An ode to the small, the banal, the overlooked things that make up the fabric of our lives.Most of our stories are about the big stuff: Important or dramatic events, big ideas that transform the wor

Sometimes a seemingly silly question gets stuck in your craw and you cant shake the feeling that something big lies behind it. We are constantly collecting these kinds of questions from our listeners

First aired way back in 2009, this episode is all about a wonderfully slippery and smarty-pants word for randomness, Stochasticity, and how it may be at the very foundation of our lives. Along the way

Karim Ani dedicated his life to math. He studied it in school, got a degree in math education, even founded Citizen Math to teach it to kids in a whole new way. But, this whole time, his whole life, a

First aired back in 2009, this episode is all about one thing, or rather a collection of things. Whether you love 'em or hate 'em, chances are you rely on numbers every day of your life. Where do they

As a lifeguard, a paramedic, and then an ER doctor, Blair Bigham found his calling: saving lives. But when he started to work in the ICU, he slowly realized that sometimes keeping people (and their ho

In this short episode that first aired in 2011, a neurologist issues a dare to a ragtime piano player and a famous conductor. When the two men face off in an fMRI machine, the challenge is so unimagin

Could puberty get any more awkward? Turns out, yes. Writer Patrick Burleigh started going through puberty as a toddler. He had pubic hair before he was two years old and a mustache by middle school. A

The definition of life is in flux, complexity is overrated, and humans are shrinking.Viruses are supposed to be sleek, pared-down, dead-eyed machines. But when one microbiologist stumbled upon a GIAN

In this episode we introduce you to a part of our bodies that was invisible to Western scientists until about five years ago; its called "the interstitium," a vast network of fluid channels inside th