Putting aside the question of whether there's any validity to it, the ancient science of astrology has a lot in common with contemporary data science. In fact, data scientist Alexander Boxer calls astrology humanity’s very first set of algorithms.More
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Science and Technology
Tania Munz recently wrote a biography of Karl von Frisch — the German scientist who cracked the mystery of the honeybee’s waggle dance, which shows the rest of the hive precisely where to find a new food source miles away.More
In many parts of Detroit, there are blighted, abandoned patches of land. Instead of looking the other way, Timothy Paule and Nicole Lindsey started buying up vacant lots and building bee hives as an act of urban renewal.More
Christof Koch, a leading neuroscientist in the field of consciousness, says bees are smarter than we ever imagined.More
A single empty yellow chair sits next to Heather Swan’s tall, buzzing beehive in her backyard in Madison, Wisconsin. Swan keeps it there to sit next to the bees — some 60,000 insects —and talk with them.More
Heather Swan is a beekeeper and author — she tells Steve Paulson about what it's meant for her to be "chosen by the bees."More
One of the greatest walkers of our time, William Helmreich — known for exploring every street in New York City — was an early casualty of COVID-19. But composer David Rothenberg got to walk with him one last time, around wetlands in Queens.More
Magic mushrooms go way back in human history. Some people even believe psychedelic mushrooms helped create human consciousness. We examine the "Stoned Ape Theory."More
Writer Eugenia Bone’s obsession with mushrooms began with her love of eating them. She shares notes from her hunts for morels as well as three recipes for how to best enjoy fungal delicacies. More
Fungi contain vast, untapped potential, says Louie Schwartzberg — to remediate pollution, reverse climate change, even address chronic disease and mental disorder — something he argues in his film "Fantastic Fungi."More
Paul Stamets may be the most passionate mycologist on the planet. He tells Steve why new medicines and technologies derived from mushrooms might save life as we know it.More
Producer Charles Monroe-Kane's son goes to a school with a 13.8% non-vaccination rate. So why aren't his neighbors vaccinating their kids? Charles went out searching for the answer.More
Why have some parents started second guessing their pediatrician’s advice, to the point that measles is showing up in Disneyland? Historian Arthur Allen explains how we got here.More
Richard Holmes talks with Steve Paulson about how art and science influenced each other during the Romantic period.More
Jonah Lehrer says that the great French writer Proust described insights into the way the mind processes memory long before the scientists could prove how the brain worked.More
Ray Kurzweil tells Steve Paulson humans will merge with new technology and vastly improve their intelligence.More
Psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist says most neuroscientists have downplayed the differences between the left and right sides of the brain. He says he thinks the left hemisphere has become so dominant in Western culture that we're losing the sense of what makes us human.More
James Gardner is the author of “Biocosm: The New Scientific Theory of Evolution: Intelligent Life Is the Architect of the Universe.”More