Driven to Discover

An AI pioneer who combines scientific expertise with a love for language, Rohini Srihari is the ideal person to reimagine chatbots. In this episode, she talks about building conversational AI tools that create positive change, from tackling the nation’s mental health crisis to helping people with motor neuron diseases find their voice.

An act of sorcery at a school table tennis match in Nigeria led Phillips Stevens to a 50-year anthropology career that dove deep into magic and witchcraft. In this episode, Stevens talks with host Tom Dinki about why belief in the supernatural persists in the modern world, and how it may ultimately be what makes us human.

Nick Henshue was a classic “nature kid” as a child. Now he’s an associate teaching professor of ecology and an expert in all things earthworm. In this episode, he explains why earthworms are a menace to forests, how trees talk to each other, and what’s behind the “jumping” earthworm’s name.

When it was Jeff Scott’s turn to choose an instrument, the sixth grader picked the French horn because no one else had. Today, he is one of the nation’s premier French hornists and a Grammy-winning composer. In this engaging episode, Scott shares his unexpected path to success and how his multicultural Queens upbringing shaped the wildly eclectic music he writes today.

A childhood fascination with the fish and crabs in the river near his home led Vincent Lynch to a career as an evolutionary biologist, studying the genetic history of various species to better understand human health. In this episode, he explains why human pregnancy is a mystery, why elephants don’t get cancer and why bringing the woolly mammoth back to life is a terrible idea.

Working as a bouncer during college, Mark Frank found he could learn a lot about people by observing their gestures and expressions. Today the communications professor is a globally recognized expert on nonverbal communication who advises the FBI and the CIA. In this episode, Frank explains how he’s able to get the truth out of even the most practiced liars.

After seeing the river she swam in as a child turn black with pollution, Diana Aga became determined to help clean up the planet. In this episode, the renowned environmental chemist talks to host Cory Nealon about PFAS, or forever chemicals: what they are, why they're so dangerous, and what she's doing to take the "forever" out of them.

As a child, Stephanie Poindexter loved watching the apes at the zoo. Now she's an expert in the slow loris, a noctural primate that inhabits Southeast Asia. In this episode of Driven to Discover, Poindexter tells host Vicky Santos what it's like to track down this shy creature in a Thai jungle in the middle of the night, and why she does it.