Thinking Places

Cells in our bodies are constantly dying — and these countless tiny deaths are essential to human health and multicellular life itself. In this episode, co-host Steven Strogatz speaks with cellular biologist Shai Shaham about what makes a cell “alive” and the latest developments in understanding how and why cells die.

While some fret about technology’s social impacts, Raj Reddy still believes in the power of artificial intelligence to improve lives.

The discovery that other vertebrates have healthy, microbial brains is fueling the still controversial possibility that we might have them as well.

Three high schoolers and their mentor revisited a century-old theorem to prove that all knots can be found in a fractal called the Menger sponge.

Our computers can get a lot more done when they share the load with other machines.

The reference frames from which observers view quantum events can themselves have multiple possible locations at once — an insight with potentially major ramifications.

We often consider spoken language to be a feature that distinguishes humans from other forms of animal life. Brain research, however, suggests that other creatures — including certain birds — share some of our neural circuitry related to language. In this episode, co-host Janna Levin explores the origins and underlying mechanisms of human speech and birdsong with neurobiologist and geneticist Erich Jarvis.

The clearest picture yet of our “last universal common ancestor” suggests it was a relatively complex organism living 4.2 billion years ago, a time long considered too harsh for life to flourish.

The mathematician David Bessis claims that everyone is capable of, and can benefit greatly from, mathematical thinking.