_Monogamy, sleep deprivation, high fashion, and avant-garde Japanese dance—that’s right Deeply Human is coming back with a bang. In season 2, Dessa, speaks to psychologists, animal behaviorists, mathematicians, historians, and one legendary DJ to ask the evergreen question: why do you do what you do? Why does music animate our …
It’s time to talk. It is never too late for a rigorous conversation about death activism, the guillotine and the ferocity of human love — unless, of course, you are dead already. It is time to meet the death doulas who can help you through this, and learn why a …
It’s time to talk.
What if everything you experienced felt like you had already lived it before? Meet the people for whom déjà vu is every day. It’s that moment when you mix up past and present, the real and the imagined, and you can no longer trust your senses. How is it that …
What that feeling that you have lived all this before means.
The experiences of being a teenager are deep and lasting — first break-ups, fierce arguments with parents, that time a friend tried to skateboard off the roof. Why is that time of life experienced so intensely and remembered so vividly? Dessa finds that many answers lie in neuroanatomy and the …
Why adolescence is so weird.
Listening to sad songs is a weird, counterintuitive thing to do. Why listen to something that moves you to tears? As someone who’s sensitivity to sad songs sometimes means pulling over until the tears clear, Dessa mulls major versus minor, explores what melody has in common with the sound of …
Why we love sad songs.
What whales and women have in common.
If you think you’re too young to learn about menopause, you’re wrong. Prepare to be both surprised and entertained — and maybe even become a kinder son or daughter. Our understanding of menopause has changed dramatically, and it’s our distant relatives the whales that may help explain what it’s for. …
Why you think there really is something out there.
Why, when we’re alone, do we sometimes feel like we’re not? Why are we eager to find signs of life in our surroundings — to see faces in clouds, or to get creeped out when the house creaks at night? Dessa investigates some of the most mystical, disorienting and disturbing …
Our ideas of what’s beautiful are tied to symmetry. Symmetry attracts. Why? What’s so compelling about faces that are the same on both sides of that nose in the middle? To study symmetry we dive into the world of asymmetry – where things are different. Dessa talks with a professor …
Why a perfectly symmetrical face is so attractive.
Budging. Cutting in line. Skipping. Butting. Doesn’t it make your blood boil? The standing line evokes strong feelings about justice — breaking what we see as the rules for waiting in line can arouse anger and even violence that feel totally out of proportion to the length of our wait. …
Why we rage against those who refuse to wait their turn.
Most female mammals schedule their sex life into just the couple of days in their cycle when they’re fertile. So why do humans do it whenever the mood strikes? (Well, in theory, at least.) To find out, Dessa explores stinky t-shirt tests and all sorts of things we’d better not …
Why it’s not how you do it, it’s when
High-stakes lies have all sorts of consequences: perjurers are imprisoned and slanderers are sued. But when your coworker asks your opinion on his new haircut, a little lie feels obligatory. You lie much more than you’re probably aware of — but is that a bad thing? Dessa finds out why …