Science and Technology

A crystal ball

There's no shortage of forecasts about the future these days. But did you know that ordinary people can out-predict the pros? More

The people of Twitter

About a year ago, a group of progressive activists started a campaign to buy Twitter. Give the public shares in everyone’s favorite social media platform and turn it into a co-op. How's that working out?More

A whiskey drink

Journalist Elizabeth Kolbert argues that human vices are just as important as human virtues in shaping evolution.More

Tents of scientists during Antarctic summer

When Jane Willenbring was a young scientist working in Antarctica, she was the target of constant hazing by her team leader. Years later, she filed a complaint. David Marchant was recently found guilty of sexual harassment by Boston University.More

Ann Bishop's Wikipedia page

Women are underrepresented on Wikipedia. So Emily Temple-Wood recruited people to write more articles about notable women. In return, she got rape and death threats. Now, every time she's trolled, she writes a new Wikipedia bio of a female scientist.More

Natto

"Natto" is gaining popularity with home fermentation enthusiasts.  Producer Erik Lorenzsonn heads to the Reedsburg Fermentation Fest to ask why, as well as ponder other fermentation mysteries.More

Suzanne Lee of BioCouture explains how to make clothes from bacteria

What if we could harness nature to grow clothing for us?  London-based fashion designer Suzanne Lee explains how.More

An outhouse. For pooping.

At the University of Colorado, microbiologist Rob Knight is exploring a new frontier — the human microbiome.More

Kraut

Sauerkraut, kimchee, kefir, kombucha — Sandor Katz calls himself a "fermentation fetishist."More

Fermented shark meat

Take a big slab of shark meat, bury it in a pit and let it rot. Then dig it up and hang it in a windy shack for four months. No wonder the Vikings took to sea.More

stove

To The Best Of Our Knowledge producer Doug Gordon explains what it’s like to live with obsessive compulsions.More

Black Lives Matter is just one movement whose online presence took root among black Twitter users.

One person’s bubble can be another person’s safe space — a place where you don’t have to pretend and where you can feel supported and understood. For many black Americans, that place is Twitter. Media scholar Meredith Clark explains why.More

The Foo Show set, in virtual reality.

What's it like to host a talk show in virtual reality? We talk avatars with Will Smith, host of “The Foo Show.”More

Torah and jad - exhibits in Big Synagogue Museum, Wlodawa - Poland. (CC BY 2.5)

The story of one famous mathematician’s obsession with the ancient and mystical and numerical world of the Kabbalah, from Shlomo Maital of the podcast "Israel Story."More

The beauty of nature.

Frank Wilczek is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist at MIT. He's kind of obsessed, in his own way, with understanding the universe. Specifically, he’s interested in what he calls “the beautiful question." Is the universe naturally, inherently beautiful?More

Plastic crochet corals from the "Crochet Coral Reef" project by Christine and Margaret Wertheim and the Institute For Figuring.

What if the geometric structure of the universe has been hidden, for centuries, in crochet? Margaret Wertheim can help you get there with a ball of wool, a crochet hook, and some non-Euclidean geometry.More

scene from "Blade Runner 2049"

If you think you haven't seen any movies based on Philip K. Dick's work, you're probably wrong.  David Gill talks about Hollywood's adaptations of Dick's work.More

hall of mirrors

The central question of Philip K. Dick's fiction is "What is reality?" Literary critic Umberto Rossi explains that Dick's work often contains many possible realities.More

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