The 2015 Ig Nobels: Studies That Make You Go 'Huh?'
This year's prizes honored, among others, the brave researcher who subjected himself to 200 bee stings to determine where it was most painful.
View ArticleTrying To Change, Or Changing The Subject? How Feedback Gets Derailed
The first episode of Hidden Brain explores switchtracking: a common pattern in conversations you'll be accusing your partner of in no time! Plus speedy science, a cup of tea and a song from Adam Cole.
View ArticleAn Ace Up The Poker Star's Sleeve: The Surprising Upside Of Stereotypes
Annie Duke was often the only woman at the poker table, which influenced the way people saw her, and the way she saw herself. Feeling like an outsider can come at a cost, but also can be an advantage.
View ArticleResearch Methods And Bias In Science
Amid recent scandals, Alva Noë considers an essay on the role of cognitive bias in science — and how methods of research in one field, like physics's data blind study, could be replicated in others.
View ArticleThe Humanities: What's The Big Idea?
The humanities may be under attack, but many argue for the intrinsic and instrumental value of the field. Tania Lombrozo talks to one Berkeley professor who is rethinking the humanities.
View ArticleThe Need To Believe: Where Does It Come From?
Religious belief offers a sense of community with the unknown — with what transcends the confines of our humanity — as science aims to extend our reality, says astrophysicist Marcelo Gleiser.
View ArticleLike It Or Not, We May Be 'Meaning Junkies'
As human beings, we need more than science is able to deliver, says guest blogger Alister McGrath. In his new book, he explores a way to think about science and faith that may hold them together.
View ArticleAfter Paris: Reason, Faith And Love
History shows us clearly that the ability to organize human culture through these virtues is no small thing — it has always been hard won. But we can feel grace to know it at all, says Adam Frank.
View ArticleIs This A Snowy Wonderland Or The World Inside A Petri Dish?
Artist Rogan Brown peers into the invisible worlds of microbes, then uses their forms as the inspiration for large paper sculptures that seem at once familiar and profoundly alien.
View ArticleHow Sound Reveals The Invisible Within Us
Microscopes illuminate the tiny. But sound? Scientists didn't really see it as all that important, until an amazing invention came along that opened new worlds: the stethoscope.
View ArticleScience Can Quantify Risks, But It Can't Settle Policy
Recognizing this doesn't mean we should give up on evidence-based policy, or that anything goes; instead, it invites us to recognize our values and subject them to scrutiny, says Tania Lombrozo.
View ArticleGetting Science Right In Film: It's Not The Facts, Folks
When films capture the method of science, that's when magic happens: It matters more than getting the facts right, says blogger Barbara J. King.
View ArticleNear Wins, And Not Quites: How Almost Winning Can Be Motivating
Shankar Vedantam explores "almosts" and "not quites" on this episode of the Hidden Brain podcast, with the help of Monica Wadhwa, Dan Pink and country music singer Kacey Musgraves.
View ArticleOf Science And Faith, As Discussed By A Physicist And A Cardinal
The essence of a constructive dialogue between faith and science is to recognize that we are all in this together — and that our perplexity at being alive is one and the same, says Marcelo Gleiser.
View ArticleCan Songs Help You Learn Scientific Concepts?
A new set of studies, though preliminary, points to the promise of novel approaches to formal science instruction, like incorporating music and other media into learning, says Tania Lombrozo.
View ArticleResearchers Offer Jet Lag Advice In Return For Data About Your Sleep
Users of an app developed by the University of Michigan to help with jet lag entered information on their time zone and sleep patterns that helped academics with their work. But is the approach valid?
View ArticleKnowledge, The Endless Pursuit
Imagine how sad it would be if we one day arrived at the end of knowledge — no new questions to explore, no boundaries to expand, no great discoveries ahead, says astrophysicist Marcelo Gleiser.
View ArticleThe Madness Of Humanity Part 4: Science Vs. Religion
Science is not out there to kill people's faiths: Science is out there to make sense of the world we live in — and when science gets pitched against religion, everyone loses, says Marcelo Gleiser.
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The Porous Boundary Between Science And The Mysterious
Imagine how sad it would be if, one day, we arrived at the end of knowledge — that would be incomparably worse than embracing doubt as the unavoidable partner of a curious mind, says Marcelo Gleiser.
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Excitement, Frustration, Glory: The Olympics — Or Science?
There is a herolike narrative in science that is not that far from a sports narrative — the striving for success with the hope of bringing something unimagined to the field, says Marcelo Gleiser.
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