Inquiring Minds

We talk to bestselling author Daniel Pink about his latest book When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing.

This week: The New Horizons spacecraft took pictures of an object in the Kuiper belt; a study that brings up questions about how to define death; there’s a major upcoming scientific study that the US conducts every 10 years: the US census; and a look into the pricing and access to scientific journals.

We talk to David Amodia, a social neuroscientist and psychology professor at NYU and the University of Amsterdam, about the science of prejudice.

This week: Kishore looks back through 2018 and lays out his favorite science stories of the year.

We talk to Dave Williams, a Canadian astronaut, neuroscientist, physician, and author of the new book Defying Limits: Lessons from the Edge of the Universe.

This week: A study looking into how male hummingbirds divebomb fast enough that their tail feathers make high-pitched squeaks; and new evidence explaining why sea levels were 6-9 meters higher about 150,000 years ago (even though the climate was just about as warm as it is today), and why that’s especially relevant now.

We talk to author Robert Greene, most known for the bestselling The 48 Laws of Power, about his new book The Laws of Human Nature.

This week: A look into quorum sensing, a field of research looking into if bacteria, particularly bacteria that are trying to invade another host, can communicate with each other—and new research suggesting viruses can exhibit the same behavior; new research into using alpha waves to stimulate creativity; and Indre and Kishore’s 2018 science gift recommendations.

Carl Zimmer is a New York Times columnist and author of 13 books about science. We talked to him about his latest book, She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity, which was recently named The Guardian’s Best Science Book of 2018.

This week: The UCL–Lancet Commission on Migration and Heath released a new report that busts some common migration myths; and a scientist at Oxford University has come up with an alteration to Einstein's general theory of relativity that could have some interesting effects on our understanding of our universe: negative mass.

Dr. Concetta Tomaino is a pioneer in the field of music therapy and the executive director and co-founder of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function. On the show this week we talk to Dr. Tomaino about her work treating individuals suffering the effects of brain trauma or neurological diseases as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

This week: A study that tracked ants using little backpacks and a look at a new study suggesting a connection between differences in the DNA of our neurons and Alzheimer's.

We follow up last week’s dino-episode by talking to paleontologist at University of Edinburgh Steve Brusatte about his new book The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World.

We talk to science writer David Quammen about his new book The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life.

Up To Date: 10/19/2018