff Schloss and David Sloan Wilson joined Steve Paulson to explore how group selection can explain altruism.More
We're asking listeners to show us what brings love into their lives. Share yours on Instagram by tagging it #TTBOOK.More
Doug Eck directs Google’s new “Magenta” project, an experiment in teaching machines to make art, leveraging advances in machine learning like neural networks to enable computers to do things like compose music.More
As an acquisitions editor for Penguin Books, Jodie Archer saw many novelists struggling to write books that would sell. Then she went to grad school at Stanford, where she and her advisor created an algorithm to help.More
When a computer program fixes a writer’s novel, or improvises a few bars of music, is that real creativity? Are they not just doing what they were programmed to do? Blaise Agüera y Arcas would wholeheartedly disagree.More
How taking microdoses of LSD for a month helped her find a calm she hadn’t known for years.More
Psychedelic drugs show remarkable promise for treating addiction and end-of-life anxiety.More