Podcasts about John Templeton Foundation

In this episode, we break the thermometer and watch the mercury spill out as we discover that temperature is far stranger than it seems. We first ran this episode in 2021: Five stories that run the gamut from snakes to stars. We start out underwater, with a species of snake that has evolved a devious trick for keeping warm. Then we hear the tale of a young man whose seemingly simple method of warming up might be the very thing making him cold. And Senior Correspondent Molly Webster blows the lid off the idea that 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit is a sound marker of health. In this episode, we break the thermometer and watch the mercury spill out as we discover that temperature is far stranger than it seems. We first ran this episode in 2021: Five stories that run the gamut from snakes to stars. We start out underwater, with a species of snake that has evolved a devious trick for keeping warm. Then we hear the tale of a young man whose seemingly simple method of warming up might be the very thing making him cold. And Senior Correspondent Molly Webster blows the lid off the idea that 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit is a sound marker of health. EPISODE CREDITS:Reported by - Lulu Miller and Molly WebsterProduced by - Becca Bressler, Lulu Miller and Molly Websterwith help from - Carin LeongFact-checking by - Emily KriegerSign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Signup (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

What happens when a filmmaker refuses to judge his characters and just keeps asking "and then what would happen?" Kelly and Tammy dive into Spike Jonze's Her, a film made in 2013 that somehow predicted our current moment of AI engagement with unsettling precision. They wander through questions about embodiment and consciousness, the dangerous beauty of unchecked curiosity, and why conviction kills creativity before it can bloom. This Go To episode is supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. To learn more, please visit: https://www.templeton.org/ To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a culture that often reduces love to romance, we explore the science of love across the lifespan—revealing how our bonds with parents, friends, partners, and communities shape our health, happiness, and survival.Summary: Love is commonly understood as a feeling, yet scientific research increasingly points to its role as a core biological drive. In this episode of The Science of Love, we explore how love is expressed through caregiving, friendship, romantic attachment, and shared experience, and how these connections leave measurable effects on the brain, body, and even the microbiome. Scroll down for a transcription of this episode.Related The Science of Happiness episodes:  The Science of Love Series: https://bit.ly/TheScienceofLove36 Questions to Spark Love and Connection: https://tinyurl.com/ktcpz78uHow 7 Days Can Transform Your Relationship: https://tinyurl.com/bdh2ezhrToday's Guests:ANN DRUYAN is an author, activist, and documentary producer.Learn more about Ann Druyan's work here: https://tinyurl.com/5n8crkevDANIEL LEVITIN is a neuroscientist, musician, and bestselling author.Follow Daniel Levitin on IG: https://www.instagram.com/daniellevitinofficialJESSICA EISE is a social and environmental scientist and is an assistant professor of social and environmental challenges with Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington.Learn more about Jessica Elise here: https://jessicaeise.com/ANNA MACHIN is an evolutionary anthropologist who studies the evolution of love.Learn more about Anna Machin here: https://annamachin.com/FRANCESCO BEGHINI is a computational biologist at Yale University.Learn more about Francesco Beghini here: https://tinyurl.com/knm4du4mILANA BRITO is a biomedical engineering professor at Cornell University.Learn more about Ilana Brito here: https://tinyurl.com/mtnhw3ydCONSTANCE BAINBRIDGE is a Communication PhD student at UCLA.Learn more about Constance Bainbridge here: http://constancebainbridge.com/SANDRA LANGESLAG is a cognitive and biological psychologist who studies romantic love.Learn more about Sandra Langeslag here: https://tinyurl.com/523wc9wxMessage us or leave a comment on Instagram @scienceofhappinesspod. E-mail us at happinesspod@berkeley.edu or use the hashtag #happinesspod.Help us share The Science of Happiness! Leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts or share this link with someone who might like the show: https://tinyurl.com/2p9h5aapFunding for this special was provided by the John Templeton Foundation, as part of the Greater Good Science Center's Spreading Love Through the Media initiative.Transcription: https://tinyurl.com/bfave5wd

Kelly sits down with visionary neuroscientist Gül Dölen—who FedExed seven octopuses to her lab and dosed them with MDMA to understand how brains learn—and to explore what happens when you let wonder lead the way. Gül explains that our brains have windows when they're wide open to learning, that those windows known as "critical periods" close—and more importantly, how we might crack them back open. She and Kelly discuss why pure curiosity, the kind with no practical application in sight, has always been the source of our most important discoveries, and why deprivation and mystical joy might be two paths to the same place. Gül makes the case that there's magic everywhere if you're willing to see the physical world as miraculous, and that lasting change comes not from a pill but from what you learn while your mind is open. Note: This episode discusses neuroscience research on psychedelics, including MDMA. All references are to controlled scientific studies, not recreational use. This episode was made possible by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. To learn more, please visit ⁠www.templeton.org⁠. Recorded at the Aspen Ideas Festival. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Parker J. Palmer was a young man, he became aware of a growing unrest within him. Guided by his inner voice, he turned down prestigious university jobs and instead took a challenging, unstable job in community organizing. Parker then followed his north star again – and moved with his family to live in a radically equal Quaker community for over a decade.   Parker is an activist and author who has written 10 incredibly influential books – including Let Your Life Speak. He founded the Center for Courage & Renewal, which supports leadership, vocation, and community formation. And in 2021, the Freedom of Spirit Fund gave him their Lifetime Achievement Award in honor of work that promotes and protects spiritual freedom. Parker believes that in this moment of instability, finding our internal grounding is more important than ever – and he shares a beautiful ‘circle of trust' practice for listening deeply to others. You'll learn how others are so crucial to tuning into your true inner voice - and how listening to ourselves can then move us out into the wider world. Links and resources:  About Parker J. Palmer Parker's 10 published books About the Center for Courage & Renewal Living the Questions - Parker J. Palmer's Substack The Growing Edge, Parker's project with Carrie Newcomer Parker's collected On Being columns With & For is a podcast of the Thrive Center, an applied research center that exists to catalyze a movement of human thriving, with and for others through spiritual health. Learn more at thethrivecenter.org. Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter Dr. Pamela Ebstyne King hosts With & For, and is the Executive Director of the Thrive Center and the Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at the School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy at Fuller Seminary. Follow her @drpamking. About With & For Host: Pam King Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook Operations Manager: Lauren Kim Social Media & Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen Senior Producer: Clare Wiley Executive Producer: Jakob Lewis Produced by Great Feeling Studios Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and Fuller Seminary's School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. The podcast was made possible through the support from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

One spring evening in 2024, science journalist Rachel Gross bombed at karaoke. The culprit was a bleed in a fist-sized clump of neurons tucked down in the back and bottom of her brain called the Cerebellum. A couple weeks later, her doctors took a piece of it out, assuring her it just did basic motor control - she might be a bit clumsy for a while, but she'd still be herself. But after that surgery Rachel did not feel quite like herself. So she dove into the dusty basement of the brain (and brain science)  to figure out why. What Rachel found was a new frontier in neuroscience. We learn what singing Shakira on stage has to do with reaching for a cup of coffee  — and why the surprising relationship between those two things means we may need to rethink what we think about thinking.Special thanks to Warzone Karaoke at Branded Saloon, the Computer History Museum for their archival interview with Henrietta Leiner, either the choir “Singing Together, Measure by Measure” or the Louis Armstrong Department of Music Therapy which houses it, Daniel A. Gross (... and Shakira?)EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Rachel GrossProduced by - Sindhu GnanasambandanEPISODE CITATIONS:Articles -“Ignoring the cerebellum is hindering progress in neuroscience.” (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39934082/), by Wang et al, 2025“The cerebellum and cognition.” (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29997061/), by Schmahmann JD. Neurosci Lett. 2019“How did brains evolve?” (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11805823/), by Barton RA., Nature. 2002Books - Vagina Obscura (https://www.rachelegross.com/book), by Rachel E. GrossSign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Signup (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Kelly and Tammy explore creativity through La La Land, a film that uses color like a second language and turns a highway traffic jam into magic. Tammy reflects on her own journey trying to make it in LA and why the film's authenticity around creative pursuit never fails to wreck her, while Kelly considers the deep self-belief required to chase any dream and the humiliation baked into trying. They talk about what happens when two people are more committed to their art than to each other, how the end of the film refuses to give us what we think we want, and why watching people struggle toward something they might not ever achieve is somehow the most relatable thing in the world. This episode was made possible by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. To learn more, please visit: templeton.org To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Metaphors matter. They enliven our speech and our prose; they animate our arguments and stir our passions. Some metaphors power political movements; others propel scientific revolutions. These little figures of speech delight, provoke, captivate, shock, amuse, and galvanize us. In one way or another, metaphors just seem to help us make sense of a messy world. But how do they do all this? Whence their peculiar powers? What does it say about the human mind that we just can't escape our metaphors—and frankly don't want to?  My guest today is Dr. Stephen Flusberg. Steve is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Vassar College, where he directs the Framing, Reasoning, And Metaphor (FRAME) Lab. Here, Steve and I talk about what metaphors are and why we're so drawn to them. We discuss some of the misleading ideas about metaphor you may remember from middle school literature class. We consider why some metaphors work and others flop. We talk about the metaphors we use for climate change and prevalence and potency of war metaphors across different realms of public discourse. We consider how metaphor operates in science and in scientific theorizing. Finally, we talk about the question of whether there are some ideas that we simply can't grasp literally, concepts we can only approach through metaphor. Along the way, Steve and I talk about: "aura farming"; nautical metaphors and textile metaphors; the outmoded idea that metaphors are mere adornments; metaphor versus analogy; dead metaphors and how to resuscitate them; shadows and footprints; Dan Dennett's technique of metaphorical triangulation; and the brain-as-computer metaphor—and whether it is actually a metaphor. Alright, friends this is a fun one. Steve has spent his entire career exploring this fascinating terrain—and, as you'll see, he's a lively and affable guide. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Dr. Steve Flusberg.    Notes 3:00 – For more on "beige flags," see here. For more on "aura farming," see here. 8:00 – For an overview of metaphor in communication and thought, see here for an article by Dr. Flusberg and co-authors. 18:00 – The "life is a journey" (or "career is a journey") metaphor—as well as other examples we discuss—are treated at length in the classic book, Metaphors We Live By. 24:00 – For a detailed academic treatment of the relationship between metaphor and analogy, see here. 32:00 – Some of the best-studied "orientational metaphors" are those found in the domain of time. See here and here. 37:00 – For more on metaphors used in discussions of environmental issues, see a paper by Dr. Flusberg and a colleague here.   42:00 – For more on the idea of the "climate shadow," see here. 46:00 – The study by Dr. Flusberg and colleagues comparing the effects of race and war metaphors for climate change. 55:00 – The article by Dr. Flusberg and colleagues on the role of war metaphors across different areas of public discourse. 1:04:00 – For an influential discussion of the role of metaphors and analogies in science, see here. For Kensy's take on Darwin's metaphors for natural selection, see here. For discussion of whether, the "brain-as-computer" metaphor is actually a metaphor, see here and here. 1:12:00  – For more on the history of metaphors in the English language—including analyses of which source domains have historically been the most fruitful—see here. 1:14:00 – For discussion of the (disputed) idea of "dead metaphors," see here and here. 1:17:00 – The idea of "theory-constitutive metaphors" in science is discussed in a chapter by Richard Boyd in this book.  1:19:00 – For a preview of Dr. Flusberg's in-progress paper on the philosopher Daniel Dennett and his technique of "metaphorical triangulation," see here. 1:33:00 – For the (extremely short) Borges' story on a maps that are too accurate to be useful, see here.   Recommendations Metaphors we Live By, by George Lakoff & Mark Johnson Consciousness Explained, by Daniel Dennett Three Sheets to the Wind, by Cynthia Barrett   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).

After a white supremecist killed his father at a Sikh temple outside of Milwaukee, Pardeep Singh Kaleka pairs up with a former neo-Nazi to teach students about overcoming hate and finding forgiveness. Today's episode was produced in collaboration with Pauline Bartolone, and was funded in part by UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center, as part of its "Spreading Love Through the Media" initiative, supported by the John Templeton Foundation. Pauline can be reached at paulinebartolone.org and on Instagram @pmbartolone Today's episode featured Pardeep Singh Kaleka. If you'd like to reach out to Pardeep, you can email him at Pardeep.S.Kaleka@gmail.com. Pardeep is on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn @pardeepsinghkalekaPardeep is the Clinical Director at Mental Health America–Wisconsin, a senior anti-hate advocate, and co-author of The Gift of Our Wounds. After losing his father in the 2012 Oak Creek Sikh Temple attack, he became a leading voice for community healing, resilience, and faith. With over 25 years of experience in law enforcement, education, mental health, and supporting hate-crime survivors, Pardeep has served with the U.S. Department of Justice–CRS and led the Interfaith Conference. He specializes in communal trauma and helps public health professionals, educators, and law enforcement develop community-oriented strategies to address conflict, hate, and rising targeted violence.Producers: Whit Missildine, Andrew Waits, Pauline Bartolone Content/Trigger Warnings: Mass shooting / gun violence, Murder / death, Hate crime / domestic terrorism, White supremacy / neo-Nazi ideology, Racism / religious persecution (anti-Sikh bias; Islamophobia mentioned), PTSD / trauma responses, Suicidal ideation (students mention feeling suicidal), Bullying, Addiction / substance abuse, Graphic violence / execution-style killing details. Police shooting / officer shot, explicit language Social Media:Instagram: @actuallyhappeningTwitter: @TIAHPodcast Website: thisisactuallyhappening.com Website for Andrew Waits: andrdewwaits.comWebsite for Pauline Bartolone: pmbartolone.org Support the Show: Support The Show on Patreon: patreon.com/happening Wondery Plus: All episodes of the show prior to episode #130 are now part of the Wondery Plus premium service. To access the full catalog of episodes, and get all episodes ad free, sign up for Wondery Plus at wondery.com/plus Shop at the Store: The This Is Actually Happening online store is now officially open. Follow this link: thisisactuallyhappening.com/shop to access branded t-shirts, posters, stickers and more from the shop. Transcripts: Full transcripts of each episode are now available on the website, thisisactuallyhappening.com Intro Music: “Sleep Paralysis” - Scott VelasquezMusic Bed: KPM Main Series (KPM) - Barely There ServicesIf you or someone you know is struggling with the effects of trauma or mental illness, please refer to the following resources: National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: Text or Call 988 National Alliance on Mental Illness: 1-800-950-6264National Sexual Assault Hotline (RAINN): 1-800-656-HOPE (4673)See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the 4th episode of our Super Traits series, Kelly sits down with her favorite writer George Saunders—author of 12 books including Lincoln in the Bardo and his latest novel Vigil—to explore creativity as a practice of staying open. They talk about how precise language changes the way we receive the world, why specificity lowers reactivity, and what it means that neurologically speaking, we're always writing and revising. George reflects on empathy as a gateway to creativity, why foreclosure is death to the creative process, and the dream of repair—which might be the whole job of fiction. He also shares why he never decides what his books mean before he writes them and why he considers constraints to be essential. This episode was made possible by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. To learn more, visit www.templeton.org. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of the most persistent myths about self-compassion is that it's selfish. But in reality, self-compassion connects us to the rest of humanity – and it's a critical pathway to thriving.  Dr. Kristin Neff is a pioneer in the study of self-compassion. As Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas and founding director of the Self-Compassion Institute, Kristin has spent decades researching the mind-altering power of self-compassion. Kristin's findings show that kindness is a better motivator than criticism, and she breaks down how self-compassion connects to healthy spirituality. Kristin also talks openly about how self-compassion helped her face challenges through her divorce and in parenting her son, who's on the autism spectrum.   You will walk away from this episode with a three-step plan for self-compassion - and a simple practice if you don't know where to get started. Links and resources The Self-Compassion Institute Guided practices About Dr. Kristin Neff With & For is a podcast of the Thrive Center, an applied research center that exists to catalyze a movement of human thriving, with and for others through spiritual health. Learn more at thethrivecenter.org. Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter Dr. Pamela Ebstyne King hosts With & For, and is the Executive Director of the Thrive Center and the Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at the School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy at Fuller Seminary. Follow her @drpamking. About With & For Host: Pam King Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook Operations Manager: Lauren Kim Social Media & Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen Senior Producer: Clare Wiley Executive Producer: Jakob Lewis Produced by Great Feeling Studios Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and Fuller Seminary's School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. The podcast was made possible through the support from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

In the beginning, there was nothing but air. The supreme being breathed upon it, and the air became water. Air and water moved together, forming mud. Seeing its shape, the supreme being breathed again – and life began. Today, we'll be exploring this creation story – born of Afro-Brazilian philosophy – forged under conditions of extreme violence, displacement, and resistance. During the transatlantic slave trade, more than four million Africans were forcibly taken to Brazil – far more than were sent to the United States. They brought with them their gods, their rituals, and their philosophies. Despite sustained efforts to suppress them, these traditions not only survived, but developed into sophisticated systems of thought that remain living practices today. We'll be exploring these traditions with José Eduardo Porcher Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. José is currently Director of the Spiritual Realities, Relationality, and Flourishing: Brazilian Contributions to Philosophy of Religion project, and has been centrally involved in a number of major research initiatives examining alternative approaches to philosophy of religion – including the John Templeton funded project Expanding the Philosophy of Religion by Engaging with Afro-Brazilian Traditions. In this episode, we'll explore the Afro-Brazilian religious tradition of Candomblé: its account of creation, its distinctive conception of God and the deities, and its striking vision of a world enchanted by a vital life-force that flows through people, objects, nature, and the divine. We'll ask what it means to live in a world where gods possess human bodies, where objects can be sacred, and where divinity is powerful yet limited. And we'll consider what these traditions might teach us about evil, responsibility, nature, and how to live well in a world that is far stranger than Western philosophy ever thought.   This episode is produced in partnership with The Global Philosophy of Religion Project at University of Birmingham, funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Links José Eduardo Porcher, Webite José Eduardo Porcher, Afro-Brazilian Religions (Book)

Most of us spend some part of our lives feeling bad about ourselves and wanting to feel better. But this preoccupation is a surprisingly new one in the history of the world, and can largely be traced back to one man: a rumpled, convertible-driving California state representative named John Vasconcellos who helped spark a movement that took over schools, board rooms, and social-service offices across America in the 1990s. This week, we look at the rise and fall of the self-esteem movement and ask: is it possible to raise your self-esteem? And is trying to do so even a good idea?Special thanks to big thank you to the University of California, Santa Barbara Library for use of audio material from their Humanistic Psychology Archives and to their staff for helping located so many audio recordings. EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Heather Radke and Matt Kielty Produced by - Matt KietlyFlute performance and compositions by -  Ben BatchelderVoiceover work by - Dann FinkFact-checking by - Anna Pujol-Mazzini and  Angely Mercadoand Edited by  - Pat WaltersEPISODE CITATIONS:Articles - UCSB Humanistic Psychology Archive (https://zpr.io/HfVjUmvcVevE)Books - Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It's Doing to Us (https://zpr.io/eGRyqz9zNQHu) by Will Storr. Counterpoint, 2018.A Liberating Vision (https://zpr.io/tJn7BR5m84fv) by Vasconcellos, John. Impact Publishers, Inc., 1979The Therapeutic State (https://zpr.io/tJn7BR5m84fv) by Nolan, James, Jr. NYU Press, 1998Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

This week's Go To is another film discussion between Kelly and Tammy, this time exploring creativity through Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel. They break down what makes the film a masterclass in creative choices: the strict candy-store palette, the impeccable production design/hair/makeup and the intentional postures and snappy pacing from the actors. Kelly reflects on what it takes to hold the line on daring creative choices and why collaboration that comes too early can make something special become ordinary. It's about trusting your audience, the miracle of hundreds of people doing their jobs superbly at once, and proof that radical creativity can also be commercially successful. This Go To is supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. To learn more, visit: templeton.org. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tyler considers Diarmaid MacCulloch one of those rare historians whose entire body of work rewards reading. This work includes his award-winning Cranmer biography, his sweeping histories of Christianity and the Reformation, and his latest on sex and the church, which demonstrates what MacCulloch calls the historian's true vocation: unsettling settled facts to keep humanity sane. Tyler and Diarmaid explore whether monotheism correlates with monogamy, Christianity's early instinct towards egalitarianism, what the Eucharistic revolution reveals about the cathedral building boom, the role of Mary in Christianity and Islam, where Michel Foucault went wrong on sexuality, the significance of the clerical family replacing the celibate monk, why Elizabeth I—not Henry VIII—mattered most for the English Reformation, why English Renaissance music began so brilliantly but then needed to start importing Germans, whether Christianity needs hell to survive, what MacCulloch plans to do next, and more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded October 29th, 2025. This episode was made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Image Credit: Barry Jones

Kelly sits down with theoretical physicist Brian Greene—who might seem like an unusual choice for a conversation about creativity until you learn he's turned the general theory of relativity into theater that makes people cry. They explore what it means to translate the mysteries of the universe into stories that move us, why Brian doesn't believe in free will, and how collections of particles governed by physical law can paint masterpieces and feel transcendent joy. Brian reflects on going from a laser-focused college student who only wanted equations to someone teaching a course called "Origins and Meaning" with no equations at all, and why his father pushed him away from music even though he was a composer. It's about cosmic communion, auditory "cheesecake", and what happens when science gets stitched into the fabric of culture. This is the third episode in our Super Traits series. This episode was made possible by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. To learn more, please visit: templeton.org Thank you to our friends at the Aspen Ideas Festival where this episode was recorded. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode, first aired in 2019, brings you the story of John Scott, the professional hockey player that every fan loved to hate.  A tough guy. A brawler. A goon. But when an impish pundit named Puck Daddy called on fans to vote for Scott to play alongside the world's greatest players in the NHL All-Star Game, Scott found himself facing off against fans, commentators, and the powers that be.  Was this the realization of Scott's childhood dreams? Or a nightmarish prank gone too far? Today on Radiolab, a goof on a goon turns into a parable of the agony and the ecstasy of the internet, and democracy in the age of Boaty McBoatface.Special thanks to Larry Lynch and Morgan Springer. Check out John Scott's "Dropping the Gloves" podcast (https://www.droppingthegloves.com/) and his book (https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/A-Guy-Like-Me/John-Scott/9781501159657) "A Guy Like Me". EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Latif NasserProduced by - Matt KieltyOriginal music and sound design contributed by -John Dryden, Thee Oh Sees, Weedeater and Bongzilla.Sign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Signup (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Kelly and Tammy continue their Friday movie tradition, this time exploring humility in The Pursuit of Happyness. They discuss the difference between humiliation—being forced down—and humility—choosing to stay grounded, and how Will Smith's character, Chris Gardener, retains his dignity while losing everything. They talk about being honest when you have every reason to lie, the fine line between owning your struggle without burdening others, and why showing your flaws almost never comes back to bite you the way we fear. This episode was made possible by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. To learn more visit: www.templeton.org. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello friends, and happy new year! We're gearing up for a new run of episodes starting later in January. In the meanwhile, enjoy this pick from our archives. ------ [originally aired October 16, 2024] IQ is, to say the least, a fraught concept. Psychologists have studied IQ—or g for "general cognitive ability"—maybe more than any other psychological construct. And they've learned some interesting things about it. That it's remarkably stable over the lifespan. That it really is general: people who ace one test of intellectual ability tend to ace others. And that IQs have risen markedly over the last century. At the same time, IQ seems to be met with increasing squeamishness, if not outright disdain, in many circles. It's often seen as crude, misguided, reductive—maybe a whole lot worse. There's no question, after all, that IQ has been misused—that it still gets misused—for all kinds of racist, classist, colonialist purposes. As if this wasn't all thorny enough, the study of IQ is also intimately bound up with the study of genetics. It's right there in the roiling center of debates about how genes and environment make us who we are. So, yeah, what to make of all this? How should we be thinking about IQ? My guest today is Dr. Eric Turkheimer. Eric is Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia. He has studied intelligence and many other complex human traits for decades, and he's a major figure in the field of "behavior genetics." Eric also has a new book out this fall—which I highly recommend—titled Understanding the Nature-Nurture Debate. In a field that has sometimes been accused of rampant optimism, Eric is—as you'll hear—a bit more measured. In this conversation, Eric and I focus on intelligence and its putatively genetic basis. We talk about why Eric doubts that we are anywhere close to an account of the biology of IQ. We discuss what makes intelligence such a formidable construct in psychology and why essentialist understandings of it are so intuitive. We talk about Francis Galton and the long shadow he's cast on the study of human behavior. We discuss the classic era of Twin Studies—an era in which researchers started to derive quantitative estimates of the heritability of complex traits. We talk about how the main takeaway from that era was that genes are quite important indeed, and about how more recent genetic techniques suggest that takeaway may have been a bit simplistic. Along the way, Eric and I touch on spelling ability, child prodigies, the chemical composition of money, the shared quirks of twins reared apart, the Flynn Effect, the Reverse Flynn Effect, birth order, the genetics of height, the problem of missing heritability, whether we should still be using IQ scores, and the role of behavior genetics in the broader social sciences.  Alright folks, lots in here—let's just get to it. On to my conversation with Dr. Eric Turkheimer. Enjoy!   A transcript of this episode is available here.   Notes and links 3:30 – The 1994 book The Bell Curve, by Richard Herrnstein a Charles Murray, dealt largely with the putative social implications of IQ research. It was extremely controversial and widely discussed. For an overview of the book and controversy, see the Wikipedia article here. 6:00 – For discussion of the "all parents are environmentalists…" quip, see here. 12:00 – The notion of "multiple intelligences" was popularized by the psychologist Howard Gardner—see here for an overview. See here for an attempt to test the claims of the "multiple intelligences" framework using some of the methods of traditional IQ research. For work on EQ (or Emotional Intelligence) see here. 19:00 – Dr. Turkheimer has also laid out his spelling test analogy in a Substack post. 22:30 – Dr. Turkheimer's 1998 paper, "Heritability and Biological Explanation." 24:30 – For an in-passing treatment of the processing efficiency idea, see p. 195 of Daniel Nettle's book Personality. See also Richard Haier's book, The Neuroscience of Intelligence. 26:00 – The original study on the relationship between pupil size and intelligence. A more recent study that fails to replicate those findings. 31:00 – For an argument that child prodigies constitute an argument for "nature," see here. For a memorable narrative account of one child prodigy, see here. 32:00 – A meta-analysis of the Flynn effect. We have previously discussed the Flynn Effect in an episode with Michael Muthukrishna. 37:00 – James Flynn's book, What is Intelligence? On the reversal of the Flynn Effect, see here. 40:00 – The phrase "nature-nurture" originally comes from Shakespeare and was picked up by Francis Galton. In The Tempest, Prospero describes Caliban as "a born devil on whose nature/ Nurture can never stick." 41:00 – For a biography of Galton, see here. For an article-length account of Galton's role in the birth of eugenics, see here. 50:00 – For an account of R.A. Fisher's 1918 paper and its continuing influence, see here. 55:00 – See Dr. Turkheimer's paper on the "nonshared environment"—E in the ACE model. 57:00 – A study coming out of the Minnesota Study of Twins reared apart. A New York Times article recounting some of the interesting anecdata in the Minnesota Study. 1:00:00 – See Dr. Turkheimer's 2000 paper on the "three laws of behavior genetics." Note that this is not, in fact, Dr. Turkheimer's most cited paper (though it is very well cited). 1:03:00 – For another view of the state of behavior genetics in the postgenomic era, see here. 1:11:00 – For Dr. Turkheimer's work on poverty, heritability, and IQ, see here. 1:13:00 – A recent large-scale analysis of birth order effects on personality. 1:16:00 – For Dr. Turkheimer's take on the missing heritability problem, see here and here.    1:19:00 – A recent study on the missing heritability problem in the case of height. 1:30:00 – On the dark side of IQ, see Chapter 9 of Dr. Turkheimer's book. See also Radiolab's series on g. 1:31:00 – See Dr. Turkheimer's Substack, The Gloomy Prospect.   Recommendations The Genetic Lottery, Kathryn Paige Harden Intelligence, Stuart Ritchie Intelligence and How to Get It, Richard Nisbett "Why our IQ levels are higher than our grandparents'' (Ted talk), James Flynn   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala. Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).

Kelly sits down with Father Greg Boyle, who has run Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles for nearly 40 years—the largest gang intervention program in the world. They explore humility not as the kind that makes you small, but the kind that sets you free. Father Greg reflects on burying 263 young people and why he keeps count, what happens when someone can't imagine tomorrow, and why gang membership is often a suicide mission in disguise. He talks about the difference between being other-centered and self-absorbed, why curiosity is the antidote to judgment, and how 90% of success is sheer dumb luck. It's about discovering that loving is your home, catching yourself before judgment takes over, and remembering that none of us are well until all of us are well. This is the second episode in a six-part series on super traits, supported by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation. To learn more about the John Templeton Foundation, visit: www.templeton.org. Special thanks to the team at the Aspen Ideas Festival where this episode was recorded. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yascha Mounk and Rebecca Goldstein debate whether our desperate need for significance is a flaw we should overcome—or an essential part of human dignity. Rebecca Goldstein is a philosopher and novelist. Her latest book is The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us. In this week's conversation, Yascha Mounk and Rebecca Goldstein discuss why humans have an instinct to matter beyond mere survival, the different approaches people use to feel significant, and whether the desire to matter is a psychological flaw we should overcome or an essential part of human dignity. We're delighted to feature this conversation as part of our series on Liberal Virtues and Values. That liberalism is under threat is now a cliché—yet this has done nothing to stem the global resurgence of illiberalism. Part of the problem is that liberalism is often considered too “thin” to win over the allegiance of citizens, and that liberals are too afraid of speaking in moral terms. Liberalism's opponents, by contrast, speak to people's passions and deepest moral sentiments. This series, made possible with the generous support of the John Templeton Foundation, aims to change that narrative. In podcast conversations and long-form pieces, we feature content making the case that liberalism has its own distinctive set of virtues and values that are capable not only of responding to the dissatisfaction that drives authoritarianism, but also of restoring faith in liberalism as an ideology worth believing in—and defending—on its own terms. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following ⁠⁠this link on your phone⁠⁠. Email: ⁠⁠leonora.barclay@persuasion.community⁠⁠ Podcast production by Jack Shields and Leonora Barclay. Connect with us! ⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠Apple⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠Google⁠⁠ X: ⁠⁠@Yascha_Mounk⁠⁠ & ⁠⁠@JoinPersuasion⁠⁠ YouTube: ⁠⁠Yascha Mounk⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Persuasion⁠⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠⁠Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With & For is back with a brand new season exploring spiritual health.  What is healthy  spirituality exactly, and how does it help us thrive? How do spiritual practices connect us to others? And what does it mean to have a calling in life?  We have some incredible guests this season – leading thinkers from across faith, art and psychology – like author activist Parker Palmer, self-compassion pioneer Kristin Neff, developmental scientist Richard Lerner and How God Works host David DeSteno. Hosted by development psychologist, ordained minister and professor Dr. Pam King,  With & For bridges psychology and spiritual wisdom to help you thrive.  Season three launches January 26th.  The Thrive Center is an applied research center that exists to catalyze a movement of human thriving, with and for others through spiritual health. Learn more at thethrivecenter.org. Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter Dr. Pamela Ebstyne King is the Executive Director of the Thrive Center and the Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at the School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy at Fuller Seminary. Follow her @drpamking. About With and For Host: Pam King Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook Operations Manager: Lauren Kim Social Media & Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen Senior Producer: Clare Wiley Executive Producer: Jakob Lewis Produced by Great Feeling Studios Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and Fuller Seminary's School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. The podcast was made possible through the support from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

In the beginning, there was nothing but air. The supreme being breathed upon it, and the air became water. Air and water moved together, forming mud. Seeing its shape, the supreme being breathed again – and life began. Today, we'll be exploring this creation story – born of Afro-Brazilian philosophy – forged under conditions of extreme violence, displacement, and resistance. During the transatlantic slave trade, more than four million Africans were forcibly taken to Brazil – far more than were sent to the United States. They brought with them their gods, their rituals, and their philosophies. Despite sustained efforts to suppress them, these traditions not only survived, but developed into sophisticated systems of thought that remain living practices today. We'll be exploring these traditions with José Eduardo Porcher Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. José is currently Director of the Spiritual Realities, Relationality, and Flourishing: Brazilian Contributions to Philosophy of Religion project, and has been centrally involved in a number of major research initiatives examining alternative approaches to philosophy of religion – including the John Templeton funded project Expanding the Philosophy of Religion by Engaging with Afro-Brazilian Traditions. In this episode, we'll explore the Afro-Brazilian religious tradition of Candomblé: its account of creation, its distinctive conception of God and the deities, and its striking vision of a world enchanted by a vital life-force that flows through people, objects, nature, and the divine. We'll ask what it means to live in a world where gods possess human bodies, where objects can be sacred, and where divinity is powerful yet limited. And we'll consider what these traditions might teach us about evil, responsibility, nature, and how to live well in a world that is far stranger than Western philosophy ever thought. This episode is produced in partnership with The Global Philosophy of Religion Project at University of Birmingham, funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Links José Eduardo Porcher, Webite José Eduardo Porcher, Afro-Brazilian Religions (Book)

When neuroscientist Madeline Lancaster was a brand new postdoc, she accidentally used an expired protein gel in a lab experiment and noticed something weird. The stem cells she was trying to grow in a dish were self-assembling. The result? Madeline was the first person ever to grow what she called a “cerebral organoid,” a tiny, 3D version of a human brain the size of a peppercorn.In about a decade, these mini human brain balls were everywhere. They were revealing bombshell secrets about how our brains develop in the womb, helping treat advanced cancer patients, being implanted into animals, even playing the video game Pong. But what are they? Are these brain balls capable of sensing, feeling, learning, being? Are they tiny, trapped humans? And if they were, how would we know?Special thanks to Lynn Levy, Jason Yamada-Hanff, David Fajgenbaum, Andrew Verstein, Anne Hamilton, Christopher Mason, Madeline Mason-Mariarty, the team at the Boston Museum of Science, and Howard Fine, Stefano Cirigliano, and the team at Weill-Cornell. EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Latif Nasserwith help from - Mona MadgavkarProduced by - Annie McEwen, Mona Madgavkar, and Pat Walterswith mixing help from - Jeremy BloomFact-checking by - Natalie Middleton and Rebecca Randand Edited by  - Alex Neason and Pat WaltersEPISODE CITATIONS:Videos - “Growing Mini Brains to Discover What Makes Us Human,” Madeline Lancaster's TEDxCERN Talk, Nov 2015 (https://zpr.io/6WP7xfA27auR)Brain cells playing Pong (https://zpr.io/pqgSqguJeAPK)Reuters report on CL1 computer launch in March 2025 (https://zpr.io/cdMf8Yjvayyd) Articles - Madeline Lancaster: The accidental organoid – mini-brains as models for human brain development (https://zpr.io/nnwFwUwnm2p6), MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology What We Can Learn From Brain Organoids (https://zpr.io/frUfsg4pxKsb), by Carl Zimmer. NYT, November 6, 2025Ethical Issues Related to Brain Organoid Research (https://zpr.io/qyiATHEhdnSa), by Insoo Hyun et al, Brain Research, 2020 Brain organoids get cancer, too, opening a new frontier in personalized medicine (https://zpr.io/nqMCQ) STAT Profile of Howard Fine and his lab's glioblastoma research at Weill Cornell Medical Center: By re-creating neural pathway in dish, Stanford Medicine research may speed pain treatment (https://zpr.io/UnegZeQZfqn2) Stanford Medicine profile of Sergiu Pasca's research on pain in organoids A brief history of organoids (https://zpr.io/waSbUCSrL9va) by Corrò et al, American Journal of Physiology - Cell Physiology, Books - Carl Zimmer Life's Edge: The Search for What it Means to be Alive (https://carlzimmer.com/books/lifes-edge/)Sign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Signup (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

What does humility look like when you're standing at the absolute top? Kelly talks with Steve Kerr—nine-time NBA champion—about the tension between winning and perspective, the culture built on values most people wouldn't associate with dominance, and the contradiction at the heart of his best player, Steph Curry. They explore why we're drawn to watching people reach their peak, what coaches taught him that had nothing to do with basketball, and how loss shaped the way he leads. Steve also reflects on using his platform when staying quiet would be easier, what he's learning from the youngest people in the room, and why beginner's mind might be the most important practice of all. This is the first episode in a six-part series on super traits including humility curiosity and creativity, supported by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation. To learn more visit: www.templeton.org. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this first session of "The Rise of the Nones" online class, I am joined by Ryan Burge, Tony Jones, and Sarah Lane Ritchie to introduce findings from the largest survey ever conducted on religiously unaffiliated Americans—over 15,000 participants. The research, funded by the John Templeton Foundation's Spiritual Yearning Research Initiative, used machine learning to identify four distinct categories of "Nones": NINOs (Nones In Name Only, who are actually quite religious), Spiritual But Not Religious (the largest group), the Disengaged (content secular individuals far from any religious or spiritual practice), and Zealous Secularists (a small but vocal group actively encouraging others to leave religion). The conversation explores what these categories reveal about American religious identity, why traditional survey methods may be undercounting Christians, and the surprising finding that many "happy atheists" report life satisfaction comparable to religious Americans. Join us for the remaining sessions of this class, where we'll dive deeper into each category with special guests—registration is donation-based, including $0, at www.AmericanNones.com. You can WATCH the conversation on YouTube Join us at Theology Beer Camp, October 8-10, in Kansas City!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠UPCOMING ONLINE CLASS: The Rise of the Nones⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ One-third of Americans now claim no religious affiliation. That's 100 million people.  But here's what most church leaders get wrong: they're not all the same. Some still believe in God. Some are actively searching. Some are quietly indifferent. Some think religion is harmful.  Ryan Burge & Tony Jones have conducted the first large-scale survey of American "Nones", which reveals 4 distinct categories—each requiring a different approach. Understanding the difference could transform everything from your ministry to your own spiritual quest. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Get info & join the donation-based class (including 0) here.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ This podcast is a ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Homebrewed Christianity ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠production. Follow ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠the Homebrewed Christianity⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Theology Nerd Throwdown⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, & ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Rise of Bonhoeffer⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ podcasts for more theological goodness for your earbuds. Join over 75,000 other people by joining our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack - Process This!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Get instant access to over 50 classes at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.TheologyClass.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow the podcast, drop a review⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, send ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠feedback/questions⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or become a ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠member of the HBC Community⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What if your New Year's resolutions weren't about losing weight or getting organized, but about becoming more curious, humble, and creative? Kelly reflects on why these three traits matter and how they're connected—curiosity as genuinely wondering instead of rushing to conclusions, humility as recognizing there's always more to learn and some things we'll never understand, and creativity as problem-solving with whatever you have in front of you. It's about resolutions that actually lay the groundwork for better days, better relationships, and better work. Check out our new 6-part series called Super Traits, made possible by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The first episode airs Jan 6th, 2026 and is Kelly's interview with NBA coach Steve Kerr on the topic of humility . To learn more about the John Templeton Foundation and the work they do, please visit templeton.org. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1971, a red-headed, tree-loving astronaut named Stu ‘Smokey' Roosa was asked to take something to the moon with him. Of all things, he chose to take a canister of 500 tree seeds. After orbiting the moon 34 times, the seeds made it back to Earth. NASA decided to plant the seeds all across the country and then… everyone forgot about them. Until one day, a third grader from Indiana stumbled on a tree with a strange plaque: "Moon Tree." This discovery set off a cascading search for all the trees that visited the moon across the United States. Science writer, and our very own factchecker, Natalie Middleton (https://www.nataliemiddleton.org/) tells us the tale.Read Lulu's remembrance of Alice Wong for Transom.org: 13 questions I'll never get to ask Alice Wong (https://transom.org/2025/13-questions-ill-never-get-to-ask-alice-wong/). Check out Natalie's map to find your nearest moon tree on our show page (https://radiolab.org/podcast/the-travelers-how-moon-trees-hide-among-us)!Help us hunt for more moon trees. If you know of an undocumented moon tree, contact Natalie at nataliemiddleton.org. Check out Natalie's essay on Moon Trees (https://orionmagazine.org/article/moon-tree/) and Space Zinnias (https://orionmagazine.org/article/astronaut-scott-kelly-flower-experiment-space/) in Orion Magazine (https://orionmagazine.org/).Visit NASA's official Moon Tree Page (https://science.nasa.gov/resource/apollo-moon-trees/) for a list of all the Apollo 14 Moon Trees in the world. To learn more about Stu Roosa or to learn more about acquiring your own half Moon Tree, check out the Moon Tree Foundation (https://www.moontreefoundation.com/), spearheaded by Stu's daughter, Rosemary Roosa. A reminder that Terrestrials also makes original music! You can find ‘Tangled in the Roots' and all other music from the show here (https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab-kids/just-the-songs).EPISODE CREDITS: Terrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC Studios. This episode was produced by Tanya Chawla and sound-designed by Joe Plourde. Our Executive Producer is Sarah Sandbach. Our team includes Alan Goffinski, Ana González and Mira Burt-Wintonick. Fact checking was by Diane Kelly. Special thanks to Sumanth Prabhaker from Orion magazine, retired NASA Scientist Dr. Dave Williams, Joan Goble, Tre Corely and NASA scientist Dr. Marie Henderson.Our advisors for this show were Ana Luz Porzecanski, Nicole Depalma, Liza Demby and Carly Ciarrocchi.Support for Terrestrials also comes from the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation.Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

As she -- and her friends — approached the age of 35, senior correspondent Molly Webster kept hearing a phrase over and over: “fertility cliff.” It was a short-hand term to describe what she was told would happen to her fertility after she turned 35 — that is, it would drop off. Suddenly, sharply, dramatically. And this was well before she was supposed to hit menopause. Intrigued, Molly decided to look into it — what was the truth behind this so-called cliff, and when, if so, would she topple? This story first premiered in “Thirty Something,” a 2018 Radiolab live show that was part of, Gonads, (https://radiolab.org/series/radiolab-presents-gonads)a six-episode audio and live event series all about reproduction and the parts of us that make more of us. The live event was produced by Rachael Cusick and edited by Pat Walters.Special thanks to epidemiologist Lauren Wise, at Boston University. Plus, Emily, Chloe, and Bianca. And of course, Jad Abumrad.If you're more of a visual person, here are the graphs we explain in the episode, we also include links to the corresponding papers in our Episode Citations Section, below!LINK TO GRAPHS:https://internal.wnyc.org/admin/cms/image/249243/EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Molly WebsterProduced by - Arianne WackFact-checking by - Diane A. KellyEPISODE CITATIONS:Audio:Gonads (https://radiolab.org/series/radiolab-presents-gonads/)A six-part audio series on reproduction and the parts of us that make more of usThe Menopause Mystery (https://radiolab.org/podcast/the-menopause-mystery)One of Radiolab's most listened-to episodes of 2025! Videos:“Radiolab Presents: Thirty Something”https://youtu.be/LOJVAaSwags?si=czCBraHf1JEqmAQiResearch Articles:Graph 1: Can assisted reproduction technology compensate for the natural decline in fertility with age? A model assessment (https://zpr.io/ft6dqdbkJnTd) Graph 2: Ovarian aging: mechanisms and clinical consequences (https://zpr.io/GrPLebynpvxV) , Brookmans, et al.BUT, the graph was borrowed and actually comes from this 1991 paper, Delaying childbearing: effect of age on fecundity and outcome of pregnancy” (https://zpr.io/whWg2UAZsb6h)  Graph 3 and 4: Age and fecundability in a North American preconception cohort study, (https://zpr.io/Rmqry4Kd67hY) Wise et al; Dutch fertility researchFurther reading: Predicting Fertility, (https://zpr.io/YEdfiYT29rUh): Magazine article on Lauren Wise's research, Sign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Signup (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

The standard view of evolution is that living things are shaped by cold-hearted competition. And there is no doubt that today's plants and animals carry the genetic legacy of ancestors who fought fiercely to survive and reproduce. But in this hour that we first broadcast back in 2010, we wonder whether there might also be a logic behind sharing, niceness, kindness ... or even, self-sacrifice. Is altruism an aberration, or just an elaborate guise for sneaky self-interest? Do we really live in a selfish, dog-eat-dog world? Or has evolution carved out a hidden code that rewards genuine cooperation?Sign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Alright, friends—we've come to the end of the 2025 run of Many Minds! Our final episode of the year is an audio essay by yours truly. This is a classic format for the show, one that we only do every so often. Today's essay is about names. It's about the question of whether animals have something like names for each other. And it's also about a deeper question: What even is a name? How do humans use names? How does the historical and ethnographic record kind of complicate our everyday understanding of what names are. I had a lot of fun putting this together, and do I hope you enjoy it.  Now, the holiday season is a time when people might be shopping around for new podcasts to listen to. That makes it a great time to recommend us to your friends and family and colleagues. You can think of it has an especially thoughtful gift, one that's absolutely free, and that keeps on giving throughout the year.  Speaking of gifts, as an addendum to this episode you'll find a little stocking stuffer after the credits. It's a reading of a poem that figures prominently in today's essay.  Without further ado, here is my essay—'In search of names.' Enjoy!   Notes: A text version of this essay will be published shortly.   Notes 2:00 – The text of, 'The Naming of Cats,' by T.S. Eliot is here. See also the full collection, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. The lines about cats' taste preferences and cats having different kinds of minds comes from another poem in the collection, 'The Ad-Dressing of Cats.' 3:00 – The 2019 study finding that cats know their names, and the 2022 study showing that cats know the names of their friends. 4:00 – For an overview of research on dolphin "signature whistles," see here. 5:00 – For the 2024 study reporting name-like rumbles in elephants, see here.  6:00 – For the 2025 study reporting vocal labels for individuals in marmosets, see here. A critical response to the study is here; the authors' response to the criticism is here. 12:00 – For overviews of cross-cultural variation in names and naming practices, see here, here, here, and here. Richard Alford's 1988 study, published in book form, is here.  13:30 – The study reporting name signs in Kata Kalok is here. 15:00 – For research on expectations based on the sounds of people's names, see here and here. 16:00 – For recent work on the "face-name matching effect," see here. For the study on "nominative determinism" in the medical profession, see here. (Note that, while this latter study does report empirical data, its rigor is questionable. And, yet, at least one other study has reported similar findings.) 17:30 – For the example of over-used names in Scotland, see here.  19:30 – For discussion of names in New Guinea, see here. For examples of research on "teknonymy" see here and here. For discussion of Penan "necronyms," see here.  20:30 – For an overview of name taboos, see here. For more on "alexinomia," see here. 22:30 – For an example of recent work on "name uniqueness," see here.   23:00 – William Safire's column on dog names is here. The study of gravestones in the world's oldest pet cemetery is here.     Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).

Jason Marsh is the executive director of the Greater Good Science Center at UC-Berkeley. Greater Good is committed to sharing science-based insights with educators, parents, and other professionals to foster meaningful lives and a thriving society. In recent years, Greater Good has received grants from the John Templeton Foundation to engage and promote virtues such as intellectual humility and love. He joins the podcast to discuss their research and how your life can be improved by practicing intellectual humility.  At their best, holidays fill us with hope, wonder, generosity, love, and joy. But what is joy, really, and can we experience it even when life is turbulent and tough going? To learn more, check out Alene Dawson's Templeton Ideas essay Unwrapping the Science of Joy. Join our growing community of 200,000+ listeners and be notified of new episodes of Templeton Ideas. Subscribe today.  Follow us on social media: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn , and YouTube.    

It is not an understatement to say that AI has revolutionized virtually every aspect of human life. What should characterize a Christian posture towards AI? Should we be concerned? Optimistic? How do we think biblically about it the emergence of new AI technology? In this unique episode, Sean is joined by three Biola/Talbot professors who are experts in their fields and in AI: Yohan Lee, Associate Dean of Technology and Professor of Computer Science; Michael Arena, Dean of Biola's Crowell School of Business; and Mihretu Guta, Professor of Philosophy and Apologetics. Mihretu P. Guta, Ph.D. (Philosophy at Durham University, UK). After completing his Ph.D., he worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Durham University within the Durham Emergence Project which was set up with cooperation between physicists and philosophers and funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Guta's postdoctoral research focused on the nature of the emergence of the phenomenal consciousness taken from the standpoint of metaphysics, philosophy of mind, cognitive neuroscience and quantum physics. Dr. Yohan Lee has led advanced technology organizations for over 20 years in commercial industry, education, and government. He has been privileged to serve as a civil scientist (U.S. National Institutes of Health), Principal Investigator (Google AI), Chief Science Officer (Riiid Labs, Inc.), and CEO (Scaled Entelechy, Inc). His undergraduate and doctoral studies were at UCLA in neuroscience and genomics with a focus on the neurological basis of learning and memory in addition to precision medicine. His doctoral work centered on large scale genomic data for health and distributed computing. In his corporate role, Dr. Lee has led research and business units in industry, public-private partnerships, the federal government, and international academic consortia for enterprise initiatives with Fortune 50 corporations. Michael Arena, Ph.D., is the dean of the Crowell School of Business at Biola University. He is also the chief science officer and co-founder of the Connected Commons, a research consortium that brings together business and academic thought leaders to develop and apply organizational network solutions. Prior to joining Biola, he served as the vice president of talent and development at Amazon Web Services (AWS), where he leveraged network analysis to enable employee growth, organizational culture and innovation. Arena was also the chief talent officer for General Motors Corporation where he helped to facilitate a business transformation, which is highlighted in his book Adaptive Space. Arena also spent two years as a visiting scientist with MIT's Media Lab researching human networks and acted as a design thinking coach within the Stanford School for three years. ==========Think Biblically: Conversations on Faith and Culture is a podcast from Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, which offers degrees both online and on campus in Southern California. Find all episodes of Think Biblically at: https://www.biola.edu/think-biblically. To submit comments, ask questions, or make suggestions on issues you'd like us to cover or guests you'd like us to have on the podcast, email us at thinkbiblically@biola.edu.

In this replay from the Kindness Matters series, Kris sits down with Dr. Stephen G. Post: a true scholar, philosopher, and man of deep heart. Together, they explore the soul-warming stories that have shaped his extraordinary life. His gentle wisdom and kindness shines through every moment of this conversation.    Discover:   why kindness isn't weakness—it's the ultimate strength how kindness supports success through collaboration and trust why kindness is our natural birthright and how culture can return to it the connection between technology, presence, and our ability to be kind   As a special thank you to our listeners, please visit www.kristinecarlson.com/kindness for a free download of an invigorating guided meditation by Kristine—an exclusive sneak peek of her Guided Meditation Series releasing soon.   Guest bio: Stephen G. Post, PhD, is a leading scholar on altruism, compassion, and the science of giving. A best-selling author and professor of preventive medicine, he directs the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University. His work spans science, medicine, spirituality, and ethics, exploring how unselfish love heals and transforms lives. He is also President of the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, a role personally entrusted to him by philanthropist Sir John Templeton, and served on the Board of the John Templeton Foundation from 2008–2014. Visit his website: https://www.stephengpost.com/   

A year ago we brought you a show called Shell Game where a journalist named Evan Ratliff made an AI copy of himself. Now on season 2 of the show, Evan's using AI to do more than just mimic himself — he's starting a company staffed entirely by AI agents, and making a podcast about the experience. The show is a smart, funny, and truly bizarre look at what AI can do—and what it can't. This week we bring you the first episode of Shell Game Season Two, Minimum Viable Company. You can sign up to get the rest of the Shell Game ad-free, and the Shell Game newsletter, at shellgame.co .EPISODE CREDITS: Shell Game Hosted by Evan Ratliff, Produced and edited by Sophie Bridges. Shell Game's Technical Advisor Matty Bohacek Executive Produced by Samantha Henig, Kate Osborn and Mangesh Hattikudur at Kaleidoscopeand Katrina Norvell at IHeart Podcasts.Radiolab portions Hosted by Simon Adler Produced by Mona Madgavkar.Sign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Signup (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Not long ago culture was considered rare in nature, maybe even uniquely human. But that's changed. We now know that the tree of life is buzzing with culture—and not just on a few lonely branches. Creatures great and small learn songs, migration routes, and feeding techniques from each other. Many species build up reservoirs of knowledge over generations. This has profound implications, not just for understanding of the natural world, but also for our efforts to protect it.  My guest today is Dr. Philippa Brakes. Philippa is an Honorary Lecturer at the University of Exeter, with one foot in science and another in conservation. She's both a behavioral ecologist, focusing on whales and dolphins, and a leading voice—for more than a decade now—urging conservationists to take animal cultures seriously.  Here, Philippa and I talk about how researchers define culture and social learning in animals. We tour the mounting evidence for culture across species—in birds, in apes, in fish, possibly even in insects. We discuss the methods that scientists use to infer that behaviors are socially learned. We consider how animal culture complicates the conservation enterprise. We also discuss the idea that animal cultures have intrinsic value—not value for us humans, not value that can be easily quantified, but value for the animals themselves. Along the way Philippa and I talk about the notion of "cultural rescue"; indigenous understandings of animal culture; cases where social learning is maladaptive; human-animal mutualism; fashion trends; the idea of conserving "cultural capacity"; elephant matriarchs and other "keystone individuals"; golden lion tamarins, herring, and regent honey-eaters; and the question of why some orcas where salmon as hats. Alright friends, this topic has been on our wish list for a while now. Hope you enjoy it!   Notes  2:30 – For academic articles by Dr. Brakes and colleagues on the importance of animal culture for conservation, see here, here, and here. The last of these is the introduction to a recent special issue on the topic. Many of the topics discussed in this episode are also covered in this issue.  3:30 – The case of the golden lion tamarins is discussed here. 5:00 – For more about the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species (or CMS) of Wild Animals, see here.  9:00 – For a classic paper on social learning in animals, see here. For a relatively recent, detailed overview of animal culture see here. For a short primer on animal culture, see here. 10:00 – For discussion of the riskiness of long-line depredation (and for an important early discussion of animal culture and conservation), see here. 12:00 – For a study by Dr. Sonja Wild and colleagues on bottlenose dolphin declines following a heat wave—and how these declines may have been buffered by tool-using traditions—see here.  15:00 – For the review of cetacean foraging tactics by Dr. Taylor Hersh and colleagues, see here.  17:00 – For a primer on honeyguides (and their mutualism with honey hunters), see here. 20:00 – For a recent review of culture and social learning in birds, see here. For a review of conservation of avian song culture, see here. 25:00 – For a review of (the conservation of) chimpanzee culture, see here. 28:00 – For the initial report of chimpanzees putting grass in their ears, see here. For more on the phenomenon of orcas wearing salmon hats, see here. 33:00 – For a recent review of culture and social learning in fish, see here.  35:00 – For the recent study on "collective memory loss" in herring, see here. 39:00 ­– For more on the possibility of social learning in insects, see here. For a video of the puzzle box experiment in bees, see here. 44:00 – For a recent review of the "methodological toolkit" used by researchers in the the study of social learning in animals, see here. 47:00 – For the study using network-based diffusion analysis to understand the spread of feeding strategies in humpback whales, see here. 49:00 – For the original 2000 study on the spread of humpback whale song, see here. For a more recent study of "revolutions" in whale song, see here.  53:00 – For an example of work looking at changes in whale song as a result of human noise, see here.  55:00 – For more on the idea of "keystone individuals" in the case of elephants, see here. For more on menopause and the so-called grandmother hypothesis, see our earlier episode with Alison Gopnik.  1:05:00 – A recent editorial calling for the protection of animal cultural heritage under UNESCO.   Recommendations The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins, by Hal Whitehead and Luke Rendell Animal Social Complexity, edited by Frans de Waal and Peter Tyack The Evolution of Cetacean Societies, by Darren P. Croft et al. The Edge of Sentience, by Jonathan Birch (featured on an earlier episode)   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).

Dr. Carlos Eire on October 30, 2025 at Saint Ignatius College Prep. Two of the most significant features of Catholic Christianity are its focus on holy men and women and the miracles ascribed to them. What is it that makes saints and miracles so significant? What difference does this characteristic of Catholicism make, not just for its history, but for us, here and now? Asking such questions is absolutely necessary for Catholics, and in this talk we explore why this is so. --- This project was made possible through the support of In Lumine Tuo: Expanding and Sustaining the Catholic Intellectual Tradition Nationwide (grant #63614) from the John Templeton Foundation and the generous support of the Bollandist Society and St. Ignatius College Preparatory School. The opinions expressed in this publication ​are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

Dr. Carlos Eire and Dr. Kirsten Macfarlane on October 29, 2025 at the University of Chicago's Swift Hall. Levitation. Bilocation. Witchcraft. Demonic Possession. Europe in the early modern era was simultaneously the site of Kepler, Newton, Copernicus–and of eyewitness accounts of levitating saints and nocturnal witches' sabbats. In his history of the impossible, award-winning historian Carlos Eire mines the firsthand accounts and archival evidence of the miraculous and demonic. How did an increasingly skeptical and scientific culture account for events deemed impossible by its leading intellectuals? What does this say about the supposed boundaries between the natural and supernatural that marked the transition to modernity? In this lecture, Carlos Eire explores the major themes of "They Flew" and asks: what makes something impossible? And is there more to reality than meets the eye? University of Chicago Divinity School professor Kirsten Macfarlane offers a response and engages Eire in a conversation. --- This project was made possible through the support of In Lumine Tuo: Expanding and Sustaining the Catholic Intellectual Tradition Nationwide (grant #63614) from the John Templeton Foundation and the generous support of the University of Chicago Divinity School and the Workshop on the Early Modern World. The opinions expressed in this publication ​are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

Jainism, along with Buddhism and Hinduism, is one of India's great dharmic traditions – though far less well known than its siblings. Emerging around the second century BCE, it is best-known for valuing ahimsa in pursuit of liberation – a devout practice of non-violence. Yet there is far more to Jain philosophy than liberation and ahimsa. Jainism offers a rich way of understanding the self, the cosmos, and the divine. It's a philosophy with a vision of reality that continues to challenge Western preconceptions on, well, just about everything: from the nature of souls and knowledge to the meaning of life and the origin of the universe. Today, we'll be exploring Jainism with Dr Marie-Hélène Gorisse. Dr Gorisse is currently Dharmanath Assistant Professor in Jain Studies at the University of Birmingham, where she's co-project lead of the Global Philosophy of Religion Project 2. Marie-Hélène's work explores South Asian philosophy of religion and, most specifically, she is a world-leading expert on Jaina philosophy. In this episode, we'll trace how Jainism arose, how its sages taught that the self can escape the cycle of rebirth, and the purpose of the universe. And perhaps more importantly, we'll explore how Jainism can help us all live better lives for the sake of ourselves, and the world around us. This episode is produced in partnership with The Global Philosophy of Religion Project at University of Birmingham, funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Links Marie-Hélène Gorisse, University of Birmingham The Global Philosophy of Religion Project 2, Website

Our original host Jad Abumrad returns to share a new podcast series he's just released. It's all about Fela Kuti, a Nigerian musician who created a genre, then a movement, then tried to use his hypnotic beats to topple a military dictatorship. Jad tells us about the series and why he made it, and we play the episode that, for us at least, gets to the heart of the matter: How exactly does his music work? What actually happens to the people who hear it and how does it move them to action?You can find Jad's entire nine-part series, Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, on Apple or Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Jad AbumradRadiolab portions produced by - Sindhu GnanasambandanSign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Signup (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Cass Sunstein is one of the most widely cited legal scholars of all time and among the most prolific writers working today. This year alone he has five books out, including Imperfect Oracle on the strengths and limits of AI and On Liberalism: In Defense of Freedom. In his second appearance on the show, he brings his characteristic intellectual range to exploring liberalism's present precariousness and AI's implications for law and speech. Tyler and Cass discuss whether liberalism is self-undermining or simply vulnerable to illiberal forces, the tensions in how a liberal immigration regime would work, whether new generations of liberal thinkers are emerging, if Derek Parfit counts as a liberal, Mill's liberal wokeism, the allure of Mises' "cranky enthusiasm for freedom," whether the central claim of The Road to Serfdom holds up, how to blend indigenous rights with liberal thought, whether AIs should have First Amendment protections, the argument for establishing a right not to be manipulated, better remedies for low-grade libel, whether we should have trials run by AI, how Bob Dylan embodies liberal freedom, Cass' next book about animal rights, and more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel. Recorded October 10th, 2025. This episode was made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Cass on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here.

Today on the show, we're bringing you an episode from Our Common Nature (https://link.podtrac.com/v7mx144d), a new podcast series where cellist Yo-Yo Ma and host Ana González travel around the United States to meet people, make music and better understand how culture binds us to nature. The series features a few familiar voices, including Ana González (host) and Alan Goffinski (producer), from our kids podcast, Terrestrials (https://link.podtrac.com/vysacqn1). About the episode: West Virginia is defined by its beauty and its coal, two things that can work against each other. Yo-Yo Ma felt this as soon as stepped foot in its hills.This episode explores how music and poetry help process the emotions of a community besieged with disaster and held together by pride and duty. We travel down the Coal River with third-generation coal miner Chris Saunders, who tells us how coal has saved and threatened his life. Poet Crystal Good shares her poetry, which channels her rage and love. And musician and granddaughter of West Virginia coal miners, Kathy Mattea, explains the beauty of belting out your home state in a chorus. The end of the episode finds host Ana floating down the New River with help from a group of high schoolers and Yo-Yo Ma. Listen to the full series Our Common Nature (https://link.podtrac.com/v7mx144d). Featuring music by Yo-Yo Ma, Dom Flemons, and Kathy Mattea and poetry by Crystal Good.EPISODE CREDITS: Radiolab Bits Produced - Anisa Vietze (Radiolab bits)Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Jainism, along with Buddhism and Hinduism, is one of India's great dharmic traditions – though far less well known than its siblings. Emerging around the second century BCE, it is best-known for valuing ahimsa in pursuit of liberation – a devout practice of non-violence. Yet there is far more to Jain philosophy than liberation and ahimsa. Jainism offers a rich way of understanding the self, the cosmos, and the divine. It's a philosophy with a vision of reality that continues to challenge Western preconceptions on, well, just about everything: from the nature of souls and knowledge to the meaning of life and the origin of the universe. Today, we'll be exploring Jainism with Dr Marie-Hélène Gorisse. Dr Gorisse is currently Dharmanath Assistant Professor in Jain Studies at the University of Birmingham, where she's co-project lead of the Global Philosophy of Religion Project 2. Marie-Hélène's work explores South Asian philosophy of religion and, most specifically, she is a world-leading expert on Jaina philosophy. In this episode, we'll trace how Jainism arose, how its sages taught that the self can escape the cycle of rebirth, and the purpose of the universe. And perhaps more importantly, we'll explore how Jainism can help us all live better lives for the sake of ourselves, and the world around us. This episode is produced in partnership with The Global Philosophy of Religion Project at University of Birmingham, funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Links Marie-Hélène Gorisse, University of Birmingham The Global Philosophy of Religion Project 2, Website

Qasem Waleed is a 28-year-old physicist who has lived in Gaza his whole life. In 2024, he joined a chorus of Palestinians sharing videos and pictures and writing about the chaos and violence they were living through, as Israel's military bombardment devastated their lives. But Qasem was trying to describe his reality through the lens of the most notoriously confusing and inscrutable field of science ever, quantum mechanics. We talked to him, from a cafe near the Al-Mawasi section of Gaza, to find out why. And over the course of several conversations, he told us how this reality-breaking corner of science has helped him survive. And how such unspeakable violence actually let him understand, in a visceral way, quantum mechanics' most counter-intuitive ideas. Special thanks to Katya Rogers, Karim Kattan, Allan Adams, Sarah Qari, Soren Wheeler, and Pat WaltersEPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Lulu MillerProduced by - Jessica Yungwith mixing help from - Jeremy BloomFact-checking by - Emily Kreigerand Edited by  - Alex NeasonEPISODE CITATIONS:Videos - A Brief History of Quantum Mechanics with Sean Carroll, The Royal Institution (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hVmeOCJjOU)Introduction to Superposition, with MIT's Allan Adams (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ3bPUKo5zc)The Quantum Wavefunction, Explained (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOI4DlWQ_1w)Articles - Read a selection of Qasem's published essays about his life in Gaza and the quantum world: I am stuck in a box like Schrodinger's in Gaza (https://zpr.io/ALDVi9E5bRt8) Israel has turned Gaza's summer into a weapon (https://zpr.io/YS4WK4hVQC5T)The Physics of Death in Gaza (https://zpr.io/hxsgxicVqPAd) Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

When we think of China today, we think of a technological superpower. From Huawei and 5G to TikTok and viral social media, China is stride for stride with the United States in the world of computing. However, China's technological renaissance almost didn't happen. And for one very basic reason: the Chinese language, with its 70,000 plus characters, couldn't fit on a keyboard.Today, we tell the story of Professor Wang Yongmin, a hard-headed computer programmer who solved this puzzle and laid the foundation for the China we know today.Special thanks to Martin Howard. You can view his renowned collection of typewriters at: antiquetypewriters.com. EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Simon AdlerProduced by - Simon Adler Sign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Signup (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

A call to oceanographer Edie Widder about a fish with a very odd immune system quickly becomes something else: a dive into the deep sea, into a world of brilliant light. But down there, the light doesn't behave like light -- it sparkles and glows, but also drips, squirts, and dribbles. Today, find out how creatures make the light and how they use it, from hunting and hiding to maybe even … talking. And hear about a series of mysterious moments where Edie goes from studying the creatures to becoming one of them. EPISODE CREDITS: Hosted by - Molly WebsterReported by - Molly WebsterProduced by - Maria Paz Gutierrezwith help from - Molly WebsterFact-checking by - Diane A. KellyEPISODE CITATIONS:Documentary - Coming soon, there'll be a new doc about Edie's life and work studying bioluminescence in deep sea creatures. According to Edie, “A Life Illuminated”, contains some of the best deep sea bioluminescence footage ever recorded. It's from our friends at Sandbox Films, and director Tasha Van Zandt.https://www.sandboxfilms.org/films/a-life-illuminated/Books - Edie Widder wrote a memoir! Go read, “Below the Edge of Darkness: A Memoir of Exploring Light and Life in the Deep Sea”.https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/564185/below-the-edge-of-darkness-by-edith-widder-phd/Videos - It's not in the episode, but a few years back, Edie's fame reached new heights when she captured footage of a never-before-seen Giant Squid … here's the story, and video.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krDdv9KLmuM Articles - A look at some glowing shrimps.https://zpr.io/3jyHWi7VFBw5A photo gallery of different types of deep sea glow, from different types of deep sea creatures, including one of counterillumination, which Edie talks about in the episode.https://zpr.io/hdFFsArGjhau Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Love it or hate it, the freedom to say obnoxious and subversive things is the quintessence of what makes America America. But our say-almost-anything approach to free speech is actually relatively recent, and you can trace it back to one guy: a Supreme Court justice named Oliver Wendell Holmes. Even weirder, you can trace it back to one seemingly ordinary eight-month period in Holmes's life when he seems to have done a logical U-turn on what should be say-able.  Why he changed his mind during those eight months is one of the greatest mysteries in the history of the Supreme Court. (Spoiler: the answer involves anarchists, a house of truth, and a cry for help from a dear friend.)  Join us in an episode we originally released in 2021, as we investigate why he changed his mind, how that made the country change its mind, and whether it's now time to change our minds again.Special thanks to Jenny Lawton, Soren Shade, Kelsey Padgett, Mahyad Tousi and Soroush Vosughi.LATERAL CUTS:Content WarningFacebook Supreme CourtThe Trust EngineersEPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Latif NasserProduced by - Sarah Qariwith help from - Anisa Vietze Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Over the past five years TikTtok has radically changed the online world. But trust us when we say, it's not how you'd expect.Today we continue our yearslong exploration of what you can and can't post online. We look at how Facebook's approach to free speech has evolved since Trump's victory. How TikTtok upended everything we see. And what all this means for the future of our political and digital lives.Special thanks to Kate KlonickEPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Simon AdlerProduced by - Simon AdlerOriginal music from - Simon Adlerwith mixing help from - Jeremy BloomeFact-checking by - Anna Pujol-MazziniLateral Cuts:The Trust EngineersFacebook's Supreme CourtSignup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Ella al-Shamahi is one part Charles Darwin, one part Indiana Jones. She braves war zones and pirate-infested waters to collect fossils from prehistoric caves, fossils that help us understand the origin of our species. Her recent hit BBC / PBS series Human follows her around the globe trying to piece together the unlikely story of how early humans conquered the world.  But Ella's own origins as an evolutionary biologist are equally unlikely. She sits down with us and tells us a story she has rarely shared publicly, about how she came to believe in evolution, and how much that belief cost her. Special thanks to Misha Euceph and Hamza Syed.EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Latif NasserProduced by - Jessica Yung and Pat Walterswith help from - Sarah QariFact-checking by - Diane Kellyand Edited by  - Pat Walters EPISODE CITATIONS:Videos - “Human” (https://www.bbcearth.com/shows/human), Ella's show on the BBC and PBSSignup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

This is the story of a three-year-old girl and the highest court in the land. The Supreme Court case Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl is a legal battle that has entangled a biological father, a heart-broken couple, and the tragic history of Native American children taken from their families. We originally released this story back in 2013, when that girl's fate was still in the balance of various legal decisions. We thought now was a good time to bring the story back, because the Act at the center of the story is still being questioned.When then-producer Tim Howard first read about this case, it struck him as a sad but seemingly straightforward custody dispute. But, as he started talking to lawyers and historians and the families involved in the case, it became clear that it was much more than that. Because Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl challenges parts of the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, this case puts one little girl at the center of a storm of legal intricacies, Native American tribal culture, and heart-wrenching personal stakes.LATERAL CUTS:What Up Holmes?The GatekeeperEPISODE CREDITS:Reported by - Tim HowardProduced by - Tim HowardEPISODE CITATIONS (so many):Background and Reporting from a range of different perspectives"Couple forced to give up daughter"An introductory article by Allyson Bird, for the Charleston, SC Post and Courier"Supreme Court Takes on Indian Child Welfare Act in Baby Veronica Case" A report for Indian Country Today by Suzette Brewer, who has also written a two-part series on the case."Supreme Court hears Indian child custody case"Tulsa World article by Michael Overall which includes Dusten Brown's account of his break-up with Veronica's mother, and his understanding about his custodial rights. Plus photos of Dusten, Veronica, and Dusten's wife Robin in their Oklahoma home_._Randi Kaye's report for CNN on the background of the case, and interviews with Melanie and Matt Capobianco: "Video: Adoption custody battle for Veronica"Nina Totenberg's report for NPR: "Adoption Case Brings Rare Family Law Dispute To High Court"Reporting by NPR's Laura Sullivan and Amy Walters on current ICWA violations in South Dakota.Dr. Phil's coverage: "Adoption Controversy: Battle over Baby Veronica"Analysis and EditorialsOp-ed by Veronica's birth mom, Christy Maldonado, in the Washington Post: "Baby Veronica belongs with her adoptive parents"Colorlines report "The Cherokee Nation's Baby Girl Goes on Trial:"Americans remain dangerously uninformed about the basics of tribal sovereignty, and what it means for the relationship between the United States and Native tribes and nations.The Weekly Standard's Ethan Epstein argues that ICWA is "being used to tear [families] apart]: "Mistreating Native American Children"Andrew Cohen considers the trickier legal aspects of the case for the Atlantic in "Indian Affairs, Adoption, and Race: The Baby Veronica Case Comes to Washington:"A little girl is at the heart of a big case at the Supreme Court next week, a racially-tinged fight over Native American rights and state custody laws.Marcia Zug's breakdown of the case (Marica Zug is an associate professor of law at the University of South Carolina School of Law who she specializes in family and American Indian law) "Doing What's Best for the Tribe" for Slate:Two-year-old “Baby Veronica” was ripped from the only home she's known. The court made the right decision.Marcia Zug for the Michigan Law Review: "Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl: Two-and-a-Half WAys To Destroy Indian Law"From Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute's Center for Constitutional Studies: "The Constitutional Flaws of the Indian Child Welfare Act"Rapid City Journal columnist David Rooks poses a set of tough questions about ICWA: "ROOKS: Questions unasked, unanswered"Editorial coverage from The New York Times:"A Wrenching Adoption Case""Adoptive Parents vs. Tribal Rights"Contemporary, Historic, and Legal Source MaterialsAdoptive Couple v. Baby Girl on the SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) BlogAudio from the oral arguments in the Supreme CourtOfficial website for ICWA (the federal Indian Child Welfare Act)1974 Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Indian Affairs "on problems that American Indian families face in raising their children and how these problems are affected by federal action or inaction." PDFThe National Indian Child Welfare AssociationThe First Nations Repatriation Institute, which works with and does advocacy for adopteesSignup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.