Most of us have no idea how others – even our friends and neighbors – spend their days at work. What’s it really like to be a plumber, a marriage counselor, an ice cream truck owner, an author of mystery novels? In his podcast Dan Heath talks to workers in dozens of different jobs to find out What It’s Like to Be.

The puppy kindergarten at Duke University is discovering how to spot a future great service dog while the dog is still a puppy. And it turns out that what makes a great service dog can also make your dog great.

How the acclaimed TV series came to be and what it has come to mean since, as recalled in a new book by cast members Melissa Fitzgerald and Mary McCormack. Including stories you’ve probably never heard before.

Alan and executive producer Graham Chedd look ahead to season 27. In a nostalgic look back at the TV series The West Wing, Alan recalls the scariest moments of his career; we visit a puppy kindergarten to spot future service dogs; a doctor tells stories that vividly illustrate the shortcomings of the health care system; and we meet a woman who can read our history as Earthlings. All that and more…

Her doctoral thesis led to her becoming a member of the team behind yesterday’s successful launch of NASA’s Clipper mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa. Her contribution could help find out if beneath its thick ice crust, Europa is friendly to life.

For eight years he wrote speeches for President Obama. Today he applies much of what he learned then in helping others with public speaking – how to craft a speech, how to connect with the audience, how to overcome the sheer terror of standing in front of dozens or hundreds of people.

He’s had a legendary life as a stand-up comedian, actor, writer, banjo player, even magician. As Steve talks about these threads in his life, a picture emerges of the thoughtful side of this remarkable entertainer.

A clarion call to those of us acutely aware of the peril facing our planet yet feel powerless to help save it. Ayana Johnson urges us to stop fretting about what “I” can do and instead think about what “we” can do, by joining our own skills and passions with those of others – and have fun doing it. Then, she asks in her provocative new book, What If We Get It Right?

Escaping the Covid lockdown in 2020 he and his wife Laurel set out in an RV to travel across America along the Lincoln Highway – a road more aspirational than real. But with Abraham Lincoln’s spirit as their guide they talked with the people they met along the way to explore the urgent question of what can hold our fractured country together.

Is improvisation at the heart of Western culture — music, art, literature, politics, even artificial intelligence? Author Randy Fertel thinks so. And he warns that as much as it’s a positive force, there’s also peril in it.

Alan talks with Roger Rosenblatt about his new book “A Steinway on the beach.” It explores that great mystery of how being wounded—emotionally or physically—is both an inescapable part of life and a chance to illuminate it. It’s seeing the wound as the place where the light enters you.

She’s a pioneer in figuring out how we might tell if any of the trillions of planets out there in the galaxy might harbor life – and if so, what kind of life.

Chance events not only change lives, they can change history – as when a soviet sailor’s briefly stuck foot prevented a potential nuclear catastrophe. You can’t predict when luck, good or bad, will intervene. But you can learn to take advantage of it.

Over time, the meaning of words often changes. The history of these changes suggests they're inevitable and that some of us (like our host) could be a little more relaxed about it and a little less peevish.

Older people, says Mo Rocca, have better stories. And he tells many of them – stories of people as different as Colonel Sanders and Henri Matisse – in his new book Roctogenarians – older people who even in their 90s have achieved great things.

Alan and Executive Producer Graham Chedd chat about and play excerpts from Alan's conversations with some of the guests in the new season, beginning next week. Guests include author Roger Rosenblatt, word maven Anne Curzan, and TV and radio personality Mo Rocca.

Most creatures play– even octopuses, pigs, crows and bees. But play is much more than fun and games. Play teaches life skills and empathy – even morality. And it may help shape evolution. Want to play?

An astrophysicist brings the universe down to earth. In brief captivating videos she tells the stories of how everything our world is made of – including ourselves – was created in cataclysmic explosions and collisions far out in space.

When we experience things that seem beyond explanation, are they evidence of the supernatural? Or instead, a quirk of our brains? A skeptical but open-minded psychologist has some entertaining answers.

Sharing her experiences of three space missions – including 159 days as the only woman on the 6-person crew of the International Space Station – Cady Coleman also shares lessons about getting along: valuable insights for the rest of us down here on earth.

Alan and the author of a new book called Supercommunicators share their thoughts on what makes a great conversation. The result? A great conversation!

The world of the very small is very different from the one we are familiar with. (Gold for instance turns red.) Chad Mirkin and Robert Langer’s skills in crafting this bizarre micro-world into medical breakthroughs earned them the 2024 Kavli Prize in nanotechnology.

He is searching space for planets that are something like ours. She is searching brains to discover how we recognize things. They are both 2024 Kavli laureates – Charbonneau awarded the prize for astrophysics, Tsao for neuroscience.

That was the question two determined astronomers set out to answer. A frustrating five-year search revealed that Pluto, long thought to be a small, lonely planet on the outer fringes of the solar system, is in fact part of a huge ring of debris left over from the solar system’s birth.