NASA says the first humans will set foot on Mars in the mid-2030’s. It will be the most dangerous mission any human has ever taken. Glad You Asked host Cleo Abram wants to know: What comes after that? Not how do we get there, but how will we survive once we do?

Glad You Asked host Joss Fong has been fascinated by crying her entire life. She’s even kept a spreadsheet of every time she cries to figure out what patterns lie in the triggers. This episode explores how crying evolved in humans and what it tells us about ourselves.

Death has changed dramatically in the last century. From the changing definition of death to near death experiences, Alex Clark embarks to answer arguably humanity’s biggest question: What happens when we die? While looking into the dreams of the dying, Alex finds there might be an answer.

Memes are the language of the internet. At some point in the last decade, they became the secret ingredient for advertising, political messaging, and disinformation all across the world. Glad You Asked host Christophe Haubursin wanted to know why that happened — and what it means for the internet today.

Glad You Asked host Alex Clark has been a gamer for most of his life. And in all his years of playing, he's spent a great deal of money buying and selling virtual items in video games. He’s not alone -- billions of dollars are spent inside the virtual economies of video games. So why spend money on a virtual good? And how did they become so valuable?

Air travel is a quintessential product of the fossil fuel era: It’s both highly convenient and difficult to replace with alternatives. Now as the impacts of climate change are becoming more urgent, a growing “flight shame” movement is prompting consumers to question their air travel. Glad You Asked host Joss Fong explores the ethical implications of flying in a world on the brink of crisis.

The internet has transformed beauty culture from an exclusive domain of models and magazines to the broad, accessible world of social media. In recent years, research shows that more and more women are saying that they feel beautiful. But at the same time, the vast majority of women say they feel pressure to be beautiful. Glad You Asked hosts Cleo Abram and Joss Fong explore the benefits and costs of today’s beauty culture.

We often make assumptions about the things that make us lonely. But research shows that the amount of time you spend with other people, and the quality of our social skills don't really make a difference. So why is it that nearly half of the U.S. population reports feeling lonely regularly? Glad You Asked hosts Alex Clark and Christophe Haubursin set off to discover what causes loneliness, how it affects our health, and what to do to address it.

For most of us, the internet is virtual, made of Instagram posts, emails and YouTube videos. And, access to the vital utility isn’t guaranteed across the world. Glad You Asked host Cleo Abram wants to know: What is the internet actually made of? And, how does it work? Answering that question involves discovering how internet cables are laid in the sea, if 5G is really the future, and how balloons in the stratosphere are helping people connect.

At the current rate, we'll have to grow as much food in the next 30 years as we have in all of human history. And many experts argue that to do that, we’ll have to engineer the genes of our food. But the concern surrounding whether we should grow and eat genetically modified food has made the technology one of the most divisive topics of our generation. Glad You Asked host Christophe Haubursin embarks on a journey to Hawaii to understand what the controversy is actually about — and uncovers whether GMOs are really delivering on their promise to feed the world.

This is a difficult question to ask yourself. But recent events and an increasing amount of research has shown just how much racial bias impacts our world. Before we can start the work of dismantling systemic racism, we have to first understand our own biases. Glad You Asked host Cleo Abram explores if we can measure those biases, how we shine a light on them, and what to do about them.

Many of us assume that tech is neutral, and we have turned to tech as a way to root out racism, sexism, or other “isms” plaguing human decision-making. But as data-driven systems become a bigger and bigger part of our lives, we also notice more and more when they fail, and, more importantly, that they don’t fail on everyone equally. Glad You Asked host Joss Fong wants to know: Why do we think tech is neutral? How do algorithms become biased? And how can we fix these algorithms before they cause harm?

Housing policy in the United States has a long history of deepening segregation. Redlining, exclusionary lending, and targeted zoning laws have all played a role in isolating minority populations while simultaneously privileging white residents. Glad You Asked host Lee Adams wants to know how this happened, and what effect residential segregation has on your future.

Education in the United States is supposed to be meritocratic, meaning a student’s achievement is measured solely by their efforts. But how do class and privilege affect opportunity, and does everyone really get the same shot? Glad You Asked host Fabiola Cineas explores how the myth of meritocracy perpetuates racism while keeping the American dream achievable only for a privileged few.

After the events of 2020, we are no strangers to stress and anxiety. But for Black and brown Americans, that stress was nothing new. Racial health gaps have always existed, and socioeconomics and racism within the medical system have long kept equal healthcare out of reach. But what kind of toll does the experience of racism itself have on your body? Glad You Asked host Christophe Haubursin wants to know.

Glad You Asked host Cleo Abram is pretty sure she wants kids, but doesn’t feel like she has enough information to truly understand the impact of that decision. She’s not alone - even though the majority of American women do decide to have children, the number of births in the United States has been creeping downward, and women are having kids later and later in life. But while no one but you can answer if you want to have kids, join Cleo as she gathers more data and perspective on what it means to be a parent.

Most of us aren’t getting enough sleep. But whether you struggle to fall and stay asleep or because you decide sleep is the first thing you can cut out to make time for other things, we all underestimate the power of a good night’s rest. Glad You Asked host Christophe Haubursin wants to know why we aren’t sleeping well, what impact too little sleep has on your body and how we can get enough shuteye.

Close your eyes and open your ears. What do you hear? Do the sounds you hear bother you? And, more importantly, do you have control over those sounds? As more and more the population migrates to urban environments - the urban population of the world has quadrupled since 1960. In fact, unwanted noise has become an increasingly critical problem. Join Glad You Asked host Joss Fong as she explores how noise pollution is becoming an ever greater concern for our health, how the negative effects of noise are unequally distributed, and how we can learn to find peace.

Are you seeing a therapist? If not, why? Is it because you think it’s ineffective? Is it too expensive? Or is it because the very idea of mental wellness has been stigmatized? After the events of 2020, more and more of us reported feeling depressed or anxious, but plenty of people still find therapy to be out of reach. Glad You Asked host Fabiola Cineas explores why we don’t prioritize our mental health and how you can seek out the mental health care that’s right for you.

Race is not genetic. It’s a concept most of us are familiar with, and yet, we haven’t really questioned why race plays a crucial role in medicine and scientific research. It’s one of the first things your doctor asks when filling out your charts, it can determine what your insurance will cover, and we paid special attention to how Covid-19 spread in BIPOC communities. But more and more, doctors are beginning to question whether a patient’s race should be considered when providing care, and if it’s eliminated from the equation, what should be included instead. Glad You Asked host Lee Adams wants to know: What role should race play in medicine?