This week we’re joined by podcaster, journalist, and author David McRaney to discuss his latest book How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion. It’s a deep look at what we know about what it takes to change someone’s mind and why it’s more complicated than you might think.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds

This week we welcome back James Beard award winning food science writer J. Kenji López-Alt. He talks about growing up around science, studying architecture at MIT, and how, strangely enough, both subjects pertain to cooking. Kenji is the author of the bestselling The Food Lab and the recently released The Wok: Recipes and Techniques.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds

You might not be aware of it, but the UK is experiencing a wildlife crisis. Ecologist Derek Gow joins us this week to talk about what we ought to do about it and how he’s trying to rewild the country with his farm-turned-wildlife breeding center. Gow wrote the bestselling Bringing Back the Beaver and will soon release his latest book Birds, Beasts and Bedlam: Turning My Farm into an Ark for Lost Species.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds

On the show this week we’re joined by naturalist, author, and returning guest Sy Montgomery. Throughout her career, Montgomery has repeatedly shown an incredible ability to understand, befriend, and interact with animals. We last heard from her in episode #128 where she talked about her 2016 book The Soul of an Octopus, but she’s written about everything from tigers to snakes to hummingbirds. In this episode we explore her latest book, where she covers her perhaps most challenging animal yet, The Hawk’s Way: Encounters with Fierce Beauty.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds

Brian Butterworth, a renowned professor of cognitive neuropsychology, discusses the mathematical abilities in other species, including infants' sensitivity to numbers and the relationship between math and the universe. The podcast also explores counting in animals and bioluminescent bacteria, the accumulator theory, counting as a decision-making tool in animal behavior, and the concept of numbers and discount cunies.

How do you feel fear and be creative anyway? How is letting your mind wander key to coming up with, and following through on, creative ideas? Returning to the show this week is journalist Matt Richtel, winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for a series on distracted driving, and author of numerous books. His latest book, Inspired: Understanding Creativity: A Journey Through Art, Science, and the Soul, is devoted to a deeper understanding of creativity and he joins us this week to talk about it.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds

How do you define how painful something is? On the show this week we welcome back physician, writer, and clinical researcher Haider Warraich to talk about his new book The Song of Our Scars: The Untold Story of Pain. Warraich explores the idea that far from being something objective and easily defined, pain is complex, misunderstood, and culturally influenced. The book delves into the history of pain and explains how our understanding of it has been “shaped not just by science but by politics and power, by whose suffering mattered and whose didn’t.”Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds

This week we’re joined by Benjamin Ehrlich, author of The Brain in Search of Itself: Santiago Ramón y Cajal and the Story of the Neuron. It’s a book about the discoveries and life of Spanish neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal, who has been called the ‘father of modern neuroscience.’ While today relatively unknown outside of his field, Cajal’s discoveries about the brain changed the field of neuroscience forever. In 1906 he won a Nobel Prize for his pioneering work on neurons, which he called “the mysterious butterflies of the soul … whose beating of wings may one day reveal to us the secrets of the mind.” https://inquiring.show/episodes/378-the-untold-story-of-the-neuronSupport the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds

This week on the podcast, they discuss how certain cancer cells help understand cellular adaptation, measuring creativity using narrative theory, and studying visual perception through the hunting method of archerfish.

During the pandemic, one thing we’ve had a little more of--at least sometimes--is time. Time to panic and stress and worry, but also time to think and reflect. This week, in the spirit of reflection, we’re revisiting a conversation with theoretical physicist Sean Carroll recorded back in 2016. At the time he had just written a book called The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself, which explores questions about purpose and belief and meaning. Today, in 2022, his book is even more poignant. If you’ve ever found yourself feeling woefully insignificant relative to the vastness of space and time, Carroll’s perspective might just change your life. He argues that since we only have a limited time in a tiny part of space, we need to make good use of every heartbeat. The Big Picture is a poetic overview of the known universe, with deep insights into the human experience.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds