Inquiring Minds

It's flu season. And we're all about to crisscross the country to exchange hugs, kisses and germs. We're going to get sick. And when we do, many of us will run to our doctors and, hoping to get better, demand antibiotics. And that's the problem: Antibiotics don't cure the flu (which is viral, not bacterial), but the over-prescription of antibiotics imperils us all by driving antibiotic resistance....

Simon Singh isn't exactly your average fan of Fox's The Simpsons. He has a Ph. D. in particle physics from Cambridge, and made an award-winning documentary about Fermat's Last Theorem. Let's be frank: He's a math geek. But then, so are a surprisingly large number of the show's writers. You may not have realized it, but as Singh shows in his new book, The Simpsons and their Mathematical Secrets, a...

On the show this week we talk to climate researcher Michael Mann about how he, as a self-described math and computer nerd working in an esoteric field known as paleoclimatology, wound up front and center in a nationally watched political campaign. His situation traces back to the world famous "hockey stick" graph, originally published by Mann and his colleagues in a 1998 scientific paper...

This week we feature a conversation with psychologist Alison Gopnik, recorded live at the 2013 Bay Area Science Festival. Gopnik talks about her latest book, The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life. She explains that babies are natural explorers, and way smarter than we used to think. But along the way, we lose that cognitive flexibility and...

This week, we speak with veteran science journalist George Johnson, whose new book The Cancer Chronicles: Unlocking Medicine's Deepest Mystery helps turn much traditional thinking about cancer on its head. It's a provocative and also a personal exploration of the myths and misunderstandings that surround this most formidable enemy to our health and well being. This episode also features a discussi...

Why is America so polarized? Why are our politicians so dysfunctional? Why do they sometimes even seem to downright hate each other? In this episode of Inquiring Minds, moral psychologist and bestselling The Righteous Mind author Jonathan Haidt explains that our differences are, at root, the result of sharply contrasting moral systems and the emotions that underlie them. These emotions differ from...

As two top researchers studying the science of science communication—a hot new field that combines psychology with public opinion research—Dan Kahan and Stephan Lewandowsky agree about most things. There's just one problem. The little thing that they disagree on—whether it actually works to tell people, and especially political conservatives, that there's a "scientific consensus" on clim...

This week we talk to Randy Schekman, the University of California-Berkeley cell biologist who was just awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in medicine for his work on how cells regulate the protein “traffic” that is at the core of their communication with other cells. In the interview with co-host Indre Viskontas, Schekman not only explains his scientific breakthroughs—he also tells us why he wants to ta...

This week we talk to scientist and explorer Sylvia Earle, a woman who has spent almost a year of her life under water. She explains why the oceans are "not too big to fail." But she also says that just maybe, we're growing wise enough to save them. Earle is the National Geographic Society Explorer in Residence, and former chief scientist at NOAA—plus she's a TED Prize winner who used tha...

This week, Chris Mooney talks to environmental journalist Alan Weisman, who explains why, following on his 2007 New York Times bestseller The World Without Us, he decided to centrally take on the issue of human population. For his just-published book Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?, Weisman traveled to 21 countries—from Israel to Mexico, and from Pakistan to Niger—to report o...

There aren't many people on Earth who have spent more of their life in space than Marsha Ivins. A veteran of five space shuttle missions, Ivins has spent a total of 55 days in orbit, on missions devoted to such diverse tasks as deploying satellites, conducting scientific research, and docking with Mir and the International Space Station. This episode features an interview with Ivins, where she rel...