This episode —first released in 2009 and then again in 2015, with an update — asks, what is “normal”? Maybe it exists, maybe not. We examine peace-loving baboons with Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky, talk to Stu Rasmussen, whose preferred pronouns were he/him (https://zpr.io/nUdsZawNmhwt), and his neighbors in Silverton, Oregon about how a town choos ... Show More
Apr 3
Life in a Barrel
This week, in an episode we first aired in 2022, we flip the Disney story of life on its head thanks to a barrel of seawater, a 1970s era computer, and underwater geysers. It’s the chaos of life. Latif, Lulu, and our Senior Producer Matt Kielty were all sitting on their own littl ... Show More
54m 42s
Feb 2017
Randy Olson, “Houston, We Have a Narrative: Why Science Needs Story” (U. Chicago Press, 2015)
Randy Olson, author of Houston, We Have a Narrative: Why Science Needs Story (University of Chicago Press, 2015), has an unusual background. He is a Harvard-trained biologist and former tenured professor who resigned from his academic post to earn a degree from the world-renowned ... Show More
1h 3m
Aug 2023
Travis Holloway, "How to Live at the End of the World: Theory, Art, and Politics for the Anthropocene" (Stanford UP, 2022)
the near universal disappearance of shared social enterprise: the ruling class builds walls and lunar shuttles, while the rest of us contend with the atrophy of institutional integrity and the utter abdication of providing even minimal shelter from looming disaster.
The irony of ... Show More
51m 14s
Aug 2020
Rutger Bregman on Human Kindness in a Frightened World with Helen Lewis
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared ------ Human beings, we’re taught, are by nature selfish and governed by self-interest. From Hobbes’ theory about the state of nature to Richard Dawkins’ ‘selfish gene’, the roots of this belief are deeply ingrained ... Show More
1 h
Sep 2023
The New Science Behind Tackling Depression
Philip Gold is one of the world's leading researchers of depressive illness. Since 1974, he has worked at the National Institute of Health, where he has served as Chief of Neuroendocrine Research, and Senior Investigator in the National Institute of Mental Health Intramural Resea ... Show More
32m 15s
Sep 2021
Ep 117 | The Dark Horses: From Campus Villains to Political Peacemakers | Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying | The Glenn Beck Podcast
One day, Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying were biology professors at Evergreen State College. The next, they were "campus villains" who dared to speak out when the school told white people to take a “day of absence.” Since then, they have become founding members of the “Intellec ... Show More
1h 29m
Oct 2018
A New World Beyond Pluto, Neuroscience’s Take on Free Will, and Blue Zones Where People Live Longer
Learn about a world beyond Pluto nicknamed “The Goblin” that astronomers just discovered; what neuroscience says about whether humans have free will; and “Blue Zones” where people live longer.In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosit ... Show More
7m 58s
Nov 2020
What If We Lived in a Closed Biosphere? - with Jane Poynter
In 1991, 8 people walked into the first ever biosphere project, committed to live there, grow their own food, recycle their waste and sustain themselves on limited amounts of oxygen for 2 years. So who better to ask "What If we lived in a closed biosphere than Jane Poynter, one o ... Show More
39m 1s