PRI: Science and Creativity from Studio 360

The trendy New York restaurant wd-50 is a destination for foodies, thanks to chef Wylie Dufresne. Dufresne is a leader in the culinary movement called molecular gastronomy. Using surprising chemicals, Dufresne invents dishes that both charm and confound. Kurt Andersen visits Dufresne at wd-50's kitchen laboratory.

Tesla was a flamboyant character who held salons where he played fast and loose with technology. Mike Daisey tells the story of Tesla, Mark Twain, and an X-ray gun.

Janna Levin spends her days chasing down the mysteries of the universe, like chaos theory and black holes. And to take a break from mapping the universe, she makes stuff up -- not as a scientist but as a novelist. Her first novel, "A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines," combines the tricky worlds of mathematical theory and historical fiction.

Wylie Dufresne makes his unique Eggs Benedict, featuring a strange creation all his own: deep-fried hollandaise sauce. Food scientist John Coupland explains how the inventions of cutting-edge chefs sometimes find their way to the frozen food aisle of your supermarket.

If there's one climate change scientists are sure of, it's that sea levels are rising - and coastal cities are in their way. In a new exhibit up at New York's Museum of Modern Art, teams of architects envision radical approaches to the problem. Studio 360's Eric Molinsky looks into how innovation in design can help protect coastal cities.

It would be hard to write a novel - or read one - without the ability to empathize. Recent discoveries tell us that empathy may be hard-wired in our brains. V.S. Ramachandran, who teaches neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego, explains how mirror neurons work their empathic magic.

Kurt checks in with a Columbia University physicist (and novelist) who's anxiously awaiting the LHC's first particle collisions. Janna Levin is the author of "How the Universe Got Its Spots" and "A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines."

All over the country, amazing science is happening without institutional or government funding. Matt Cavnar talked to inventors in garages, basements, a Quonset hut, even NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab to see what home inventors are doing in the 21st century.

Scientist are looking for ways to better understand an autistic person's perception of the world. In a recent study, Ami Klin and Warren Jones of the Yale School of Medicine tracked autistic viewers' gazes as they watched the 1966 film "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." David Gruber visited their lab and tried on the apparatus.

Though President Obama has spoken of a new commitment to NASA, getting humans to Mars still looks a long way off. Undeterred, a group of scientists and engineers created the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah to simulate life on the red planet. We sent reporter Mike Neal there on a mission.

A lot of us learned that Guglielmo Marconi invented radio, but Nikola Tesla transmitted electromagnetic waves before Marconi –- the Supreme Court decided the case in 1943. Jim Stagnitto, the Director of Engineering for WNYC, gives Kurt a tour at the top of the Empire State Building to check out a radio transmitter in action.

When Richard Rifkind was a kid, Hollywood made dramatic biopics about scientists like Paul Erlich, who invented an early cure for syphilis -- impressive men with beards and German accents. Rifkind became a scientist himself; his treatment for lymphoma was approved by the FDA in 2007. Now retired from research, Rifkind is making movies himself.

Are supermodels more symmetrical? Beauty expert Kelley Quan joins Kurt and Mario Livio to talk about how symmetry affects human attraction. Quan is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the online fashion magazine ZooZOOM.com, and she explains how symmetry -- or the lack of it -- can make people more attractive.

Magicians wow us on stage with sleight of hand and misdirection. But it turns out there's also a lot magic can tell us about how our brains work. Produced by Michael May.

Biology professor Hazel Sive teaches at MIT. She thinks science could benefit from showing a little more emotion, so she started scoring her classroom presentations with Pink Floyd and The Who. Produced by Ari Daniel Shapiro.