Alexander Weinstein’s “Children of the New World” is a collection of cautionary tales about extreme emotional attachment to software and silicon. More
Exploring the Deeper End of Ideas
Science and Technology
Evolutionary biologists Jeff Schloss and David Sloan Wilson joined Steve Paulson to explore how group selection can explain altruism.More
Historian Iain McCalman’s Dangerous Idea? The Anthropocene — the idea that humans have fundamentally changed our global climate. It’s scary, but we’re also seeing people come together in unprecedented ways to solve planetary problems.More
Psychologist Lisa Diamond offers a radical new understanding of sexual orientation, arguing that it’s much more fluid than previously believed.More
Can you fall in love with anyone? Maybe, if you ask the right questions.More
In 2018, we have a lot more to be anxious about than just nuclear weapons.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
We’re starting to see a new kind of fiction: climate fiction. Lidia Yuknavitch’s “The Book of Joan” is one of the most stunning examples. It’s the story of a near-future where Earth is decimated and the last few survivors are stranded in space.More
If climate change is the most urgent problem facing humanity, why are there so few novels about it? Acclaimed novelist Amitav Ghosh believes that’s a big problem. He says climate change is less a science problem than a crisis of imagination.More
We all think about time but probably not as deeply as the groundbreaking theoretical physicist Lee Smolin. Smolin has created a radical new view of the nature of time and the cosmos. He lays it out in a book called "Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe."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
How A Novel About “Monster Dogs” Can Help Us Rethink Our Relationship with Our Own Canine Companions
Kirsten Bakis first wrote her story of biomechanically-enhanced, hyper-intelligent dogs 20 years ago, and it’s been a cult favorite ever since. So why create a post-modern Frankenstein story with dogs at the heart of the tale?More
Unlike their canine relatives, coyotes have thrived in the U.S. Despite having been hunted just as intensely as wolves, coyotes have survived. Somehow, coyotes just spread, everywhere. Dan Flores told Steve Paulson how. More
Wolf biologist Rick McIntyre took a moment from his own wolf watching to explain the lives of Yellowstone wolves, one he's observed first hand almost every day for 22 years.More
The personal devices we live with and depend on — our computers, tablets, smartphones and more— all share information about us. Randolph Lewis tells more stories about how we’re being watched in a book called “Under Surveillance.”More
In a world filled with devices that could be used to listen in on our daily lives, how do you take back control of your privacy? Steve Paulson asked security reporter Lily Hay Newman.More
Do you ever get the feeling that your digital devices are eavesdropping on you?
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Science journalist Claudia Hammond unlocks the weirdness of how we experience time — including our fixation on the future — in a book called "Time Warped."More