Useful Knowledge

As a tribal judge, educator, and enrolled citizen of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe, Robert J. Miller’s work is personal. Miller is an expert on Federal Indian Law and serves as the Chief Justice for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe Court of Appeals and a judge for other tribes. In this episode of Useful Knowledge , Miller recaps centuries of legal exchange between Indigenous communities and the American governm...

He’s best remembered as a Founding Father, but did you know that James Madison also helped establish meteorology in the United States? From his observations of weather conditions and crop cycles to notes on the wheat-destroying Hessian fly, Madison’s records speak to the potential and limits of collective scientific work. In this episode of Useful Knowledge , hear from geophysicist and current Nat...

Are monsters real?  In this episode of Useful Knowledge , host Patrick Spero joins author, historian, and self-proclaimed “monster consultant” Surekha Davies to learn about what she calls “monsterification” in human societies. A central theme in her 2025 book Humans: A Monstrous History , Davies suggests that while monsters like giants, cyclopes, and werewolves are not real, humans have used monst...

Indigenous traditions and communities have helped preserve the plants of the Americas since time immemorial. In this special episode of Useful Knowledge , part of the APS’s America’s Scientific Revolutionaries series, hear a conversation about some of the plants and gardens across the Americas , their traditional use, and how we can protect life on our planet through careful cultivation.  This epi...

“That result is not curing a disease, it’s having an advance in our knowledge.”  In this episode of Useful Knowledge , Martin Chalfie shares the story of how, by building on another scientist’s findings, they both went on to win the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. “Useful knowledge” is at the core of the APS, but Chalfie argues for the utility of “useless knowledge.” Some discoveries push us forwar...

In 1999, the American Philosophical Society held a symposium that gathered experts from around the world to make predictions about humanity in the 21st century. One of those experts, demographer and statistician Joel Cohen, met with host Patrick Spero to discuss this millennium’s trends and if we got them right in 1999. In this episode of Useful Knowledge , Cohen reviews his 1999 predictions on to...

Dr. Emily Sperou is an ecobiologist and researcher who spent her doctoral studies and the first years of her postdoctoral career studying one of the world’s most elusive apex predators: the leopard seal. She and her colleagues take arduous boat trips through Antarctica, searching for rare animals and studying their diets, reproduction, and their survival amid climate change, melting polar ice, and...

David Tatel grew up believing in the power of law and science to make life better for everyone. He began doing that work himself, launching a decades-long career as a civil rights lawyer and later, as a judge in the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He fought and decided cases on various topics, notably education, voting rights, environmental law, and disability protections. Alo...

Before becoming a respected biochemist, Michael Marletta was a child watching Sputnik crossing over Rochester, New York, imagining what it might be like to be a scientist one day. He was his mother’s helper in the kitchen, wondering how spices got their flavor and how they changed when mixed together and heated. He admired the periodic table and the unbelievable truth that those simple elements ma...

Distant, freezing, barren–it may seem that the icy regions of the Arctic and Antarctica have nothing to do with life in warmer homes. In this episode of Useful Knowledge , Neil Shubin, paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and APS Member, joins host Patrick Spero to explain how much these regions can tell us about the history and future of life on our planet and beyond. Shubin’s work has allowed...

Psychologist, author, and APS Member Daniel Gilbert considers the human imagination one of our greatest evolutionary gifts. In this episode of Useful Knowledge, Gilbert joins host Patrick Spero to discuss how humans imagine new possibilities and the subjective way we think about the future and the past. Inspired by the United States’ upcoming 250th birthday, Gilbert and Spero discuss what America’...

Historian and APS Member Joyce Chaplin joins host Patrick Spero to speak about Benjamin Franklin and the global significance of the Franklin stove. Chaplin explores how Franklin’s efforts to heat his Philadelphia home during the Little Ice Age led to new ways of thinking about fuel efficiency, indoor climate, and the atmosphere itself. The conversation moves from colonial Pennsylvania and environm...

In this episode of Useful Knowledge , Patrick Spero speaks with pioneering astronomer Jill Tarter about her lifelong search for life beyond Earth. Tarter, a founding figure of modern SETI, reflects on the scientific, technological, and philosophical dimensions of asking whether we are alone in the universe. She discusses how advances in radio astronomy and AI are reshaping the hunt for extraterres...

Classicist Dame Mary Beard joins host Patrick Spero to explore what “useful knowledge” means for understanding the ancient world—and ourselves. From Roman ideas of punishment and citizenship to the myths of freedom and democracy, Beard shows how history offers a new vantage point on the present. She also reflects on how emerging technologies like DNA analysis are reshaping what we know about ancie...