01
September 28, 2026
Colors
Radiolab · Jad Abumrad & Robert Krulwich · 1 hr 6 min
A playful, gorgeous episode about how different creatures and cultures see colour. It changes how the sky looks.
All topics
Episodes about how the world works.
Handpicked podcast conversations about science, research and honest curiosity — chosen for depth, not headlines.
02
September 27, 2026
#168: The Value of Deep Work in the Age of Distraction
The Art of Manliness · Cal Newport · 57 min
A clear, practical case for long, undistracted focus from the person who named it. Still true, maybe more so.
03
September 26, 2026
Being Kind to Yourself
Hidden Brain · Kristin Neff · 51 min
A researcher on self-compassion shows why being harsh with yourself rarely makes you better, and what works instead.
04
September 25, 2026
David Reich – Why the Bronze Age was an inflection point in human evolution
Dwarkesh Podcast · David Reich · 2 hr 13 min
A geneticist reads ancient DNA like a history book and finds a far stranger, more mixed human story than we were taught.
05
September 23, 2026
233. How to Be Less Terrible at Predicting the Future
Freakonomics Radio · Philip Tetlock · 47 min
The researcher behind decades of forecasting studies explains why experts are often wrong and how ordinary people get better.
06
September 16, 2026
Robert Sapolsky on Why We Behave the Way We Do
Sean Carroll's Mindscape · Robert Sapolsky · 1 hr 29 min
A neuroscientist walks backward from a single action, through seconds, years and millennia, to show how much stands behind every choice.
07
September 10, 2026
Adam Brown – A deep but accessible introduction to general relativity
Dwarkesh Podcast · Adam Brown · 1 hr 38 min
The clearest introduction to general relativity you are likely to hear spoken aloud, from a physicist who refuses to hide behind the maths.
08
September 8, 2026
361 | Bonnie Bassler on How Bacteria Talk and Work Together
Sean Carroll's Mindscape · Bonnie Bassler · 1 hr 16 min
Bacteria hold conversations, count each other and act together. Bassler explains it with the delight of someone who still cannot believe her luck.
09
September 3, 2026
Nick Bostrom on What Happens if AI Solves All of Our Problems
Odd Lots · Nick Bostrom · 56 min
Instead of asking what goes wrong, Bostrom asks what is left for us if everything goes right. The uncomfortable question underneath the loud one.
10
August 31, 2026
Patient Zero
Radiolab · Jad Abumrad & Robert Krulwich · 52 min
How a story about the beginning of an outbreak becomes a story about how we assign blame. Radiolab at its most patient and least sensational.
11
August 30, 2026
A road trip through the data center debate
Search Engine · PJ Vogt · 41 min
PJ Vogt drives to the places where the cloud actually sits and listens to the people who live beside it. Curiosity instead of a verdict.
12
August 27, 2026
364 | Stuart Firestein on How Science Relies on Ignorance and Failure
Sean Carroll's Mindscape · Stuart Firestein · 1 hr 16 min
Firestein argues that science runs on ignorance rather than facts, and Carroll lets the idea breathe. A rare hour that makes not knowing feel like a skill.
13
August 26, 2026
The Bone Wars
99% Invisible · Roman Mars · 45 min
Two rival paleontologists turned the American West into a feud, and modern dinosaur science still carries the dents. Funny, then quietly sobering about how knowledge really gets made.
14
August 22, 2026
The Arrow of Time
Sean Carroll's Mindscape · Sean Carroll · 1 hr 24 min
Carroll explains why the past differs from the future without once losing the thread or talking down to you. It is physics, but it lands as something closer to a meditation on memory and mortality.
15
August 20, 2026
TSMC
Acquired · Ben Gilbert & David Rosenthal · 3 hr 12 min
The story of the single most important company most people cannot name, told with the patience of a long book and the clarity of a great lecture. By the end you understand not just a business but the physical substrate of modern life.
16
August 16, 2026
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Decoder with Nilay Patel · Brian Chesky · 1 hr 6 min
A slogan got loose on the internet and this is the conversation where someone is actually pressed on what it means. Chesky is unusually specific about how he runs things, and the interviewer does not let vague answers pass. Useful whether you agree with him or not.
17
August 12, 2026
Plate Tectonics
In Our Time · Sanjeev Gupta, Rebecca Bell, Saskia Goes · 52 min
A calm academic conversation about how an idea considered ridiculous became the foundation of modern earth science. No music, no drama, just three scholars taking their time. It is a small lesson in how consensus actually changes.
18
August 11, 2026
Memory and Forgetting
Radiolab · Jonah Lehrer, Karim Nader, Oliver Sacks · 58 min
An hour that quietly dismantles the idea that memory is a recording. Every time you remember something you rebuild it, and the rebuilding changes it. The reporting is careful, the storytelling is patient, and the conclusion stays with you long after the episode ends.
19
August 7, 2026
Most of the universe is missing
Unexplainable · Byrd Pinkerton and Noam Hassenfeld · 29 min
A show built entirely around what scientists do not know, applied to the largest gap of all. It models something rare: curiosity that is comfortable ending without an answer.
20
August 5, 2026
Children of the Magenta (Automation Paradox, pt. 1)
99% Invisible · Roman Mars and Katie Mingle · 34 min
Long before anyone argued about AI, aviation had already learned what happens to human skill when the machine does most of the work. This episode turns one flight into a quiet, unforgettable argument about the cost of handing over control.
21
August 4, 2026
Daniel Kahneman on Cutting Through the Noise
Conversations with Tyler · Daniel Kahneman · 56 min
A conversation with one of the few thinkers who changed how we understand our own minds, held by an interviewer who refuses to ask the obvious questions. Kahneman is unusually willing to say what he still does not know, and that honesty is the reason this hour keeps its value.
22
August 3, 2026
Savage Landscapes (with Cal Flyn)
EconTalk · Cal Flyn · 1 hr 2 min
Cal Flyn walks through the places humans abandoned and found them teeming with life. It reframes what we mean by ruin without ever tipping into easy optimism.
23
August 2, 2026
Should this creepy search engine exist?
Search Engine · Kashmir Hill · 61 min
PJ Vogt and journalist Kashmir Hill trace the strange, largely unregulated rise of facial search engines back to one mysterious first builder. It's an investigation that manages to be gripping without sensationalism, and it leaves you with a genuinely unresolved ethical question rather than an easy verdict. This is narrative journalism at its most patient.
24
July 31, 2026
Chaos and Complexity Economics (with J. Doyne Farmer)
EconTalk · J. Doyne Farmer · 65 min
Physicist J. Doyne Farmer argues that standard economic models miss what chaos theory and agent-based simulation can capture about real human behavior. Russ Roberts pushes back throughout, which keeps the conversation honest rather than one-sided. It's a genuine debate about what economics is even trying to predict.
25
July 30, 2026
Nvidia Part I: The GPU Company (1993-2006)
Acquired · Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal · 119 min
Long before Nvidia became a trillion-dollar AI bellwether, it was a scrappy graphics chip company that nearly died more than once. Ben and David trace those near-collapses and the stubborn technical bets that eventually paid off, which makes today's AI boom look far less inevitable and far more earned. It's a masterclass in how founders survive years of being almost wrong.
26
July 29, 2026
David Chalmers on Consciousness, the Hard Problem, and Living in a Simulation
Sean Carroll's Mindscape · David Chalmers · 82 min
David Chalmers coined the term 'the hard problem of consciousness,' and here he and Sean Carroll spend an unhurried hour testing where physicalist explanations of the mind actually break down. The conversation is rigorous without being dense, and it treats simulation theory seriously rather than as a gimmick. Few philosophy-of-mind conversations manage to be both this careful and this fun.
27
July 27, 2026
The Choices Before Us
Hidden Brain · Sheena Iyengar · 49 min
Sheena Iyengar spent her career studying why more options don't necessarily make us happier, and this conversation distills that research into something usable. It reframes daily decision fatigue as a design problem rather than a personal failing. Recorded during early pandemic uncertainty, its insights about control and choice have only grown more relevant.
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