Jennifer Ackerman writes in her new book "What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds" about how owls are cryptic, hard to find, and difficult to understand. Speaking to Shannon Henry Kleiber, she said that’s part of the attraction.More
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Science and Technology
Mark Obmascik tells Anne Strainchamps about the biggest competition in North American bird-watching and how he got drawn into the quest.More
Christopher Benfey tells Anne Strainchamps why there was a hummingbird craze in 19th century Massachsetts, how artists and poets used them as symbols, and why they seem like winged jewels.More
Journalist Sebastian Junger had nearly died when reporting from war zones around the world, but nothing prepared him for the ruptured aneurysm that almost killed him. He's now trying to explain a mysterious encounter he had with his dead father.More
Scientists are revolutionizing our understanding of life and death. It’s now possible to revive patients hours after they’ve been declared clinically dead. Dr. Sam Parnia talks about these advances and the new science of near-death experiences. More
These are tough times for people who care about insects. Roughly 40 percent of insect species face extinction. Poet Heather Swan is haunted by this specter of ecosystem collapse, but she’s also determined to live with love and even hope in a perilous time.More
Biologist and philosopher Andreas Weber says life is all about eating and being eaten, which may sound gruesome, but to him, it’s a miraculous process. He’s the author of “Being Edible: Toward a Mystical Biology.”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
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
At a small think tank in Italy, scientists and philosophers debate the nature of intelligence. Dartmouth neuroscientist Peter Tse traces the evolution of human intelligence — and says our imagination is both our greatest gift and deadliest weapon. More
A group of scientists, philosophers and writers discuss and debate the many different kinds of “intelligence” — and why we’re still grappling with our understanding of sentience in plants, animals and AI. Is a robot dog actually smart?More
At the Galileo Museum in Florence, there’s a dazzling collection of old scientific instruments, including the telescope Galileo used to discover new moons. Cosmologist Marcelo Gleiser explains how Galileo revolutionized the scientific worldview.More
Astrophysicist Adam Frank says there’s an emerging science of “planetary intelligence,” which regards the Earth itself as sentient. It’s a radical idea, with far-reaching implications, and it may just help save the planet. More
A Maori conservationist in New Zealand, Mere Takoko is arguing for granting personhood for whales, who she says are her Indigenous Polynesian ancestors.More
Scientists at Project CETI exploring the sounds of whales have found a “sperm whale phonetic alphabet.” Carl Zimmer, author and science writer for The New York Times, puts the latest whale communications research and news into perspective.More
Marine biologist Shane Gero has spent decades listening to whale conversations. Through Project CETI, he’s found recent success using technologies like artificial intelligence to better understand what whales are saying. More
Roger Payne revolutionized the science of whale biology by discovering the songs of humpback whales. In this 1995 interview, Payne (who died in 2023) described the thrill of touching a whale, and why he fears for the future of whales.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