Lulu Miller's latest project is a "Radiolab" podcast series for children: "Terrestrials." She explains for how nature and child-like sensibility can help adults rediscover a sense of wonder.More
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Science and Technology
Could you get the same therapeutic benefits of a psychedelic drug without actually tripping? Neuroscientist David Olson wants to re-engineer psychedelic molecules to remove the trip. If successful, he might revolutionize the treatment of mental disorders.More
Psychedelic therapy has shown great promise for treating depression, but it's still unclear why exactly it works. Psychiatrist Charles Raison wants to know if it's the drug or the trip that makes psychedelics so potent. Is it biology or consciousness?More
The news about psychedelics tends to focus on clinical trials and lab research. But there’s a long tradition of underground guides working with plant medicines who refer to "unseen beings" and plants as "teachers." Psychologist Rachel Harris talked with many women elders in the psychedelic underground. She calls them "spiritual warriors."More
Bill Limpisathian is a professor of cartography and specializes in a brand new field – map cognition, or how we use and see and think about maps in the brain. More
Samoan journalist Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson was born and raised on the island of Savai'i. Rising sea levels washed away the small barrier islands that protected her home, eventually, forcing people to move — just one example of climate change disappearing islands in the South Pacific.More
Bad things happen when people lose their connection to the more-than-human world. "Animals know something that we that don't," says psychologist Sharon Blackie. That's one lesson you can take from the old shapeshifting myths and fairy tales.More
Marjolijn van Heemstra is the poet laureate of Amsterdam. As her anxiety about climate change and other problems ratcheted up, she found solace in the larger cosmos and became a "dark sky" activist.More
Physicist Carlo Rovelli travels to the core of a black hole, where the arrow of time reverses and a white hole is born. More
Time may be a fundamental quality of the universe, but physicists still can't explain what time is. That hasn't stopped theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser from devoting much of his life to studying the origins of time and the formation of the cosmos.More
A conversation with "rational mystic," physicist Marcelo Gleiser.More
Simon Winchester is a British journalist and best-selling author who spent decades on the road before finally buying a small farm in the Berkshires. The experience led to his book “Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World."More
Land Back is a movement that demands the return of native lands to indigenous people. One of its leaders, Hayden King — executive director of the Yellowhead Institute — explains why the movement is gaining traction in Canada.More
Pharmaceutical companies have a long history of hunting for medicinal drugs, often in Indigenous cultures. Historian Lucas Richert tells the story of how one company went bioprospecting for peyote.More
Sutton King wants to change the culture around psychedelic medicines by confronting historical wrongs and getting Indigenous people into key decision-making roles in the psychedelic industry. More
To a certain extent, loneliness is part of the human condition. You can be lonely anywhere, even surrounded by friends. But modern life has exacerbated it, and that requires modern solutions. Indie game designer Jason Rohrer has one — an artificial friend named Samantha.More
Yuria Celidwen has a wide-ranging critique of how the modern psychedelic movement is taking shape. She was the lead author of a recent article in Lancet arguing for new ethical guidelines for using psychedelics — what she calls “spirit medicine.”More
Daniel Bergner felt frustrated and helpless back when one of his closest family members — his brother — was diagnosed as having bipolar disorder. So Bergner decided to report out other possibilities for his brother’s healing.More