TRBQ: Recent Episodes
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What if you had an idea that you believed could change the world? What if that idea was a tornado machine? In this episode we ask, what drives some people to pursue an idea for their entire lives? Download audio Retired engineer Louis Michaud believes he has an idea that could solve the world’s energy…READ MORE
A very brief announcement. Really, really brief. MORE AUDIO from TRBQ: Subscribe the to the TRBQ podcast on iTunes. Listen to the TRBQ podcast on Stitcher. Follow TRBQ on SoundCloud.
You can vote when you’re 18 and drink when you’re 21. But when do you really become an adult? Download audio Psychologist Jeffrey Jensen Arnett says people in their 20s are in a different life-stage than people in their 30s. He coined the term “emerging adulthood” to describe the years between adolescence and full adulthood.…READ MORE
These are the final words of Jennifer Michael Hecht’s most recent book: “Choose to stay.” Hecht argues against suicide as an escape from despair. She offers two reasons. Choosing to stay allows you the chance to be helpful to someone else. And, she says you owe your future self a chance at happiness. AUDIO: Hecht…READ MORE
Maybe it’s a stuffed elephant. Could be a pepper shaker. Or perhaps a very special rock. Many adults have an object that’s particularly dear to them, but it’s not something that most people openly talk about. Unless you ask them. Download audio Share your special thing with us on Facebook Emily Walsh has always collected trinkets,…READ MORE
Mary Roach wants you to give yourself away. Not yet, though. After you’re dead. She wrote a book called “Stiff,” in which she details what has happened over the years to bodies that were donated—willingly or unwillingly—to science. “I think that, for many people, does take the edge off it,” Roach says. “You know there…READ MORE
If you ever doubt that animals have the capacity to share, look no further than chimpanzees and capuchin monkeys. Frans de Waal studies primates, and he teaches psychology at Emory University. He says says looking at the way other primates share sheds light on the way humans act. Download audio “Sometimes in human behavior there’s…READ MORE
On the altar of a former cathedral in Duluth, Minn., an ensemble of musicians begins to play. Their notes are piercing and sometimes dissonant. It’s not your typical cathedral music—but then again, these aren’t your typical musicians. They’re robots. Download audio None of them look like robots, though. They look more like futuristic instruments. Troy…READ MORE
The human instinct to tell stories is strong. So strong, in fact, that sometimes people see stories when they’re not there. Download audio In the 1940s, two researchers set out to demonstrate the proclivity of humans to see stories, even in random events. Fritz Heider and Mary-Ann Simmel created a short animated film in which a small…READ MORE
The TRBQ team met Harvard ethnomusicologist Richard Wolf while working on a show about music. But Wolf studies the funeral music of the Kota people in south India, and he has something to say about death, too. Listen to more of Richard Wolf’s interview on TRBQ’s radio special: What Is a Good Death?
Storytelling is an integral part of human culture. It teaches, enlightens and connects. But according to author and playwright Anne Bogart, it can also be dangerous. Download audio Bogart just released a book called “What’s the Story: Essays about Art, Theater and Storytelling.” She’s also the artistic director of SITI Company, a New York-based theater…READ MORE
Back in the 1940s, psychologists Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel made a simple animated film. Heider and Simmel used it in an experiment: They asked people to watch the film and describe what they saw happening. Try it out yourself. Here’s the Heider-Simmel film. What Heider and Simmel discovered is that many people who watched…READ MORE
Unraveling the truth behind why human beings tell stories requires a scientist who can explain science to non-scientists. Enter E. O. Wilson. Download audio Wilson is a biologist, but he’s also a storyteller. He’s among the world’s top experts on ants, but he’s also written a raft of best-selling books on popular science, and he’s…READ MORE
Every atom in our bodies was fused in the body of an ancient star. NASA astronomer Dr. Michelle Thaller explains how the iron in our blood connects us to one of the most violent acts in the universe—a supernova explosion—and what the universe might look like when all the stars die out. This video is…READ MORE
Tad Hoskins thinks we should face the facts: We’re all going to die. So we should make the necessary preparations. He’s not a morbid guy — just well prepared. That’s why he has his mom’s casket stored in his workshop. Download audio Spring came late this year to New York Mills, Minnesota. When we visited…READ MORE
TRBQ paid a visit to the United House of Prayer for All People in Harlem to spend some time with a gospel brass band called the McCullough Sons of Thunder. And we talked with some neuroscientists who study our perceptions of music. Download audio When the McCullough Sons of Thunder play at the United House…READ MORE
Pay a visit to the McCullough Sons Thunder at the United House of Prayer for All People in Harlem, and hear from neuroscientist Ani Patel of Tufts. A video from TRBQ producer Flora Lichtman.
Pinning down a definition of music is harder than it sounds. A song composed by a human easily fits into the category of music. But what about a song composed by a bird? Or the rumble of a freight train? Download audio Steven Pinker is a cognitive scientist at Harvard, and he’s written best-selling books…READ MORE
When Petr Janata tells people he does research into “groove,” he sometimes gets raised eyebrows. “It generally conjures up associations of bad hair and bad clothes from the ’70s,” says Janata, a professor of psychology at UC Davis. Groove is just one facet of music that scientists have begun to systematically investigate. Researchers are…READ MORE
Americans don’t seem to have much trouble with violent death at the movies. But real death is a different story. Slow, lingering death from old age, funerals, embalming, cremation – these are not really dinner table conversation. A group called The Order of the Good Death is trying to change that. The Order wants to…READ MORE
Why do people share? In this episode we hear from Yochai Benkler about his research into people who write Wikipedia articles, and we meet Sam Harnett who moonlights giving people rides — and recording their stories. Download audio Any given day, in any given place, someone is giving away something of value. Money, time, expertise.…READ MORE
Give and forget. This is how one elder describes the way of life that guides the Maasai of East Africa. He speaks not of giving and getting, but of giving and letting go. The concept is called “osotua,” and its closest English translation would be “umbilical cord.” It means if someone doesn’t have enough, you…READ MORE
Here’s a short clip of Frans de Waal’s famous fairness experiment with capuchin monkeys. Yes, it turns out, capuchins have a sense of fairness. They’re happy to work for slices of cucumber — until their neighbor gets a grape for doing the same task. You can see the result.
The Memorial Blood Center sets up a table in the University of Minnesota Duluth’s busy bus hub. Every few minutes a student comes by to set up an appointment, and then heads out to the blood drive bus. In one day, dozens of students volunteer to get stuck in the arm with a needle for…READ MORE
Money can make you happy. Especially if you give it to someone else. A growing body of research shows that giving money to other people is more likely to make you happy than keeping the money. In this episode, Michael Norton from the Harvard Business School tells Dean about his fascinating research into sharing and…READ MORE
I stood in the entrance of the exhibition hall and looked out at the rows of people, extending as far as the eye could see, as they tried out the latest saxophones, trumpets, and cymbals. Amid the crush of bodies and discordant sounds I said to myself: “What the hell am I doing here? This…READ MORE
It’s a question that has puzzled philosophers through the centuries: Are humans born good, and then caused by outside forces to do evil, or are we born evil, so that we need to be cajoled and threatened into being good? Dacher Keltner makes an interesting observation in his book Born to Be Good. He points…READ MORE
Emily Haavik is a television news producer and a freelance journalist. She has written for the Duluth News Tribune, the Lake County News Chronicle, Essentia Health, Journalism Practice, the news website Perfect Duluth Day and Duluth’s Homegrown Music Festival. She previously worked as an advertising copywriter at Swim Creative. She is a graduate of the…READ MORE
Flora Lichtman is a science journalist living in New York. Her videos have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic and in a number of film festivals. Previously, Flora worked for NPR’s Science Friday. Over the course of eight years with the program, she shot, produced and edited hundreds of science videos, chatted about…READ MORE
Head to your local university library, and you’ll find shelves of books on courtship and marriage in history and literature, and even more books about sex. But scholarly books about love? Not so much. If you want to read about love, you’ll find a lot more in the self-help section of the local bookstore. Books…READ MORE
Whether you’re altruistic or not may depend on what kind of family you grew up in. TRBQ host Dean Olsher recently talked with Tom Smith at the University of Chicago about his study of altruism and empathy in America. Smith directs the National Opinion Research Center at the university. Every year, the center does a…READ MORE
TRBQ pays a visit to the marriage market in Shanghai to talk with parents who are looking for mates for their adult children, and host Dean Olsher talks with scientists about brain scans of people who are in love. The question is, does “love” mean the same thing in different cultures? And it appears the…READ MORE
At San Francisco’s Exploratorium, a few eager experimenters stand around a screen with fingers flying. They’re texting, and with each message sent they catch a virtual fish. There are plenty of virtual fish for everyone, but the same thing happens over and over. And over. And over. They run out. “It’s very common for people…READ MORE
A person on the street asks you for a dollar. A fellow traveler on an airplane loses his wallet and asks you to loan him cab fare. Do you say yes? It doesn’t seem to depend on whether you’re rich or poor. Research shows that being richer doesn’t make people more generous. It also shows…READ MORE
Do not get married! Think it through…love is not always enough. Would a love-struck, soon-to-be-married 35-year-old take this advice? What if it was a message from the future, from her 43-year-old self? That’s the question Chris Johnson had in mind when he created the WisdomArc Time Machine. The contraption goes against everything Doc Brown taught…READ MORE