Food, safety, and strong relationships are essential to our survival. Psychologist Lisa Miller says our brains also crave something else: transcendence. She suggests that spirituality is a universal human capacity, and that feeling connected to something larger than ourselves may be essential to a fulfilling life.
If you enjoy listening to Hidden Brain, we think you'll enjoy watching it, too! Check out our new YouTube channel, and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any of our videos.
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This is the abbreviated version of Checkup's call-in on your home renovation horror stories. Prime Minister Mark Carney finds himself in a position so many homeowners have been before -- the start of a major renovation. We hear from experts in architecture and home renovation about what you need to know to avoid problems with your own fixer-upper.
No Prime Minister has been able to live at 24 Sussex Drive in Ottawa since 2015, because of neglect and disrepair. Now Prime Minister Mark Carney is in a position so many homeowners have been in - he's looking for a pitch and he's not sure how much it will cost. We hear from experts in architecture and home renovation about what you need to know to avoid problems with your own fixer-upper.
As Canada, the U.S. and Mexico prepare to review the CUSMA deal, experts on both sides of the border take stock of where Canada-U.S. relations stand ahead of negotiations. We hear from economists, politicians, and Canadians about how Trump's tariffs are affecting their daily decisions.
This ICYMI episode takes you back to 1991. Canada had just entered a free trade deal with the United States. But the American and Mexican governments had their sights set on something bigger -- A North American free trade deal. But Canadians weren't completely sold. Checkup asked: "Is North American free trade a risk worth taking?" Here's what some callers told host Dale Goldhawk.
Back in 2017, reporters Kristen Clark and David Conrad came to us with a story that dug into the difficult and often dark places discrimination creates. We start in Venice, Italy, where they meet gondolier Alex Hai. On the winding canals in the hidden parts of Venice, we learn about the nearly 1000-year old tradition of the Venetian Gondolier, and how the global media created a 20-year battle between that tradition and a supposed feminist icon.
We circled back to Alex in 2026, to find out where the canal of life ended up leading after our initial reporting, and we’ve included some heartbreaking and heartwarming updates on Alex’s life at the end of this episode.
Special thanks to Alexis Ungerer, Summer, Alex Hai, Kevin Gotkin, Silvia Del Fabbro, Sandro Mariot, Aldo Rosso and Marta Vannucci, The Longest Shortest Time (Hillary Frank, Peter Clowney and Abigail Keel), Tim Howard, Nick Adams/GLAAD, Valentina Powers, Florence Ursino, Ann Marie Somma, Alex Overington, Jeremy Bloom and the people of Little Italy.
EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by - David Conrad and Kristen Clark.
Produced by - Annie McEwen and Molly Webster.
with help from - Anisa Vietze
Fact-checking for the update by - Angely Mercado
OTHER COOL THINGS:
Books -
The Gondolier, by Alex Hai
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It’s a hard time to run a university: public trust is low, political pressure is high, and finances are fragile. But Daniel Diermeier, who trained as a political scientist, has Vanderbilt humming. How? He says the key is choosing magnets over wedges.
SOURCES:
Daniel Diermeier, chancellor of Vanderbilt University.
RESOURCES:
"Higher Ed’s New Crisis Managers," by Lee Gardner (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2026).
"Professors Need to Diversify What They Teach," by Jon Shields, Yuval Avnur, and Stephanie Muravchik (Persuasion, 2025).
"A Call for Constructive Engagement," (American Association of Colleges and Universities, 2025).
"2020 Statement on Anthropology and Human Rights," (American Anthropological Association, 2020).
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander (2010).
"Kalven Committee: Report on the University’s Role in Political and Social Action," (The University of Chicago, 1967).
EXTRAS:
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"'A Low Moment in Higher Education,'" by Freakonomics Radio (2024).
"'If We’re All in It for Ourselves, Who Are We?'" by Freakonomics Radio (2024).
"Do Boycotts Work?" by Freakonomics Radio (2016).
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First up on the podcast, ScienceInsider editor Jocelyn Kaiser joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss big policy stories from the past month, including a proposal from President Donald Trump’s administration to increase the involvement of politicians in grantmaking.
Next on the show, Science Senior Editor Michael Funk joins to discuss a trio of papers on the light-detecting proteins responsible for color vision.
Ohashi et al., Science 2026
Peng et al., Science 2026
Schmidt et al., Science 2026
Finally, in our books segment for this month, host Angela Saini talks with science writer Georgina Ferry, who wrote a biography about crystallographer Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, the first and only woman scientist from the United Kingdom to win a Nobel Prize.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
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Insurance forms that make no sense. Subscriptions that can’t be cancelled. A never-ending blizzard of automated notifications. In this update of a 2025 episode, Stephen Dubner discovers where all this sludge comes from — and how much it’s costing us.
SOURCES:
Benjamin Handel, professor of economics at UC Berkeley.
Neale Mahoney, professor of economics at Stanford University.
Richard Thaler, professor of economics at The University of Chicago.
RESOURCES:
"Selling Subscriptions," by Liran Einav, Ben Klopack, and Neale Mahoney (Stanford University, 2023).
"The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok," by Cory Doctorow (WIRED, 2023).
"Dominated Options in Health Insurance Plans," by Chenyuan Liu and Justin Sydnor (American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2022).
Nudge: The Final Edition, by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein (2021).
"Frictions or Mental Gaps: What’s Behind the Information We (Don’t) Use and When Do We Care?" by Benjamin Handel and Joshua Schwartzstein (Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2018).
"Adverse Selection and Switching Costs in Health Insurance Markets: When Nudging Hurts," by Benjamin Handel (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2011).
EXTRAS:
"Sludge," series by Freakonomics Radio (2025).
"People Aren’t Dumb. The World Is Hard. (Update)" by Freakonomics Radio (2024).
"All You Need is Nudge," by Freakonomics Radio (2021).
"How to Fix the Hot Mess of U.S. Healthcare," by Freakonomics Radio (2021).
"Should We Really Behave Like Economists Say We Do?" by Freakonomics Radio (2015).
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