A Cup of Knowledge: With Guests A.J. Jacobs &...

Are your instincts talking you out of your own happiness? Every day, we make split-second decisions to avoid the people around us. We put in our earbuds on the train, stare at our phones, and assume the stranger next to us prefers to be left alone. Our brain tells us that reachin ...  Show more

How did small index cards help a high school football team pull off a legendary 151-game winning streak? And what can a 1960s Queens housewife teach us about sticking to our goals? In this episode of Choiceology with Katy Milkman, we explore why some goals are easier to achieve t ...  Show more

Why don’t rockets fly straight up? What’s really happening when you make toast? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice break down the science of making toast, boiling water, and the Brachristochrone problem. 

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How literally should we take the US Constitution? What about the bible? Should we experiment with radical honesty with strangers? Those are just some of the questions human guinea pig A.J. Jacobs spends his life trying to answer. An author and journalist, he regularly immerse ...

Why are the numbers 1, 2, and 3 across the top of a phone keypad but across the bottom of a calculator? It’s not random — and once you hear the logic, you’ll never look at a keypad the same way again. That’s just one of three quirky mysteries I explain at the start of this episod ...  Show more

Is it possible to make something invisible? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice explore transparency, how we measure time on Earth, and how airplanes have changed. 

NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can listen to this entire episode commercial-free.

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