She’s best known for playing neurobiologist Amy Farrah Fowler on The Big Bang Theory, but the award-winning actress has a rich life outside of her acting career, as a teacher, mother — and a real-l...
By cataloging the steady march of human progress, the Harvard psychologist and linguist has become a very public intellectual. But the self-declared “polite Canadian” has managed to enrage people o...
In the last episode of the podcast, Stephen Dubner turns the microphone on Steve Levitt. They talk about Levitt’s favorite — and least favorite — moments from the show’s five-year run, his quest to...
The late Robert Solow was a giant among economists. When he was 98 years old he told Steve about cracking German codes in World War II, why it’s so hard to reduce inequality, and how his field lost...
Michael Crow is the president of Arizona State University, which U.S. News & World Report has called the most innovative school in the country for 11 years running. He tells Steve about why hig...
Michael Greenstone knows it’s corny, but he wants to make the world a better place — by tracking the impact of air quality, developing pollution markets in India, and … starting a podcast, which St...
Suleika Jaouad was diagnosed with cancer at 22. She made her illness the subject of a New York Times column and a memoir, Between Two Kingdoms. She and Steve talk about what it means to live with a...
Physicist and former pop star Brian Cox tells Steve about discovering the Higgs boson, having a number-one hit, and why particle physics research will almost certainly not create a black hole that ...
Irving Finkel is an expert on cuneiform — the oldest known writing system. He tells Steve the amazing story of how an ancient clay tablet unlocked the truth about Noah’s ark (and got Finkel in trou...
Moon Duchin is a math professor at the University of Chicago whose theoretical work has practical applications for voting and democracy. Why is striving for fair elections so difficult? SOURCE...
Frances Arnold pioneered the process of directed evolution — mimicking natural selection to create new enzymes that have changed everything from agriculture to laundry. SOURCES:Frances Arnold,...
Steven Pinker’s new book argues that all our relationships depend on shared assumptions and “recursive mentalizing” — our constant efforts to understand what other people are thinking. He and Steve...
The Power of Habit author Charles Duhigg wrote his new book in an attempt to learn how to communicate better. Steve shares how the book helped him understand his own conversational weaknesses. ...
Seth Berkley used to run the world's largest vaccine funding organization. He and Steve talk about the incredible value of vaccines, the economics of immunizing the developing world, and the curren...
Stefanie Stantcheva’s approach seemed like career suicide. In fact, it won her the John Bates Clark Medal. She talks to fellow winner Steve Levitt about why she uses methods that most of the profes...
From recording some of the first rap hits to revitalizing Johnny Cash's career, the legendary producer has had an extraordinary creative life. In this episode he talks about his new book and his ar...
More than two decades ago, Adam Riess’s Nobel Prize-winning work fundamentally changed our understanding of the universe. His new work is reshaping cosmology for a second time. RESOURCES:Adam ...
Uri Simonsohn is a behavioral science professor who wants to improve standards in his field — so he’s made a sideline of investigating fraudulent academic research. He tells Steve Levitt, who's spe...
Former U.S. Secretary of Education, 3x3 basketball champion, and leader of an anti-gun violence organization are all on Arne’s resume. He’s also Steve’s neighbor. The two talk about teachers caught...
Kate Marvel spends her days playing with climate models, which she says are “like a very expensive version of The Sims.” As a physicist she gets tired of being asked to weigh in on economics, geopo...
