Knowable
Knowable Magazine
Subscribe
What are the limits to what’s knowable — and how does our thinking about big questions in science and technology evolve over time? Take an audio journey with Knowable Magazine from Annual Reviews as we explore puzzles as diverse as the existence of black holes and how to build an artificial heart — with plenty of surprises along the way.
Available episodes
Newest first
Oldest first
Apr 26, 2022
How antidepressants changed ideas about depression
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.
playlist_add
Mar 29, 2022
How particle accelerators came to be
PODCAST: They started out so small, one could fit on the palm of your hand, but to make groundbreaking discoveries, physicists had to think really big — as in, vast machines with the power and capacity to reveal the tiniest building blocks of our universe.
playlist_add
Mar 15, 2022
The history of climate change offers clues to Earth’s future
Digging — quite literally — into our planet’s past to study its paleoclimate has shed light on bygone ice ages and hints at trouble ahead for our now-warming planet.
playlist_add
Mar 1, 2022
Structural biology: How proteins got their close-up
The journey to understanding these critically important molecules, in their thousands of different flavors, began with a chance discovery. Today, after decades of painstaking lab work and dizzying technological leaps, the field of protein science is exploding.
playlist_add
Feb 15, 2022
The search for exoplanets
Not that long ago, scientists found evidence that our Sun wasn’t unique — other stars have their own orbiting bodies. It was a discovery centuries in the making. What does this mean for Earth today and our place in the universe? (Season 2/Episode. 2)
Hyperlinks to scientists and papers in mainbar
playlist_add
Feb 1, 2022
The science of dreams
Freud thought that dreams were the gateway to our unconscious mind. Today, many scientists think the opposite: that the dreaming brain is quite similar to our awake, conscious state. But dreaming is a very personal experience and one that we can’t share — making the phenomenon very difficult to study. We still don’t know for sure why we dream, but in this episode, we'll hear how psychologists, neuroscientists and philosophers have been trying to answer that question.
Hyperlinks to scientists and papers in mainbar
playlist_add
Jan 25, 2022
Season two trailer
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.
playlist_add
Jan 24, 2022
Memory, the mystery
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.
playlist_add
Jan 13, 2021
The dazzling history of solar power
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.
playlist_add
Jan 12, 2021
The heart of invention
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.
playlist_add
Jan 11, 2021
How black holes morphed from theory to reality
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.
playlist_add