Michael Dickinson tells Jim Fleming about the robotic fly he’s building. Dickinson thinks flies are amazingly sophisticated flying machines.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Cognitive researcher Douglas Hofstadter explains how gendered words and phrases — like using "guys" to refer to mixed company — can oftentimes reinforce sexist attitudes.
Do you need an advanced degree in math or physics to make discoveries about the cosmos? Science writer Margaret Wertheim says thousands of amateur scientists have proposed their own theories about the universe.
Many of the biggest ideas in science today were dreamed up in the studios of NY's avant garde artists. So says John Brockman. He was there. Today, he brings the same wide-ranging intellectual spirit to his online science salon, Edge.org.
Want to hear more of Domenico Vicinanza's music from Voyager 1 and 2? Here it is.
Katherine Ellison says that pregnancy and motherhood change women's brains for the better, making them smarter, calmer and more competent.
Ray Kurzweil believes we'll soon have tiny computers embedded in our brains. He says we're on the verge of a new era in evolution - a fusion of biology and machine technology.
Novelist Mark Salzman talks about his experience teaching creative writing at Central Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles, a detention center for L.A.’s most serious young offenders.
When we think of slavery, many of us think of it as an historic trauma—something in the past that the nation"overcame" to become what it is today. But according to Edward Baptist, the instution of slavery drove the economic development and modernization of the United States, and laid the groundwork for American capitalism as we know it today.
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