The Scientist and the Swindler

Windscale is supposed to be Britain's big leap into the nuclear age, bringing science fiction to life in 1950s Northern England. But in the race to catch up with America's nuclear program, scientists are tinkering with forces they don't fully understand. When the reactor catches ...  Show more

If you tuned in to late-night WOR radio in 1950s New York, you'd enter the secret world of Jean Shepherd. Shepherd's nonconformist style, off-beat humor and love of pranks gathered a small but loyal following. These "Night People" loved being in on the joke, while the oblivious " ...  Show more

America has a soft spot for scoundrels. From the (evil) genius who kept selling the Brooklyn Bridge to foreigners to the original snake oil salesman, we race through history's most legendary cons and discover why Denver was the Florence of the Con-Man Renaissance. Featuring Ma ...

A world-famous physics professor fell in love with a world-famous bikini model. The professor obeyed the Laws of Newton, but not the laws of the land. His strange criminal escapade escaped the bounds of all logic when he was caught at an airport smuggling kilos of cocaine and he ...  Show more

From Ponzi schemes to email phishing identity thieves, the world can seem full of people who want to deceive us. Daniel Simons, PhD, and Christopher Chabris, PhD, co-authors of Nobody’s Fool: Why We Get Taken In and What We Can Do About It, talk about the cognitive habits that pu ...  Show more

Maria Konnikova, a writer and author of “The Confidence Game: Why We Fall For It… Every Time” talks to host Cardiff Garcia about her work and the challenge of judging the quality of social-science research. The two also discuss big data, open-plan offices, sleep and the psycholog ...  Show more