Recently we’ve been hearing a lot about transgender identity. That made us wonder… what makes us the gender that we are? And what should you do if your kid doesn’t fit the mold? To find out, we talked...Show More
Online dating can feel like drudgery… can science help you game the system? And do those matching algorithms actually work? To find out, we talked to psychologist Asst. Prof. Paul Eastwick, social psy...Show More
You’ve probably heard that gentrification changes neighborhoods for the worse: first come the hipsters and then the bankers. Soon, the neighborhood is overrun with dog spas and wine bars, and the orig...Show More
Essential Oils - and their claims - are huge right now. But is it all hype, or is there something special about these little brown bottles? To get to the bottom of it, we dig through the studies and s...Show More
More people in the U.S. died from opioids in 2016 than the peak year of the AIDS epidemic. So how did we get here? We speak to Prof. June Dahl, pain specialist Dr. David Tauben, and emergency physicia...Show More
America’s got an opioid problem. So where do we go from here? What can actually help people struggling with opioid addiction? We speak to Dr. Anna Lembke, Dr. Marvin Seppala, and a patient we ca...Show More
Can they help with back pain or anything else? We talk to chiropractor Carl Cleveland III, physical therapist Anita Gross, neurophysiologist Dr. Marcello Costa...and Kaity Sawrey’s parents.Check out o...Show More
So... you’re losing your hair. Is there anything that can be done about it? And are the treatments dangerous -- for your or your penis? We talk to geneticist Prof. Stefanie Heilmann-Heimbach and...Show More
Silicon Valley CEOs, Tibetan monks, and crunchy hippies alike describe meditation as blissful and life-changing, but what does the science say? Can it reduce stress, increase your attention, and impro...Show More
Science Vs peels back the label on GM foods to find out whether they’re safe to eat and what impact they can have on the environment. Both sides of the debate have written impassioned songs, but what ...Show More
Through the 1800s, babies in the U.S. were dressed in gender neutral clothing — you couldn’t tell the girls from the boys based on their outfits. So why did parents start color-coding their kids in pi...Show More
An earworm expert explains how to unstick that song that’s stuck in your head, and why it got lodged there in the first place. Plus, your earwormholes — the songs that transport you through time and s...Show More
Caller Jeremy has a problem: fruit flies have swarmed his apartment, and he needs to know where they came from. ELT finds out how Jeremy’s red-eyed roommates landed in his life. Plus, please help call...Show More
The history of the world’s most iconic movie scream.
Self-service began in a Piggly Wiggly 100 years ago. How’d it become a way of life?
How TV news got a score.
In 1987, a very strange broadcast intrusion occurred in the city of Chicago. For just a couple of minutes, the odd TV character Max Headroom appeared onscreen in the middle of an episode of Dr. Who. H...Show More
This week Josh and Chuck dive into the world of narcissism, one of the most perplexing and disturbing disorders humans can have. Learn all you ever cared to know about people who largely are centered ...Show More
This episode of 99% Invisible is all about acoustic design, the city soundscape, and how to make listening in shared spaces pleasant (or at the very least, possible). It features an interview with Den...Show More
It’s weird how much anxiety comes from parking in a city. Beyond the stress of looking for parking, you must contend with the frequently unreliable meters. The signage can be indecipherable. As a poin...Show More
Without all the beeps and chimes, without sonic feedback, all of your modern conveniences would be very hard to use. If a device and its sounds are designed correctly, it creates a special “theater of...Show More
Our first guest on Song Exploder is Jimmy Tamborello, aka Dntel, aka one half of The Postal Service (the other half being Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie). Jimmy breaks down the song The District S...Show More
Loren Bouchard is the creator of the animated television comedy Bob's Burgers, a series about a family and the restaurant they own and live above, currently in its fourth season on Fox. In addition to...Show More
Spoon was formed in 1993 by singer Britt Daniel and drummer Jim Eno. They've released eight albums, including their most recent record, They Want My Soul, which came out in August 2014. In this episod...Show More
Tycho is the project of designer-turned-musician Scott Hansen, along with guitarist Zac Brown and drummer Rory O'Connor. For this episode, which was recorded in front of a live audience in San Francis...Show More
In 2013, Warpaint starting working on their sophomore album. They retreated away from their home in Los Angeles to the nearby desert oasis of Joshua Tree, California. There, they wrote the song "Love ...Show More
Courtney Barnett released her debut album in March 2015. By the end of the year, she had been nominated for a Grammy for Best New Artist, Spin named her the Songwriter of the Year, and she won four AR...Show More
Singer/songwriter KT Tunstall released her debut album in 2004. It was nominated for a Mercury Prize. The song "Suddenly I See" from that record was a hit on the radio and it’s been used in the soundt...Show More
In 2006, Swedish trio Peter Bjorn and John released their third album, Writer’s Block. For months and months after that, it felt like you couldn’t go anywhere without hearing the first single from tha...Show More
Alt-J formed in Leeds, England in 2007. Their debut album won a Mercury Prize and their second was nominated for a Grammy. Their third album, Relaxer, came out in June 2017. In this episode, they brea...Show More
Phoenix is a Grammy-winning band from Versailles, France. They started putting out music in 1999, and in June 2017, they released their sixth album, Ti Amo. In this episode, singer Thomas Mars and gui...Show More
The song “Closing Time” by the American rock band Semisonic came out in March 1998. It hit #1 on the Alternative charts, and was nominated for a Grammy for Best Rock Song. It gets played in stadiums, ...Show More
Dan Snaith has been making Caribou records since 2001. He won Canada’s Polaris music prize in 2007, and this month, he’s releasing the seventh Caribou album, Suddenly. In this episode, Dan breaks dow...Show More
McFlurries aren't what they used to be. Why did McDonald's stop stirring them? Show notes: 2:29 - McFlurry demo (YouTube) 6:40 - Adrianne's McFlurry 8:40 - Why Is the McFlurry Machine Down Again?...Show More
We all lie. But what separates the average person from the infamous cheaters we see on the news? Dan Ariely says we like to think it's character — but in his research he's found it's more often opport...Show More
Every day, we accept another set of terms and conditions without reading the fine print. But what if there's something hiding in there, waiting to blow up our lives?
A secretive start-up promising the next generation of facial recognition software has compiled a database of images far bigger than anything ever constructed by the United States government: over thre...Show More
Marriage is hard — and there are signs it's becoming even harder. This week on Hidden Brain, we examine how long-term relationships have changed over time, and whether we might be able to improve marr...Show More
This year we’ve gotten one question more than any other from listeners: is Facebook eavesdropping on my conversations and showing me ads based on the things that I say? This week, Alex investigates. ...Show More
This week, a telephone scammer makes a terrible mistake. He calls Alex Goldman. Further Reading If you suspect you are a victim of a tech support scammer, you see a suspicious pop-up, or get an uns...Show More
This week, Alex and Damiano take a trip. This is the conclusion of last week's episode, Long Distance. Further Reading Snigdha Poonam's story on tech support scams in the Hindustan Times If you susp...Show More