Inquiring Minds

We talk to Columbia professor of mechanical engineering P. James Schuck about the released film Tesla, starring Ethan Hawke as Nikola Tesla, for which he was the science advisor.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds

This week: new research on how climate change is affecting autumn wildfires; a study that attempts to use a biologically inspired and technically enhanced enzymatic solution to break down plastics, and a study showing that whether blue whales are foraging or migrating affects what time of day they sing songs.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds

We talk to journalist and author Lee van der Voo about her new book As the World Burns: The New Generation of Activists and the Landmark Legal Fight Against Climate Change.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds

This week we talk to Stephan Crawford about The ClimateMusic Project, an organization that hopes to, through music, tell the urgent story of climate change.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds

This week we talk to Sara Hendren, an artist, writer, and professor at Olin College of Engineering about her new book What Can a Body Do?: How We Meet the Built World. Hendren's book explores the idea that perhaps many people are disabled not by the shape of their body or how they work, but instead by the shape of the built environment in which they live.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds

This week: A deep look into new research on the relationship between how you sleep and the likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease, including an interview with the study’s author, Matt Walker, and two neuroscientists review Elon Musk’s recent Neuralink announcement and explain what they got right and what they got very wrong.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds

We talk to psychologist Katherine Kinzler about her new book How You Say It: Why You Talk the Way You Do—And What It Says About You.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds

We talk to Scottish psychologist Stuart Ritchie about his new book Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds

We talk to mathematician and epidemiologist Adam Kucharski about his recent book The Rules of Contagion: Why Things Spread—And Why They Stop.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds

This week: A new study showing how you can, as a way to control their population, change blood-drinking female mosquitoes to male, non-biting mosquitoes by changing just one gene; research into new ways for robots to grab things; a study showing the ways in which the pupils of people who have PTSD react differently than others, even in emotionally-neutral situations; beavers in Alaska are working overtime in the Arctic tundra as a result of climate change and possibly damaging the ecosystem; and research examining how the Earth’s crust cracked in the first place.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds