Jun 3, 2021
Why does our universe work the way it does? What are its laws? How did it start with the Big Bang‚ and how will it end?
Scientists like Prof. Dan Hooper from the University of Chicago use something called the Standard Model of Physics to explain our universe, but there’s one big problem: The model has...
Mar 8, 2021
Anthony Fauci has spent the past year trying to curb the worst health crisis the world has seen in a century.
In a recent University of Chicago event, Fauci reflected on how the COVID-19 pandemic has been a “painful learning experience” for he and other health officials. On this episode of the Big Brains podcast,...
Feb 25, 2021
The coronavirus pandemic has raised countless ethical questions: How do we balance restricting freedoms with protecting others, how do we ethically distribute vaccines, should we force people to get vaccinated—or should we ask healthy people to get infected with COVID-19 in the name of science?
There’s no one better...
Feb 11, 2021
The Doomsday Clock has been set at 100 seconds to midnight—as close to total destruction as we were in 2020. But after a year of increasingly dangerous weather and wildfires, not to mention the COVID-19 pandemic, why didn’t the clock move?
Rachel Bronson is the president and CEO of the Bulletin of The Atomic...
Jan 28, 2021
What are the biggest questions in science today: Can we cure cancer, solve the climate crisis, make it to Mars? For Nobel laureate Jack Szostak, the biggest question is still much more fundamental: What is the origin of life?
A professor of genetics at Harvard University, Szostak has dedicated his lab to...