It's Monday, July 31st, 2017, and you're listening to Inquiring Minds. I'm Injavis Gantis.

And I'm Kishore Harri. Each week, we bring you a new, in-depth exploration of the space where science, politics, and society collide.

We endeavor to find out what's true, what's left to discover, and why it all matters.

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So as I'm sure a lot, if not all of our listeners, there have been things that you've been

curious about in your life, right, Kishore? Of course. I mean, my son just asked me the question why pretty much all day long. That counts,

right? Yeah, totally. So have you ever thought, though, about where this curiosity comes from and whether

the kind of curiosity that you have for things like, you know, what is that bizarre meat on your

lunch plate in the cafeteria versus, you know, are there more than one, is there more

than one universe out there, whether those are the same thing?

I didn't think there was more than one type of curiosity. I didn't think that was a distinction

that's, that was there. And I guess I've always thought that curiosity was sort of an innate human trait.

Yeah, I mean, I always imagine that curiosity is kind of like a higher cognitive function that subsumes a lot of different things. And in different situations, there will be different brain underpinnings of it. So, you know,

being curious about what that mystery meat is on your plate versus, you know, trying to decide

whether or not you believe in the existence of a higher power seem to me like two very

fundamental, fundamentally different things. But there is a astrophysicist who's very famous and who's done a lot

of writing about very interesting things, who has tried to tackle this problem and tried to

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