Inquiring Minds

We talk to Jessica Powell, a writer and former VP of Communications for Google, about her new book The Big Disruption: A Totally Fictional but Essentially True Silicon Valley Story.

This week: scientists successfully germinated 2,000-year-old date palm seeds and we might soon know what 2,000-year-old dates taste like; another group of researchers 3D modeled a 3,000-year-old mummy’s vocal tract and what they may have sounded like; and new research on how support cells in brains, called microglia, affect memory in mice.

We talk to science journalist Deborah Blum about her new book The Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.

We talk to wildlife researcher and writer Adele Brand about her new book The Hidden World of the Fox.

We talk to professor of information studies at UCLA and director of the UC Digital Cultures Lab Ramesh Srinivasan about his new book Beyond the Valley: How Innovators around the World are Overcoming Inequality and Creating the Technologies of Tomorrow.

Indre, along with fellow neuroscientist and person who is her husband, Adam Bristol, recap their favorite science stories and interviews of 2019.

We talk to oncologist, professor of medicine, and director of the MDS Center at Columbia University Azra Raza about her new book The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last.

We talk to environmental journalist Beth Gardiner about her new book Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution.

We talk to Michael Casey, Senior Advisor for Blockchain Opportunities at MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative, about his new book, co-authored with Paul Vigna, The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything.

We talk to neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux, author of the new book The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains.

We talk to cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsk about how language can influence the way we think.

We talk to cardiologist, writer, and clinical researcher Haider Warraich about his new book State of the Heart: Exploring the History, Science, and Future of Cardiac Disease.

We talk to author and journalist Joe Posnanski about his new book The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini.

We talk to New York Times writer and journalist Matt Richtel about his new novel, written under the pen name A. B. Jewell, called The Man Who Wouldn't Die.

We talk to theoretical physicist Sean Carroll about his new book Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime.