Elena Passarello created “Koko” from the one-thousand word vocabulary of a gorilla who uses sign language. Her book is "Animals Strike Curious Poses."
Exploring the Deeper End of Ideas
Nature
Air Dates:
- February 02, 2019
- January 27, 2018
- August 06, 2017
While their domesticated cousins sleep on our beds, Congress debates wild wolves’ survival. This hour, we’ll explore our complicated relationship with our canine cousins, and the feelings they evoke – fear, hatred, and also love.
In 1993, Norwegian explorer Erling Kagge became the first person to cross Antarctica alone. It took him 50 days. The thing that had the biggest impact on him was the silence.
One of the quietest places in the U.S. is a spot inside the Hoh Rain Forest in the Olympic National Park in Washington. It's called "One Square Inch of Silence." And it was created by the acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton.
Air Dates:
- March 02, 2019
- May 05, 2018
- October 07, 2017
For centuries, mathematicians have been looking for the deep design, the mathematical code to explain everything from microorganisms to spacetime. But it’s a dangerous quest.
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?
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.
If climate change is the most urgent problem facing humanity, why are there so few novels about it? Acclaimed novelist Amitav Ghosh believes that’s a big problem. He says climate change is less a science problem than a crisis of imagination.
We’re starting to see a new kind of fiction: climate fiction. Lidia Yuknavitch’s “The Book of Joan” is one of the most stunning examples. It’s the story of a near-future where Earth is decimated and the last few survivors are stranded in space.
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