Knowable – Details, episodes & analysis

Quantum mechanics has always included mind-bending ideas. But the concept of quantum entanglement, famously termed “spooky at a distance” by Albert Einstein in a 1947 letter, seemed to challenge the limits of belief. It remained well on the edges of modern physics until John Stewart Bell’s 1964 paper suggesting a way to actually test the baffling idea that two particles can somehow share a measured property even when well separated.

Host Adam Levy chats with Nicolas Gisin of the University of Geneva about Einstein’s quote, Bell’s test and why it took so many decades for entanglement, the focus on the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, to go mainstream. Plus, how the phenomenon could help secure communications with your bank.

Find the transcript and additional resources at knowablemagazine.org/podcast.

Sloppy by modern standards — and maybe even those back then — a 1955 article on the placebo effect by Harvard anesthesiologist Henry K. Beecher was nonetheless remarkable and influential. It paved the way for sounder drug trials and pushed scientists to better understand how we process pain. To explore its significance, Host Charlotte Stoddart enlisted the help of Ted Kaptchuk, director of the Program in Placebo Studies at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, who knows the paper well.

Find the transcript and additional resources at knowablemagazine.org/podcast.

What are the limits to what’s knowable — and how has our thinking about big questions in science and technology has evolved over time? Knowable Magazine’s science history podcast returns on February 1, with brand new episodes exploring the science of dreams, the search for extrasolar planets, the quest to treat depression and so much more. Subscribe today to stay in the know.   

The Knowable Magazine podcast from Annual Reviews explores the limits to what’s knowable — and how thinking about big questions in science and technology evolve over time.

Memory, the mystery: Just in the past half-century, our understanding of how exactly our brains remember has taken huge leaps. Amazingly, this is just the beginning.

The Knowable Magazine podcast from Annual Reviews explores the limits to what’s knowable — and how thinking about big questions in science and technology evolve over time.

The dazzling history of solar power: Once fringe and futuristic, this renewable energy shines brightly today as a cheap and efficient source of energy. Still, it remains controversial ­— for much different reasons.

The Knowable Magazine podcast from Annual Reviews explores the limits to what’s knowable — and how thinking about big questions in science and technology evolve over time.

Replacing or assisting the human heart with a machine would save countless lives. But the quest to build an artificial heart has had many gruesome missteps and caused researchers to reimagine how to keep our blood flowing.

The Knowable Magazine podcast from Annual Reviews explores the limits to what’s knowable — and how thinking about big questions in science and technology evolve over time.

Black holes, from theory to reality: Physicists were mostly skeptical when the idea of black holes emerged a century ago from Einstein’s work. This podcast episode tells the story of how the evidence evolved from circumstantial to conclusive.

The Knowable Magazine podcast from Annual Reviews explores the limits to what’s knowable — and how thinking about big questions in science and technology evolve over time.

The fossil Archaeopteryx forever changed our understanding of dinosaurs and the origin of birds, but it took a century after its discovery and a one-page paper to shift scientific consensus.

Here’s the story of that landmark 1973 article by American paleontologist John Ostrom, and published in the journal Nature, describing the bird-like features of Archaeopteryx and convincingly arguing that birds were descended from a group of dinosaurs called theropods.

Host Charlotte Stoddart speaks with paleontologist Julia Clarke of the University of Texas at Austin, whose own research focuses on the early evolution of birds and the origin of flight.

Find the transcript and additional resources at knowablemagazine.org/podcast.

A key report to President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 warned that humankind was “unwittingly conducting a vast geophysical experiment” through the burning of fossil fuels and a consequent buildup of “the invisible pollutant” — carbon dioxide — in the atmosphere. Here’s the story of what happened next to that report — and what didn’t, and why.

Host Adam Levy speaks with Harvard science historian Naomi Oreskes, coauthor of the book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. And he talks with environmental scientist Dana Nuccitelli, research coordinator for Citizens’ Climate Lobby, which aims to build political will for climate solutions through citizen volunteers. 

Find the transcript and additional resources at knowablemagazine.org/podcast

Serendipitous discoveries led to drugs like Prozac and to new insights into the physical basis of this debilitating disorder. But scientists continue to search for deeper understandings and therapies that will bring relief to those who still struggle.