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Big Brains

Big Brains explores the groundbreaking research and discoveries that are changing our world. In each episode, we talk to leading experts and unpack their work in straightforward terms. Interesting conversations that cover a gamut of topics from how music affects our brains to what happens after we die.

Does Welfare Reduce Crime? With Manasi Deshpande

27 mins; August 18, 2022

The Crucial Race To Build A Better Battery With Shirley Meng

26 mins; August 04, 2022

Do Animals Dream? With David M. Peña-Guzmán

33 mins; July 21, 2022

Extreme Heat Waves: Why Are They Surging? with Noboru Nakamura

22 mins; July 07, 2022

Why Air Pollution Is Cutting Years Off Our Lives, With Christa Hasenkopf And Anant Sudarshan

28 mins; June 23, 2022

How Tax Dodging And Corporate Secrecy Found A Home In Delaware, With Hal Weitzman

32 mins; June 09, 2022

Why Countries Choose War Over Peace, With Chris Blattman

29 mins; May 26, 2022

How Death In America Is Changing With Shannon Lee Dawdy

26 mins; May 12, 2022

Why We Need To Invest In Parents During A Child's Earliest Years, With Dana Suskind

25 mins; April 28, 2022

The Troubling Rise Of Antibiotic-resistant Superbugs, With Christopher Murray

23 mins; April 14, 2022

Is Scientific Progress Slowing? with James Evans

29 mins; March 31, 2022

Could We Vaccinate Against Opioid Addiction? With Sandra Comer And Marco Pravetoni

24 mins; March 17, 2022

The Man Who Fought To Sanction Putin And Russian Oligarchs, with Bill Browder

31 mins; March 02, 2022

Why Big Ideas Fail To Scale—And How To Fix It With John List

28 mins; February 17, 2022

Could Personalizing Laws Make Society More Just? With Omri Ben-Shahar

26 mins; February 03, 2022

How To Stick To Your Resolutions, With Ayelet Fishbach

28 mins; January 20, 2022

The Overlooked History Of Black Cinema, With Jacqueline Stewart

31 mins; January 06, 2022

Engineering A Cure For Cancer With Melody Swartz & Jeffrey Hubbell

26 mins; December 23, 2021

Confronting Gun Violence With Data, With Jens Ludwig

39 mins; December 09, 2021

Best Of: Why Talking to Strangers Will Make You Happier With Nicholas Epley

25 mins; December 02, 2021

Unlocking The Secrets Of Black Holes, With Andrea Ghez

28 mins; November 18, 2021

Do Your Genes Determine Your Success In Life? With Kathryn Paige Harden

29 mins; November 04, 2021

How The UN Aims To Save Humanity, With Chris Williams And Luis Bettencourt

25 mins; October 21, 2021

Combating Our Global Water Crisis Using AI, with Junhong Chen

25 mins; October 07, 2021

Revolutionizing Technology at the Nanoscale, with Paul Alivisatos

26 mins; September 23, 2021

The Science Behind Forming Better Habits, With Katy Milkman

27 mins; September 09, 2021

The Secret Nazi Past and Billionaire Future of U.S. Space Innovation with Jordan Bimm

27 mins; August 19, 2021

How a Genetic Breakthrough Could Address Global Hunger

22 mins; August 05, 2021

Introducing: Entitled

41 mins; July 29, 2021

The Deadly Flaw In Our Judgment, With Cass Sunstein

25 mins; July 15, 2021

A Scientist’s Beef With The Meat Industry, With Impossible Foods’ Pat Brown

23 mins; July 01, 2021

A Surprising Economic Solution To Climate Change With Michael Greenstone

25 mins; June 17, 2021

Solving The Biggest Mysteries Of Our Universe, With Dan Hooper

29 mins; June 03, 2021

Why You’re Likely Paying An Unfair Share of Property Taxes, with Christopher Berry

29 mins; May 20, 2021

Taking Aliens Seriously, with Avi Loeb

32 mins; May 06, 2021

The ‘Five Horsemen of the Techpocalypse’ with Kara Swisher

23 mins; April 22, 2021

Fighting Poverty And Pandemics, with Nobel Economist Michael Kremer

31 mins; April 08, 2021

Why Life After Incarceration Is Just Another Prison, with Reuben Jonathan Miller

36 mins; March 25, 2021

Anthony Fauci On What We Need To Get Over COVID-19

28 mins; March 08, 2021

The Ethics of COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution, with Laurie Zoloth

32 mins; February 25, 2021

The Doomsday Clock’s ‘Historic Wake-Up Call,’ With Rachel Bronson

34 mins; February 11, 2021

Unraveling the Mystery of Life’s Origins on Earth, with Jack Szostak

21 mins; January 28, 2021

The Urgent Need to Reinvest in American Research, with Barbara Snyder

26 mins; January 14, 2021

Getting Out Of The Lab With John List

27 mins; December 22, 2020

How Alternate Reality Games Are Changing The Real World with Patrick Jagoda and Kristen Schilt

32 mins; December 10, 2020

The Science of Empathy, with Peggy Mason

20 mins; November 25, 2020

Big Brains Presents: The "Capitalisn't" Podcast

47 mins; November 20, 2020

What Remains Unanswered After The 2020 Election, with William Howell and Luigi Zingales

34 mins; November 11, 2020

When Governments Share Their Secrets—And When They Don't, with Austin Carson

28 mins; October 29, 2020

How We Can Fix a Fractured Supreme Court, with Geoffrey Stone

25 mins; October 15, 2020

Correcting History: Native Americans Tell Their Own Stories

36 mins; October 01, 2020

The Future of Voting And The 2020 Election, with Anthony Fowler

24 mins; September 17, 2020

Why The Quantum Internet Could Change Everything, with David Awschalom

25 mins; September 03, 2020

How Loneliness and Isolation Affect Your Health, with Prof. Linda Waite

23 mins; August 27, 2020

The Way You Talk—And What It Says About You, with Prof. Katherine Kinzler

30 mins; August 13, 2020

From LSD to Ecstasy, How Psychedelics Are Altering Therapy, with Prof. Harriet de Wit

19 mins; July 30, 2020

How Can We Achieve Real Police Reform?

30 mins; July 16, 2020

Why We're Obsessed With Conspiracy Theories

27 mins; July 02, 2020

Black Lives Matter Protests: Hope for the Future?

40 mins; June 18, 2020

What Historic Pandemics Could Teach Us About Coronavirus, with Ada Palmer

29 mins; June 08, 2020

A Crisis Management Expert’s Advice on Handling Coronavirus

27 mins; May 21, 2020

How Students and Schools Can Recover From Coronavirus, with Elaine Allensworth

19 mins; May 12, 2020

Trump, Coronavirus and the Cost of Ineffective Government, With William Howell

27 mins; April 30, 2020

How Coronavirus Is Exposing Our Racial Disparities, with Monica Peek

17 mins; April 21, 2020

Coronavirus Shows Why We Need To Rethink Health Care, with Kate Baicker

15 mins; April 03, 2020

What Rats Can Teach Us About Empathy and Racism, with Peggy Mason

20 mins; March 10, 2020

Why the Coronavirus Could Send China’s Economy Back to the 1980s With Chang-Tai Hsieh

18 mins; February 25, 2020

Why The Doomsday Clock Is Closer To Apocalypse Than Ever With Rachel Bronson

25 mins; February 12, 2020

Vladimir Putin’s Number One Enemy With Bill Browder

25 mins; January 27, 2020

How Google and Facebook Are Ruining Capitalism, with Luigi Zingales

26 mins; January 13, 2020

How Quantum Technology Could Change Our Future With David Awschalom

19 mins; December 30, 2019

The Myths Of Millennial Voters With Cathy Cohen

20 mins; December 16, 2019

Why Some Nations Prosper and Others Fail, with James Robinson

27 mins; December 02, 2019

The Hunt for Alien Life and Exoplanets, with David Charbonneau

21 mins; November 18, 2019

Why Chasing The Good Life Is Holding Us Back With Lauren Berlant

24 mins; November 04, 2019

Saving Our Cities By Studying A Million Neighborhoods With Luis Bettencourt

23 mins; October 23, 2019

Why Talking to Strangers Will Make You Happier With Nicholas Epley

24 mins; October 07, 2019

Leading Presidential Scholar Analyzes Trump Impeachment

19 mins; September 27, 2019

The Politics of Archaeology In Iraq With Christopher Woods

24 mins; September 23, 2019

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg On Polarization, Discrimination and Her Favorite Dissent

57 mins; September 09, 2019

Why Your Social Life is a Matter of Life and Death with Linda Waite

22 mins; August 26, 2019

Revolutionizing Economics By Studying People In The Real World With John List

28 mins; August 12, 2019

The Unknown History Of The White Power Movement With Kathleen Belew

27 mins; July 29, 2019

The Missing Link In Evolution with Neil Shubin

26 mins; July 15, 2019

Guest Show - No Jargon

30 mins; July 01, 2019

Trump and the Changing Power of the Presidency with William Howell

26 mins; June 17, 2019

How the Loss of Community Threatens Society With Raghuram Rajan

23 mins; June 03, 2019

The Science of Conspiracy Theories And Political Polarization With Eric Oliver

26 mins; May 20, 2019

A Modern Medical Miracle with Drs. Valluvan Jeevanandam and Talia Baker

22 mins; May 06, 2019

An Archaeological Riddle In The Sahara With Paul Sereno

26 mins; April 15, 2019

Tiny Creatures, Big Discoveries With Nipam Patel

27 mins; April 01, 2019

The Hidden Dangers of Artificial Intelligence with Ben Zhao

21 mins; March 18, 2019

Lessons From Our Country’s Largest School Closing with Eve L. Ewing

26 mins; March 04, 2019

Simple Solutions To Address Social Issues with Harold Pollack

21 mins; February 18, 2019

What We’re Getting Wrong About Millennials With Cathy Cohen

20 mins; February 04, 2019

What Ripples in Space-Time Tell Us About the Universe with Daniel Holz

22 mins; January 21, 2019

Vietnam and the Rise of the White Power Movement with Kathleen Belew

27 mins; January 07, 2019

Big Brains: Back in 2019

51 secs; December 23, 2018

Climate Change’s Human Cost With Michael Greenstone

22 mins; December 10, 2018

David Axelrod on Why ‘Democracy is Messy’ and the Future of Politics

25 mins; November 26, 2018

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