Inquiring Minds

We talk to writer Keith Law about the behavioral economics of baseball and his new book The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves.

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This week: New research on a biological enzyme that can break down the plastic we use for water bottles; a brief look into the history of egg decorating; a new study on the social consequences of a financially contingent self-worth; and a summary of new research involving jazz guitarists improvising while wearing EEGs on their heads.

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We talk to journalist and founder of the Neurodiversity Project Jenara Nerenberg about her new book Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn't Designed for You.

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We talk to social psychologist David Dunning about his well-known 1999 study on why people are so bad at knowing how smart they are. He explains what people get wrong about it today, and what he’s learned since then.

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We talk to linguist Gretchen McCulloch about her new book Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language.

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We talk to Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Cohen about his new book The Hot Hand: The Mystery and Science of Streaks.

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We talk to French neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene about his new book How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine … for Now.

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We talk to Jessica Powell, a writer and former VP of Communications for Google, about her new book The Big Disruption: A Totally Fictional but Essentially True Silicon Valley Story.

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This week: scientists successfully germinated 2,000-year-old date palm seeds and we might soon know what 2,000-year-old dates taste like; another group of researchers 3D modeled a 3,000-year-old mummy’s vocal tract and what they may have sounded like; and new research on how support cells in brains, called microglia, affect memory in mice.

Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds

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We talk to science journalist Deborah Blum about her new book The Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.

Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds

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