Wonder Cabinet

The human brain is naturally mathematical. But there’s one particular kind of math people have surprisingly strong feelings about — geometry. It's the secret sauce of mathematics — different from everything else, and applicable to everything from gerrymandering to human evolution to romance novels.

Original Air Date: May 28, 2022

Guests: 

Jordan Ellenberg — Stanislas Dehaene

Interviews In This Hour: 

The 14th dimension, AI that writes romance novels, and other things explained by geometry — Did shapes make us human?

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After a pandemic year of social isolation, we knew loneliness would be a problem. But public health officials have been warning for years that in countries all over the world, rates of loneliness are skyrocketing. How did loneliness become a condition of modern life?

Original Air Date: April 10, 2021

Guests: 

Jason Rohrer — Samantha Rose Hill — Claudia Rankine

Interviews In This Hour: 

My Friend Samantha (The A.I.) — How Loneliness Can Lead to Totalitarianism — Being Black and Alone in America

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Before the pandemic upended all world travel, we aired a show about what it means to be an ethical traveler. Between masks and vaccinations, COVID-19 has added even more to the ethical baggage we carry with us when we travel. But part of recovering from the pandemic involves getting back out there and seeing the world.

So before you take your next trip abroad, we thought we would revisit some thoughts and advice in that episode. Safe journeys.

This show was produced in partnership with AFAR Magazine, whose May/June 2019 issue on ethical traveling inspired this episode.

Original Air Date: May 25, 2019

Guests: 

Elizabeth Becker — Dave Eggers — Kathryn Kellogg — Anu Taranath — Barry Lopez

Interviews In This Hour: 

Trying Not To Ruin The World By Visiting It — A Personal Code of Travel Ethics — How to Lessen Your Environmental Impact When You Travel — Traveling Abroad Without Falling Into Guilt Trips — To Travel Well, Be Willing To Listen, Play, Leave The Notebook Behind

Further Reading:

Afar Magazine: Making the World Better, One Traveler at a Time—Afar Magazine: 4 Ways to Explore Venice Responsibly—Afar Magazine: Are We Loving Venice to Death?—Afar Magazine: How to Photograph People When You Travel (Without Being Disrespectful)

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In peaceful times, and in moments of violence, writers have used their art as protest, remembrance, and sometimes, political acts. We talk with poets and novelists about how they deeply notice the historical time we live in — through their words and voice.

Original Air Date: May 07, 2022

Guests: 

Ilya Kaminsky — Bernardine Evaristo — Christopher Benfey — Salman Rushdie

Interviews In This Hour: 

Poetry as protest: 'When people are powerless for so many hundreds of years, language becomes a weapon' — 'All writing is political': Author Bernardine Evaristo on tenacity, growing up Black and British, and winning the Booker Prize — Should we still read the 'proud imperialist' Kipling?

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Not everyone has a nice, big yard to stretch out in while sheltering in place from COVID-19. But maybe you don't need one. People are using virtual spaces to live out the real experiences they miss — like coffee shops, road trips, even building your own house on a deserted island, or Walden Pond. In a world where we're mostly confined to our homes and Zoom screens, does the line between virtual and real-life space mean much anymore?

Original Air Date: May 16, 2020

Guests: 

Mark Riechers — Tracy Fullerton — Simon Parkin — Jane McGonigal — Donald D. Hoffman — Suzanne O’Sullivan

Interviews In This Hour: 

There's No Pandemic In Animal Crossing — I Went To The Woods To Level Up Deliberately — The Most Boring Video Game Ever Made — Want to be Happier? Turn Everyday Tasks Into a Game — How We Fool Ourselves With The Concept of 'Reality'

Further Reading:

NYAS: Reality Is Not As It Seems

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We’re sharing a special preview of a podcast we’ve been enjoying, Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso, from Pushkin Industries. Talk Easy is a weekly interview podcast, where writer Sam Fragoso invites actors, writers, activists, and politicians to come to the table and speak from the heart in ways you probably haven't heard from them before. Driven by curiosity, he’s had revealing conversations with everyone from George Saunders and Cate Blanchett to Stacey Abrams and Gloria Steinem.

In this preview, Sam talks with author Ocean Vuong about his autobiographical novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, remaining creative in the face of oppression, and wrestling with the grief of his mother’s passing.

You can listen to Talk Easy at https://podcasts.pushkin.fm/teknowledge

Why do people turn to poetry during troubled times? We saw it after 9/11 and we're seeing it now as the coronavirus travels around the world. When the world seems broken, poetry is often the one kind of language that helps.

Original Air Date: April 04, 2020

Guests:

Kitty O'Meara — Jericho Brown — Edward Hirsch — Alice Walker — Ken Nordine — Li-Young Lee — Jimmy Santiago Baca

Interviews In This Hour:

A Viral Poem For A Virus Time — Can A Poem Be A Prayer? — Poetry In A Time Of Grief And Loss — Hope Rises. It Always Does. — Li-Young Lee's Love Poetry — Ken Nordine's 'Yellow' — Words Can Change Your Life

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Over the past decade, plant scientists have quietly transformed the way we think of trees, forests and plants. They discovered that trees communicate through vast underground networks, that plants learn and remember. If plants are intelligent beings, how should we relate to them? Do they have a place in our moral universe? Should they have rights?

Human identity cannot be separated from our nonhuman kin. From forest ecology to the human microbiome, emerging research suggests that being human is a complicated journey made possible only by the good graces of our many companions. In partnership with the Center for Humans and Nature and with support from the Kalliopeia Foundation, To The Best Of Our Knowledge is exploring this theme of "kinship" in a special radio series.

To learn more about the Kinship series, head to ttbook.org/kinship.

Original Air Date: December 19, 2020

Guests: 

Robin Wall Kimmerer — Matt Hall — Monica Gagliano — Brooke Hecht

Interviews In This Hour: 

We've Forgotten How To Listen To Plants — We Share This World With Plants. What Do We Owe Them? — Guided by Plant Voices — The Botanical Medicine Cabinet

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In the 21st century, there are a lot of old crafts we think we don’t have much use for anymore. Blacksmithing. Wood turning. Spinning and basket-making. But here's the funny thing — as our world gets more and more virtual, traditional skills are starting to look better and better to a lot of people.

Original Air Date: April 09, 2022

Guests:

Sara Dahmen — Monroe Robinson — Nick Offerman

Interviews In This Hour:

Could you build your own pots and pans? Coppersmith Sara Dahmen revives a lost art — A craftsman alone in the Alaskan wIlderness — ‘He’s my Shakespeare’: Nick Offerman on the craft and wisdom of Wendell Berry

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One of the toughest things about trying to understand climate change – arguably the most important story of our time - is wrapping our minds around it. To even imagine something so enormous, so life-changing, we need a story. Some characters, a metaphor, and even some lessons learned. For that, we turn to the novelists and journalists telling the story of climate change – as we – and our children – live it.

Original Air Date: August 14, 2021

Guests: 

Alice Bell — Lydia Millet — Lidia Yuknavitch — John Lanchester

Interviews In This Hour: 

The Climate Change Stories We Need To Hear — The Climate Crisis Gets Biblical — Lidia Yuknavitch’s Dream World: How Dreams Shaped Her Dazzling Speculative Novel — A Climate Dystopia Of Cold, Concrete, Wind and a Wall

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