Behind the Data

<p>Is there life in our galaxy? How would we know if we spotted it? Dr. Moiya McTier, astrophysicist and folklorist, joins us to talk about her Ph.D. research on exactly that, plus the many surprising ways we get data...

<p>Vasant Dhar has been working on AI since way before it was cool (and before most people thought it was possible). I've admired his work for a long time and since I started this show have wanted to have him on as a...

<p>We take it as a given that Americans are politically polarized, but how do we actually know if empirically this is the case? We talk with Prof. Patrick Egan (NYU) about how we can quantify something as abstract as a...

<p>ALS is a fatal motor neuron disease that has no cure and is estimated to affect hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. Why is a cure, or even a meaningful treatment, so elusive? We talk with data engineer...

<p>Oceans of numbers come pouring out at us each day about the big tech companies -- whether it's spending on AI, iPhone sales, Tesla stocks ... or, lawsuits against SpaceX by Cards Against Humanity? -- senior tech...

<p>We all have ideas about how social media and misinformation are affecting us and our world. But, as our guest Prof. Joshua Tucker explains, received wisdom is not the same thing as scientific findings. Join us for a...

<p>Welcome to Season 2 of Behind the Data! We're going to explore brand new topics through the powerful lens of data, find common ground on some issues that are really dividing us, and even gaze into the night sky and...

<p>How do we know what career/path/decision is right for us? How can data science help? In this special season 1 finale, we are joined by Megan Hellerer, career coach to luminaries such as AOC, as well as the author of...

<p>Is democracy in decline around the world? This is a major question on many of our minds, and luckily for us there are very smart, thoughtful people working on tracking (as well as explaining, understanding, and...

<p>Approximately ten billion different narratives about what happened in the recent US presidential election have emerged since said election. But how many of these narratives can be substantiated by data? How can we...

<p>Dr. Steven Novella, clinical neurologist and host of The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast joins us to share how he collects and analyzes data when he works with patients (there is so much more going on than I...

<p>Science journalist and athlete Christie Aschwanden takes us inside the not-so-scientific world of the fitness and health data that's tracked by various apps we probably own and/or are tempted to buy, and she helps us...

<p>When we think of data and movies the first (and maybe only) thing that comes to mind for many of us is movie reviews. But there is so much more we can learn about movies and ourselves if we just think outside the box...

<p>Crime data is all over the news these days and, at least in the United States, it seems like you can tell any story you want to about whether crime is going up or down and whose fault it is. How should we be thinking...

<p>Political polls are in our faces these days whether we want them or not -- especially if you're in the US during election season. We talk with polling expert and database journalist Dhrumil Mehta of Columbia...