The Pulse

By NPR

Technology

What's The Pulse about?

Go on an adventure into unexpected corners of the health and science world each week with award-winning host Maiken Scott. The Pulse takes you behind the doors of operating rooms, into the lab with some of the world's foremost scientists, and back in time to explore life-changing innovations. The Pulse delivers stories in ways that matter to you, and answers questions you never knew you had.

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Boredom in the Age of Infor...

09.22.2023

It sneaks up on us while we're sitting in traffic, or waiting at the doctor's office, or doing our taxes — boredom, that restless feeling of dissatisfaction that arises when we harbor "the desire for desires," as Leo Tolstoy said. ...

The Pulse episodes:

09.22.2023 Boredom in the Age of Information Overload It sneaks up on us while we're sitting in traffic, or waiting at the doctor's office, or doing our taxes — boredom, that restless feeling of dissatisfaction that arises when we harbor "the desire for desires," as Leo Tolstoy said. ...
09.20.2023 Face Recognition and What it Means for our Privacy In November of 2019, New York Times tech reporter Kashmir Hill got a tip that immediately had her on high alert. It was about a secretive tech company called Clearview AI, that claimed to have developed a facial recognition app ...
09.15.2023 How Art and Science Intersect We often think of art and science as existing in different — even opposite — spheres. One revolves around creativity and imagination; the other around observable facts and data — and never the twain shall meet.But really, art and science ...
09.08.2023 Finding Happiness We spend a lot of time thinking about happiness. Wondering if we are truly happy, and how we could get there. We try to predict what will make us happy in the future, or what might lead to misery down ...
08.25.2023 Remote Working vs. the Office — Which is Better? Over the past few years, remote working has transformed millions of people's lives — giving them more time for family, more control over their schedules, and a better work-life balance. But now, a growing number of companies — including tech ...
08.18.2023 Bringing Physics from Theory to Practice Science is all about observing the world. But how do you study something you can't see, smell, or hear — like the tiniest particles all around us? How do you test a new energy source when it doesn't really exist ...
08.11.2023 Will A.I. Take Your Job — or Make It Better? Whether you're a student or a doctor, a plumber or a truck driver, a university lecturer or a radio reporter, artificial intelligence is changing the way we work. For some workers, A.I. is taking over tedious and time-consuming tasks, freeing ...
08.04.2023 Skin Care and the Quest for Eternal Youth It seems like every day, new skin care products hit the market: lotions, serums, collagen boosters, light therapy, at-home lasers — potions and procedures designed to coax our skin into peeling and healing, plumping and renewing. Their promise: wrinkle-free faces, ...
07.28.2023 What's Behind Health Care Shortages? If you've tried to book a doctor's appointment lately, chances are, it's been challenging. Many practices are not taking new patients, or open slots are weeks or months away. For some patients, it has meant gritting their teeth through pain ...
07.21.2023 Searching for Utopia For centuries, writers and philosophers have imagined what a perfect world might look like — if only we had a chance to start over, build it all from scratch. The term "utopia" comes from ancient Greek. It literally means "no ...
07.14.2023 Behind the Scenes — Challenges in Medicine When you're at the doctor's office or a hospital, it's easy to get frustrated. Why is this taking so long? Why do the nurses look so tired? Why does my doctor seem distracted? Who's making sure my diagnosis is right? ...
07.07.2023 Inside the Minds of Thrill Seekers Skydiving, BASE jumping, climbing the highest peaks, adventuring to remote parts of the world — pushing the boundaries of safety. For thrill-seekers, chasing the rush is what it's all about. Where lots of us would break into a cold sweat, ...
06.30.2023 Degrees of Freedom Freedom sounds great as an idea. Who doesn't want to be free to do what they want? But when you take a closer look, freedom becomes more complicated. What does it really mean to be free — and how free ...
06.23.2023 Buried Secrets, Buried Waste In October of 1947, a navy reserve pilot named George Earle IV received strange orders: He was to pick up several 55-gallon barrels at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, fly out 100 miles southeast of Atlantic City, and then dump them ...
06.16.2023 Black Health: Finding Solutions to End Disparities Health disparities between Black and white Americans run deep in the U.S. Black people are more likely to suffer from chronic conditions like diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, or asthma, and their life expectancy is shorter than that of their white ...
06.09.2023 The Social Self It's a simple question with lots of answers: Who are you? You might answer with your name, age, gender, or race. Or you might define yourself by your family — as a sibling, a parent, or son or daughter. You ...
06.02.2023 The Benefits of Knowing When to Quit The messages we receive around quitting are usually straightforward — don't do it. It's something we hear everywhere — from greats like Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky, in movies and TV shows, on motivational posters and in children's books: Go ...
05.30.2023 How K-Beauty Revolutionized Skincare — And Became Obsessed with Perfection When NPR host Elise Hu moved to South Korea to be an international correspondent, she ended up getting a crash course on Korean beauty and the country's billion-dollar cosmetics industry. She explains the rise of the industry, its appeal, and ...
05.26.2023 Communicating with Animals Humans have long been fascinated by the idea of communicating with other species — not just teaching animals to mimic human words, but truly understanding their calls or cries, and interpreting their meaning. In recent years, new technologies and research ...
05.19.2023 The Mind-Body Feedback Loop We all know how stress — or anger, or pangs of anxiety — can affect the body. Your heart rate increases; your blood pressure rises; maybe your palms feel sweaty, or your stomach feels tight. Likewise, our bodies have a ...
05.12.2023 When Healing Happens But We Don't Know Why More than a third of Americans use complementary and alternative medicine, ranging from acupuncture to herbalism, Ayurveda to homeopathy. But despite its growing popularity, complementary and alternative medicine remains, for the most part, outside the Western medical mainstream — regarded ...
05.12.2023 When Healing Happens But We Don’t Know Why We step outside the boundaries of Western medicine to explore those questions!
05.05.2023 Managing the Challenges of Motherhood If you look around for Mother's Day gifts, you'll probably see stuff like bubble baths, spa days, yoga classes — a whole slew of things aimed at promoting "self-care" for tireless (but actually exhausted) moms. But for a lot of ...
04.28.2023 Neurotech and the Growing Battle for Our Brains Have you ever wanted to figure out when you're the most focused? Or how your moods change throughout the day? How "fit" your brain is, or whether your insomnia is really as bad as you think? Neurotech devices promise to ...
04.21.2023 Why Rejection Hurts So Much — And How to Cope Rejection, or even the thought of it, can strike fear into our hearts, and leave a bad taste in our mouths. It often leads to a mix of sadness, shame, anxiety, and anger — along with nagging questions. What's wrong ...
04.13.2023 Why We Love and Hate Exercising —And How to Do it Either Way We all know that exercise is good for us — for both our bodies and our minds — but motivating yourself to hit the gym, take a run, or even go for a walk sometimes feels like the hardest thing ...
04.07.2023 Taking the Temperature of Climate Science We hear about the big picture of climate change almost every day — the threats it poses, the effects on our world and lives, the fight to stop it. Across the world, armies of researchers are contributing pieces to that ...
03.31.2023 Call Me — Maybe? 50 Years Since the First Cell Phone Call On April 3, 1973, an engineer named Martin Cooper stood nervously along a busy midtown Manhattan street, about to make a phone call. It was a call that would change life as we know it: The first cell phone call ...
03.17.2023 Bodies for Science If you’re training to become a physician, your first patient is usually dead. In fact, “first patient” is what med students call the human cadavers that they work on in anatomy class — when they first learn to make careful ...
03.10.2023 Bringing Physics from Theory Practice Science is all about observing the world. But how do you study something you can't see, smell, or hear — like the tiniest particles all around us? How do you test a new energy source when it doesn't really exist ...
03.08.2023 Surrounded by Walruses: The Making of ‘Haulout’ In 2018, brother and sister filmmaking duo Evgenia Arbugaeva and Maxim Arbugaev traveled to a beach in the Siberian Arctic — an area in Northeast Russia. When they arrived on this beach, the sand was almost black in color, and ...
03.03.2023 What Makes a Pest a Pest? Pests: We know them when we see them. The mice that lurk in our kitchens, the squirrels that steal our tomatoes, the mosquitoes that bite us in the summer, and the pigeons that flutter around busy city streets. And yet, ...
02.24.2023 Skin Care and the Quest for Eternal Youth It seems like every day, new skin care products hit the market: lotions, serums, collagen boosters, light therapy, at-home lasers — potions and procedures designed to coax our skin into peeling and healing, plumping and renewing. Their promise: wrinkle-free faces, ...
02.17.2023 Shame and Blame: How Stigma Impacts Health Dealing with a serious or chronic health condition is hard enough — but what happens when that condition comes with moral judgment? That’s the case for millions of people around the world. From obesity to lung cancer, sexually transmitted diseases ...
02.10.2023 Black Health: Finding Solutions to Disparities Health disparities between Black and white Americans run deep in the U.S. Black people are more likely to suffer from chronic conditions like diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, or asthma, and their life expectancy is shorter than that of their white ...
02.03.2023 The Therapist in your Pocket Finding the right therapist — or, sometimes, any therapist — can be a grueling process. Someone with the right expertise, who is still taking new clients, lives in your area, who accepts your insurance, or whose services you can afford. ...
01.27.2023 The Hidden Powers of Fungi When you hear the word fungi, chances are mushrooms come to mind: button mushrooms, maybe portobellos, or chanterelles. But so much of the fungi kingdom is invisible — underground — and many say underappreciated. Fungi are vital to life on ...
01.20.2023 Communicating with Animals Humans have long been fascinated by the idea of communicating with other species — not just teaching animals to mimic human words, but truly understanding their calls or cries, and interpreting their meaning. In recent years, new technologies and research ...
01.13.2023 Transformative Power of Awe It's the goosebumps you get at the crescendo of your favorite song; the stupefying wonder that comes with witnessing a birth or a death; the astonishing mystery we feel when gazing at the vast night sky. This is awe — ...
01.06.2023 Making the Best of It It’s the start of a new year — a time when lots of people are thinking about how they can improve their lives … and themselves. We make plans to get to the gym, eat healthier, sleep more, and have ...
12.30.2022 Noise Annoys On a technical level, noise and sound are the same thing: vibrating molecules that travel in waves straight to our ears. But when sound is annoying, we tend to call it noise. From garbage trucks to car alarms, shrieking babies ...
12.27.2022 Ed Yong on Animal Perception and the Pandemic Science journalist Ed Yong is a must-read — with his in-depth reporting, his beautifully told stories, and spot-on analysis. He is one of the go-to-journalists for the most up-to-date and accurate information on the pandemic. On top of his reporting, ...
12.23.2022 Humans and Sound The soundscape of our lives changes depending on where we are — the murmuring of voices, birdsong in trees, the beeps and dings of technology, and the cacophony of traffic. Our worlds are dense with sound. Often, it all blends ...
12.16.2022 When Humans and Wildlife Collide Whether we’re in a forest, a park, or in the middle of a city, wildlife is always close by. Birds flying overhead, deer peeking through the branches, rabbits hopping through our yards, or rats and raccoons rummaging through our garbage. ...
12.02.2022 Changing the Way We Think About Chronic Pain Pain is powerful — and when it becomes chronic, it can be all-consuming. It takes over our minds, saps our energy, and becomes the focus of our existence. And yet, pain is also invisible. We can try to describe it ...
12.02.2022 Changing the Way We Think About Chronic Pain Pain is powerful — and when it becomes chronic, it can be all-consuming. It takes over our minds, saps our energy, and becomes the focus of our existence. And yet, pain is also invisible. We can try to describe it ...
11.25.2022 The Bottom of the Sea The bottom of the ocean seems like an unlikely place to be teeming with life — it’s dark, freezing cold, and subject to enormous pressure. And yet, in recent years, scientists have discovered that these depths are a rich ecosystem, ...
11.18.2022 The Future of Food What we eat — and how our food is produced — is always changing. Over the past few decades, we’ve seen attempts to go from industrial farming to eating local, from factory farms to pasture-raised, anti-fat to anti-carb, wheat to ...
11.11.2022 The Science of Extreme Weather Hurricanes. Tornadoes. Blizzards. Flooding. Over the past 20 years, we’ve seen a staggering increase in extreme weather events, resulting in millions of deaths and trillions of dollars of damage around the globe. This increase has made the stakes for precise ...
11.04.2022 Conversations with Veterans There are 19 million veterans in the U.S. who have served in the armed forces. For many, the military gave them a sense of shared purpose, a strong connection to their comrades. But that community often disappears when they get ...

Older episodes

The Pulse

What's The Pulse about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The Pulse episodes:

Boredom in the Age of Information Overload

Face Recognition and What it Means for our Privacy

How Art and Science Intersect

Finding Happiness

Remote Working vs. the Office — Which is Better?

Bringing Physics from Theory to Practice

Will A.I. Take Your Job — or Make It Better?

Skin Care and the Quest for Eternal Youth

What's Behind Health Care Shortages?

Searching for Utopia

Behind the Scenes — Challenges in Medicine

Inside the Minds of Thrill Seekers

Degrees of Freedom

Buried Secrets, Buried Waste

Black Health: Finding Solutions to End Disparities

The Social Self

The Benefits of Knowing When to Quit

How K-Beauty Revolutionized Skincare — And Became Obsessed with Perfection

Communicating with Animals

The Mind-Body Feedback Loop

When Healing Happens But We Don't Know Why

When Healing Happens But We Don’t Know Why

Managing the Challenges of Motherhood

Neurotech and the Growing Battle for Our Brains

Why Rejection Hurts So Much — And How to Cope

Why We Love and Hate Exercising —And How to Do it Either Way

Taking the Temperature of Climate Science

Call Me — Maybe? 50 Years Since the First Cell Phone Call

Bodies for Science

Bringing Physics from Theory Practice

Surrounded by Walruses: The Making of ‘Haulout’

What Makes a Pest a Pest?

Skin Care and the Quest for Eternal Youth

Shame and Blame: How Stigma Impacts Health

Black Health: Finding Solutions to Disparities

The Therapist in your Pocket

The Hidden Powers of Fungi

Communicating with Animals

Transformative Power of Awe

Making the Best of It

Noise Annoys

Ed Yong on Animal Perception and the Pandemic

Humans and Sound

When Humans and Wildlife Collide

Changing the Way We Think About Chronic Pain

Changing the Way We Think About Chronic Pain

The Bottom of the Sea

The Future of Food

The Science of Extreme Weather

Conversations with Veterans