A high school dropout who went on to create the immensely popular YouTube channel Kurtzgesagt (In a Nutshell) ignites curiosity about science in unique ways.

Trying to figure out how to stop the spread of misinformation on social media, Carl Bergstrom draws from his studies of how birds stick to the truth when communicating about things that matter – like sex and food.

Are men more fit to lead, and more interested in sex than women? Lucy Cooke takes on these myths and more, telling Alan how she visited women biologists around the world who have studied species as different as songbirds, lions and bonobos. What she discovered is eye-opening – especially if you’re a man.

Gender fluidity is tolerated a lot more among our cousins— chimpanzees and bonobos— than in our species. The famed primatologist Frans de Waal tells Alan what he’s found after decades of studying our closest relatives.

Alan and Paul Dooley started out as actors around the same time and in this conversation they have a reunion. In the years between, Paul has gone from standup comedy to playing a multitude of dads in movies. And at 94 he’s still going strong.

The end of absolutely everything won’t happen for a long, long time. But Katie Mack can describe the different ways the universe might die with clarity and even humor.

Stars in the field of science communication, they know how to make the rest of us want to learn about something we don’t think we care about. They even creatively inspire each other.

When he realized that the skills that had led to his successes in the first half of life needed to be replaced by other skills for the next half, social scientist Arthur Brooks began investigating what we need to do now to prepare for happiness and fulfillment as we grow older.

Her realization that if she’d led the life her parents have, then she would have voted for Trump too, was an insight that contributed to her decision to write her new book, I Never Thought of It That Way. The book is both a diagnosis of, and a prescription for, the ugly polarization that is gripping today’s America.

Alan talks with longtime friend, the great pianist Emanuel Ax. How does practice lead to the unexpected magic of spontaneity? What role does the audience play? And taking music to the places whereit’s needed most.