HeyJaredUseful Knowledge
The Useful Knowledge podcast is all about big ideas and the people behind them. Each episode features a Member of the American Philosophical Society (APS) or one of our grant and fellowship alumni, all sharing the significance and impact of their work across diverse fields.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 4
- Latest publication
- Sep 8, 2026
- Audience
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 14, 2026
Latest episodes
Episode Eleven – Monsters and Humans: Surekha Davies on Science, Society, and Breaking Boundaries (opens the original)
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Are monsters real? In this episode of Useful Knowledge , host Patrick Spero joins author, historian, and self-proclaimed “monster consultant” Surekha Davies to learn about what she calls “monsterification” in human societies. A central theme in her 2025 book Humans: A Monstrous History , Davies suggests that while monsters like giants, cyclopes, and werewolves are not real, humans have used monster stories since time immemorial to separate categories and establish norms—the ultimate “us versus t
Bonus Episode: America’s Scientific Revolutionaries — “Cultivating Ethnobotanical Knowledge” (opens the original)
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Indigenous traditions and communities have helped preserve the plants of the Americas since time immemorial. In this special episode of Useful Knowledge , part of the APS’s America’s Scientific Revolutionaries series, hear a conversation about some of the plants and gardens across the Americas , their traditional use, and how we can protect life on our planet through careful cultivation. This episode features Dr. Alejandro de Ávila (APS 2025), founding director of the Jardín Etnobiológico de Oax
Episode Ten– (Martin Chalfie) “Don’t we know enough now?”: Martin Chalfie on Scientific Progress and “Useless” Knowledge (opens the original)
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“That result is not curing a disease, it’s having an advance in our knowledge.” In this episode of Useful Knowledge , Martin Chalfie shares the story of how, by building on another scientist’s findings, they both went on to win the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. “Useful knowledge” is at the core of the APS, but Chalfie argues for the utility of “useless knowledge.” Some discoveries push us forward by nature of their innovation, but others are useful in the way they inform and influence future sc
Episode Nine– (Joel Cohen) “The Millennium Project”: Human Populations and Livelihood in the 21st Century (opens the original)
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In 1999, the American Philosophical Society held a symposium that gathered experts from around the world to make predictions about humanity in the 21st century. One of those experts, demographer and statistician Joel Cohen, met with host Patrick Spero to discuss this millennium’s trends and if we got them right in 1999. In this episode of Useful Knowledge , Cohen reviews his 1999 predictions on topics like population growth, economic equality, immigration, family dynamics, and more to share the
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