Why Don’t We All Speak the Same Language? (Earth 2.0 Series)
There are 7,000 languages spoken on Earth. What are the costs — and benefits — of our modern-day Tower of Babel?
Alexandra Petri (Washington Post columnist) is our special guest co-host, with AJ Jacobs (author of It's All Relative) as real-time fact-checker. Tell Me Something I Don't Know covers everything from birth to earth, including pregnancy tests, parenting, monogamy, aging better, and, finally, embalming.
There are 7,000 languages spoken on Earth. What are the costs — and benefits — of our modern-day Tower of Babel?
Alex Guarnaschelli, Alexandra Petri, Hari Kondabolu, Mary Roach, and Jemele Hill are some of the brilliant co-hosts joining us during Season 4. Here's a sneak peek of what you'll learn in 10 new episodes beginning September 17th.
A British economist and journalist, Philippe Legrain has served as special adviser to the director-general of the World Trade Organization and worked as the trade and economics correspondent for the Economist. For his latest book, Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them, he spent over six months interviewing immigrants...
John Urschel was the only player in the N.F.L. simultaneously getting a math Ph.D. at M.I.T. But after a new study came out linking football to brain damage, he abruptly retired. Here’s the inside story — and a look at how we make decisions in the face of risk versus uncertainty.
By some estimates, medical error is the third-leading cause of death in the U.S. How can that be? And what's to be done? Our third and final episode in this series offers some encouraging answers.
How do so many ineffective and even dangerous drugs make it to market? One reason is that clinical trials are often run on “dream patients” who aren’t representative of a larger population. On the other hand, sometimes the only thing worse than being excluded from a drug trial is being included.
We tend to think of medicine as a science, but for most of human history it has been scientific-ish at best. In the first episode of a three-part series, we look at the grotesque mistakes produced by centuries of trial-and-error, and ask whether the new era of evidence-based medicine is the solution.
Standing in line represents a particularly sloppy — and frustrating — way for supply and demand to meet. Why haven't we found a better way to get what we want? Is it possible that we secretly enjoy waiting in line? And might it even be (gulp) good for us?
Tell Me Something I Don't Know is on the weird side of the tracks in Philadelphia with everything you've ever wanted to know about graffiti, cockroaches, tattoos, pee, and more. James Altucher (host of The James Altucher Show) is our special guest co-host, with Mike Maughan (head of global insights at Qualtrics) as real-time fact-checker.
The bad news: roughly 70 percent of Americans are financially illiterate. The good news: all the important stuff can fit on one index card. Here’s how to become your own financial superhero.
Relax with a TMSIDK episode filled with facts on quiet rooms, pillows, comfort food, and ...Spam? Krista Tippett (host of On Being) is our special guest co-host, with Maggie Ryan Sandford (science writer, researcher and producer) as real-time fact-checker.