Chemist Jack Szostak wants to understand how the first life forms came into being on Earth. He and Steve discuss the danger of “mirror bacteria,” the origin of biology in poisonous chemicals, and the possibility that life might exist on other planets too.
A fast-food burger has to taste the same — and cost the same — thousands of times a day at restaurants across the country. Zachary Crockett mans the fryer.
Reginald Dwayne Betts spent more than eight years in prison. Today he’s a Yale Law graduate, a MacArthur Fellow, and a poet. His nonprofit works to build libraries in prisons so that more incarcerated people can find hope.
Suzanne O’Sullivan is a neurologist who sees many patients with psychosomatic disorders. Their symptoms may be psychological in origin, but their pain is real and physical — and the way we practice medicine, she argues, is making those and other health problems worse.
Ken Goldberg is at the forefront of robotics — which means he tries to teach machines to do things humans find trivial.
He has been a lawyer, an instructor at the F.B.I. Academy, the owner of a frozen-yogurt chain, and a winner of the TV show Survivor. Today, Kwon works at Google, but things haven’t always come easily for him. Steve Levitt talks to Kwon about his debilitating childhood anxieties, his compulsion to choose the hardest path in life, and how Kwon used game theory to stage a victory on Survivor.
When you hit the slopes, you might not be thinking about water rights, controlled avalanches, and liability insurance — but someone has to. Zachary Crockett shreds the pow.
Jens Ludwig has an idea for how to fix America’s gun violence problem — and it starts by rejecting conventional wisdom from both sides of the political aisle.
Abraham Verghese is a physician and a best-selling author — in that order, he says. He explains the difference between curing and healing, and tells Steve why doctors should spend more time with patients and less with electronic health records.
John Green returns to the show to talk about tuberculosis — a disease that kills more than a million people a year. Steve has an idea for a new way to get treatment to those in need.
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