Big Brains

More and more women in the United States are saying no to motherhood. In 2023, the U.S. fertility rate reached the lowest number on record. But the idea of non-motherhood is actually not a new phenome...

What does it mean to see beneath the surface — of the human body, the brain, or even the universe itself? In his new book, The Future of Seeing: How Imaging Is Changing Our World, Prof. Daniel Sodicks...

Few ideas have gripped the public imagination quite like the idea of the “psychopath.” From Hollywood thrillers to true-crime podcasts, popular culture has led us to believe that psychopaths are dange...

For decades, neuroscience has promised breakthroughs in treating conditions like depression, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer’s. Yet despite powerful technologies and billions invested, progress has been ...

Billions of years ago, Mars may have looked less like the barren red desert we know today and more like Earth—with a blue sky, flowing rivers, and even seas. What happened to turn a once-habitable wor...

We’re living in an attention economy—and most of us are broke. But what if the secret to restoring your focus, improving your mental health, and even reducing crime rates wasn’t found in an app or a p...

We’ve long marveled at how efficiently plants convert sunlight into energy—but no one guessed they were using quantum mechanics to do it. In this episode, we speak with Greg Engel, a pioneering biophy...

You’ve heard of plastic polluting oceans. But what if it’s polluting you—your brain, your reproductive system, even your unborn children? In this eye-opening episode, we speak with Prof. Matthew Campe...

Hello listeners…we're re-releasing one of our favorite Big Brains episodes—an incredibly insightful conversation with psychologist Adam Alter. If you've ever felt stuck in your life or career, this ep...

One of the benefits of producing this podcast at the University of Chicago is that there are often events on campus that bring in not just one Big Brain, but many in order to find answers to the some ...