Suleika Jaouad was diagnosed with cancer at 22. She made her illness the subject of a New York Times column and a memoir, Between Two Kingdoms. She and Steve talk about what it means to live with a potentially fatal illness, how to talk to people who've gone through a tragedy, and ways to encourage medical donations.

• SOURCES:
  • Suleika Jaouad, author.

• RESOURCES:
  • The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life, by Suleika Jaouad (2025).
  • The Alchemy Journal, by Suleika Jaouad (2025).
  • “The Art of Survival,” by Jennifer Senior (The Atlantic, 2024).
  • American Symphony, film by Matthew Heineman (2023).
  • Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted, by Suleika Jaouad (2021).
  • “Max Ritvo, Poet Who Chronicled His Cancer Fight, Dies at 25,” by John Schwartz (The New York Times, 2016).
  • “Life, Interrupted,” column by Suleika Jaouad (The New York Times, 2012-2015).
  • The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green (2012).
  • Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America, by Barbara Ehrenreich (2009).
  • The Isolation Journals, newsletter by Suleika Jaouad.

• EXTRAS:
  • “John Green’s Reluctant Rocket Ship Ride,” by People I (Mostly) Admire (2022).
  • “Does Death Have to Be a Death Sentence?” by People I (Mostly) Admire (2022).

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Physicist and former pop star Brian Cox tells Steve about discovering the Higgs boson, having a number-one hit, and why particle physics research will almost certainly not create a black hole that destroys all life on earth.

• SOURCES:
  • Brian Cox, physicist at the University of Manchester.

• RESOURCES:
  • Black Holes: The Key to Understanding the Universe, by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw (2023).
  • "Higgs10: The Higgs boson and the rise of the Standard Model of Particle Physics in the 1970s," by John Ellis (CERN, 2022).
  • Out of Silence, by Dare (2004).
  • "WW scattering at the LHC," by J. M. Butterworth, Brian Cox, and J. R. Forshaw (CERN, 2002).
  • A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking (1998).
  • "Gravitational Collapse and Space-Time Singularities," by Roger Penrose (Physical Review Letters, 1965).
  • "The Value of Science," by Richard P. Feynman (Internet Archive, 1955).
  • "Brian Cox Live."

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Irving Finkel is an expert on cuneiform — the oldest known writing system. He tells Steve the amazing story of how an ancient clay tablet unlocked the truth about Noah’s ark (and got Finkel in trouble with some Christians).

• SOURCES:
  • Irving Finkel, curator in the department of the Middle East at the British Museum.

• RESOURCES:
  • "How to write cuneiform," by Irving Finkel (The British Museum, 2021).
  • "PBS Nova: Secrets of Noah's Ark," (2015).
  • The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood, by Irving Finkel (2014).
  • "Epic Hero," by David Damrosch (Smithsonian Magazine, 2007).
  • "How Egyptian hieroglyphs were decoded, a timeline to decipherment," (The British Museum).

• EXTRAS:
  • "Jane Goodall, Who Chronicled the Social Lives of Chimps, Dies at 91," by Keith Schneider (New York Times, 2025).
  • "Jane Goodall Changed the Way We See Animals. She’s Not Done." by People I (Mostly) Admire (2022).
  • "D:Ream - Things Can Only Get Better," (1993).

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