Curiously with Dustin Grinnell

Dustin Grinnell
  • 5.0 (1)
  • SOCIETY & CULTURE

Curiously is a podcast about questions—how we ask them, where they lead, and what we discover along the way. Host Dustin Grinnell talks with scientists, doctors, artists, and everyday thinkers about sleep, health, imagination, space, therapy, technology, and the search for meaning. If you’ve ever wondered how science connects to real life, or how people make sense of uncertainty and complexity, Curiously offers context, insight, and new ways of thinking about the questions that matter most.

  1. MAR 20

    MFA Writing Programs: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

    Can writing be taught? It’s one of the oldest arguments in literary culture, and every year, thousands of writers bet their time, money, and creative confidence that the answer is yes. They enroll in MFA programs, bring their pages into classrooms, and submit themselves to a process called “workshop,” where their work gets dissected, debated, and handed back to them. Of course, MFA writing programs exist for more than just fiction writers. You can pursue an MFA in poetry, creative nonfiction, literary journalism, graphic novels. But what actually happens inside these writing programs? How is craft taught? What does a workshop feel like from the inside? And what are the things nobody mentions in the admissions brochure? To answer all of that, I invited two writers I met during my own MFA program—Samantha Cooke and Martin Smith, who writes under the name M. Earl Smith—to talk about everything. We cover the real value of MFA training, how workshops function at their best, and what the path toward publication actually looks like. We also get into the less glamorous side: the gatekeeping, the performative readings, the bureaucratic nonsense, and the moments that make you wonder what you signed up for. Whether you’re considering an MFA yourself, already in one, or simply curious about what happens when a room full of writers tries to teach each other, this one’s for you. In this episode, we discuss: • What MFA programs in writing actually do, and what they can’t do • How the workshop model works and why it’s both powerful and flawed • The craft techniques and storytelling tools you develop along the way • What the path to publication really looks like for MFA graduates • The culture inside these programs: the good, the pretentious, the absurd • Performative readings, academic politics, and other things nobody warned you about • What Sam and Martin took away from the experience — and what they’d do differently • Whether an MFA is worth the investment for a writer serious about their craft 💡 Learn more about Sam Cooke: https://samanthaelicooke.com/ 💡 Learn more about Martin Smith (M. Earl Smith): https://www.mearlsmith.com/ 💡 Take the podcast survey: www.curiouslypod.com/survey

    1h 48m

  2. MAR 15

    This Sci-Fi Story Takes You Inside the Human Body—Literally

    When I was a kid, one of my favorite TV shows was The Magic School Bus. In one episode, Ms. Frizzle shrinks the class down and takes them inside the human body to learn about the immune system. I’ve never forgotten it. For years, I knew I wanted to write a story about people miniaturizing themselves with advanced technology and venturing into the body on a mission. Last year, I finally gave it a shot. I imagined technology that reduces the space between subatomic particles, shrinking a person down to microscopic size so they can be injected into the bloodstream. Then I gave the premise some heart, because that’s my favorite kind of sci-fi. Two veteran body explorers, Abby and Jackson, were once partners in both business and life. Now they’re estranged. When Jackson disappears inside a billionaire’s brain during an illegal memory-erasure mission, Abby is the only one who can go in after him. The story is called Micro, and it’s read here by voice actor Laura Neibaur, who responded to my casting call and brought this story to life with a dramatic yet understated performance that honors every nuance of the language. The story was beautifully scored by Brad Parsons of Train Sound Studio, a podcast production house. Finally, I recorded my intro at Massasoit Community College as part of their Radio and Podcasting Certificate Program, a new chapter I’m grateful to be in. 💡 Learn more about Laura Neibaur’s work: https://www.lbneibaur.com/ 💡 Learn more about Brad Parsons’ work: https://trainsoundstudio.com/ 💡 Take the podcast survey: www.curiouslypod.com/survey 💡 About Curiously: www.curiouslypod.com

    47 min

  3. FEB 24

    Imagination, Aphantasia & The Mind’s Eye: Why Your Brain Spends Half Your Life Somewhere Else

    When we think of imagination, we assume it’s reserved for creatives: painters and poets, actors and musicians. But the truth is, we use our imagination almost constantly: anytime we reminisce, anticipate, plan, or daydream. Research suggests we spend between a quarter and half of our waking hours with our minds wandering elsewhere, away from what’s right in front of us. But why? And what’s actually happening in our brains when we drift? In this episode, I talk with Dr. Adam Zeman, author of The Shape of Things Unseen: A New Science of Imagination, about how imagination shapes every aspect of human experience, from memory and planning to creativity and perception itself. Dr. Zeman is a UK-based neurologist whose book blends neuroscience with the humanities and the arts, drawing on evolutionary biology, child development, literature, and music to paint a picture of the imaginative mind. He examines William Blake’s visionary poetry, Mozart’s ability to hear entire concertos in his head, and the creative insights behind scientific breakthroughs like the discovery of benzene. But Dr. Zeman also reveals imagination’s darker side. A wandering mind can be an unhappy mind—excessive rumination contributes to depression, and our ability to simulate future scenarios can trap us in anxiety. From psychosomatic illness to the placebo effect, imagination operates at every level of human consciousness, for better and worse. In this episode, we discuss: • Why we spend between 25-50% of our waking hours with our minds wandering • What happens in the brain when we daydream, reminisce, or imagine the future • Aphantasia—the inability to visualize images—and what it reveals about imagination • How some people experience vivid mental imagery while others have none • Why perception might be a form of controlled hallucination shaped by expectation • The creative process of writers and artists, from William Blake to Mozart • How imagination contributes to scientific breakthroughs and problem-solving • The darker side of imagination: rumination, anxiety, and depression • The mysteries of psychosomatic illness and the placebo effect • Why understanding imagination might be the key to understanding consciousness itself

    1h 16m

  4. 2025-12-11

    Why We Can’t Sleep (And What Actually Works) with Morgan Adams

    We all know the basics for sleep: put your phone away, create a bedtime routine, avoid caffeine, keep the room cool. We’ve heard it a thousand times. And yet, one in eight Americans has chronic insomnia, and over half report frequent sleep difficulties. So, what’s the disconnect? Why do we know what to do but still lie awake at 3 a.m., mind racing, exhausted but unable to sleep? In this episode, I talk with Morgan Adams, a certified sleep coach who spent years battling insomnia herself. For a long time, nothing helped. Doctor after doctor gave her the same advice: “Just relax. Go to bed earlier.” It wasn’t until she received two breast cancer diagnoses that Morgan began taking her health seriously and started exploring the science of sleep for herself. What she discovered changed everything—not just for her, but for the countless people she’s helped through her SleepEasy Method™. Morgan’s approach isn’t about adding more rules to your already overwhelming bedtime checklist. It’s about understanding what’s actually keeping you awake—the misconceptions, the anxiety, the trap of trying too hard to sleep. Because we all know the harder you try to sleep, the worse it gets. And most of the advice we get, while well-intentioned, can actually make the problem worse. So, what does work? What separates the people who sleep well from those who don’t? And how do you escape the insomnia trap once you’re in it? This is a conversation about escaping the trap, and why good sleep might require unlearning everything you think you know about rest. In this episode, we discuss: • Why knowing what to do about sleep doesn’t mean you can actually do it • The insomnia trap and how trying too hard to sleep makes it worse • What chronic insomnia really is and why it’s more than just a few bad nights • Morgan’s personal battle with insomnia and how two cancer diagnoses changed everything • The SleepEasy Method™ and what makes it different from standard sleep hygiene advice • The biggest misconceptions about sleep that keep us stuck • Why anxiety about not sleeping becomes a bigger problem than the sleeplessness itself • Practical, sustainable solutions that go beyond “put your phone down” • What actually works when you’ve tried everything and nothing has helped • How to break the cycle of fear and frustration that keeps insomnia alive 💡 Learn more about Morgan Adams: https://www.morganadamswellness.com 💡 Take the podcast survey: www.curiouslypod.com/survey 💡 About Curiously: www.curiouslypod.com

    1h 29m

  5. 2025-11-06

    What Death Teaches Us About Living with Micaelah Morrill

    Most of us spend our lives pretending we have forever. We push off difficult conversations, delay dreams, and take tomorrow for granted. But the truth is, we don’t have forever. We have about 3,200 weeks, according to average life expectancy. Knowing this can make us work a little harder, love a little deeper, live more intentionally. But how many of us actually sit with the reality that our time is limited? How many of us talk openly about death before it’s too late? In this episode, I talk with Michaela Morrill, a death doula who helps people and families navigate the final chapter of life with grace and meaning. A death doula does for the end-of-life what birth doulas do for the beginning—they guide, support, comfort. Michaela sits beside the dying, helps families plan memorials, manages paperwork, and serves as a compassionate presence for those preparing to say goodbye to someone they love. I met Michaela on an evening in October at the Winthrop Book Depot & Café in Winthrop, Massachusetts. We sat in a circle with eight strangers at something called a Death Café, an informal gathering where people come together to openly discuss death and dying, to increase awareness of our mortality and make the most of our finite lives. These Death Cafés happen in homes, coffee shops, community centers, and online. They’ve become a global movement, held in dozens of countries around the world. When I heard there was going to be one at my local bookstore, I signed up immediately. I’ve always found thinking and talking about mortality strangely life-affirming. But the main reason I was there that night was because I was still trying to make sense of my mom’s death a year earlier. Five weeks after being diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, she suffered a medical crisis and lost consciousness. The doctors gave us a choice: prolong the inevitable with machines that would only extend her suffering, or let her go. We chose the latter. A year later, I found myself at Michaela’s Death Café. For two hours, we did what most people avoid: we talked openly about our losses, our fears of death, the realities of dying, what we got right with the people we’ve lost, and what we wish we’d done differently. Though each of our experiences was unique, we found common threads that made us feel less alone. Together, we helped one another find words for thoughts we’d carried but never quite been able to express. In this episode, we discuss: • What a death doula does and how they guide people through life’s final chapter • What it’s like to sit beside the dying and bear witness to their last moments • The most common regrets people have at the end of life—and what they teach us • How Death Cafés create space for honest conversations about mortality • Why talking about death can be strangely life-affirming rather than morbid • How confronting our mortality can bring clarity to the way we live • Why we live as though we have forever when we only have about 3,200 weeks • How to find peace after loss and honor the people we’ve loved • What the dying can teach us about living more intentionally 💡 Find a Death Café near you: www.deathcafe.com 💡 About Curiously: www.curiouslypod.com

    1h 26m

  6. 2025-10-15

    Brewing Beer & Bringing People Together: Inside Aeronaut Brewery with Brewmaster Mark Bowers

    Beer has been part of the human story for millennia. It helped fuel debates in revolutionary taverns, followed soldiers to war, brought strangers together in colonial alehouses and modern taprooms. From the Founding Fathers’ home brews to today’s experimental IPAs, beer has been a constant companion to our species. But why? What is it about this fermented beverage that’s kept us coming back for ten thousand years? In this episode, I step inside Boston’s Aeronaut Brewing Co. with head brewer Mark Bowers for a behind-the-scenes look at how great craft beer comes to life. Mark’s journey is fascinating. He’s a former PhD chemist who was in San Francisco during the mid-1960s birth of the craft brewing movement. He’s been brewing his own beer since he was a teenager, and after years working in R&D labs, he jumped at the chance to start brewing for Aeronaut in 2014, a brewery whose philosophy is “brewed with curiosity and backed by science.” The spark for this episode came back in March when I visited The Alchemist Brewery in Vermont to drink Heady Topper, a legendary IPA that’s hard to come by in Boston. Sitting there, soaking it all in, I started thinking about the craft behind my favorite beers. That’s when I realized I needed to get a brewer on the show. I’ve been a fan of Aeronaut for years, so I reached out and Mark said yes immediately. We had a wide-ranging conversation about the evolution of craft beer, the brewing process, the equipment and ingredients, prototype beers and wild experiments. And then we tasted everything, from lagers and IPAs to seltzers and sours. What struck me most was a theme that kept bubbling up: beer is really about bringing people together. It’s about being social, having fun, discovering new flavors, and sometimes even sparking ideas and getting things done. As Edward Slingerland wrote in Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization, alcohol “helps us be more creative. It helps us to be more communal. It helps us to cooperate on a large scale. So it solved a bunch of adaptive problems that we uniquely face as a species.” Now, I know some younger drinkers are moving away from beer toward cannabis and other alternatives. And there’s nothing wrong with that; plenty of people report better sleep, more energy, and lower health risks when they cut back on alcohol. But I want to make a little case for enjoying beer, responsibly and in moderation, because it’s been part of our story since the beginning. In this episode, we discuss: • Mark’s journey from PhD chemist to brewmaster and how science shapes great beer • The evolution of IPAs and why they’ve dominated craft brewing • What happens behind the scenes at a modern brewery: equipment, techniques, experiments • Aeronaut’s philosophy: “brewed with curiosity and backed by science” • Why we sampled lagers, IPAs, seltzers, and sours (and what I learned) • How beer has brought people together for ten thousand years • The role of beer in American history, from colonial taverns to revolutionary debates • Why alcohol may have helped us build civilization by making us more creative and communal • The shift away from beer among younger drinkers and why moderation still matters • What makes a great craft beer, and how to appreciate it beyond just the buzz 💡 Learn more about Aeronaut Brewing Co.: https://www.aeronautbrewing.com/about/our-story/ 💡 Read Mark’s story from PhD to brewmaster: https://www.aeronautbrewing.com/meet-the-aeronauts-mark/ 💡 About Curiously: https://www.curiouslypod.com/

    2h 14m

  7. 2025-09-29

    Science, Hope & The Future We’re Trying to Build: Live from the 2025 Cambridge Science Carnival

    I’ve always believed that the questions we ask reveal as much about us as the answers we give. So when I had the chance to set up a booth at the MIT Museum’s 2025 Cambridge Science Carnival, I brought one question with me: “If science could solve one problem for humanity in the next 50 years, what would you choose—and why?” The carnival buzzed with over a hundred booths celebrating curiosity. Families roamed the grounds, kids wide-eyed at hands-on experiments. I was there representing my own small corner of the world: science fiction with heart. I’d brought copies of my books, The Empathy Academy and The Healing Book, and by the end of the day, every single one had found a new home. But more than selling books, I wanted to listen. Fourteen people, ranging from an 11-year-old boy to adults in their sixties, stepped up to my podcast microphone. Their answers were as varied as they were revealing. Some wanted to eliminate waste, others dreamed of world peace or clean water for everyone. One kid just wanted dinosaurs back. There was talk of a human satisfaction index, of solutions that felt urgent and others that felt aspirational. Listening back, I kept thinking: some of these can’t wait 50 years. In this episode, you’ll hear: • Fourteen voices answering one big question about science and humanity’s future • Why clean water, waste elimination, and world peace topped the list • An 11-year-old’s passionate case for bringing back dinosaurs • The idea of a human satisfaction index and what it would measure • Perspectives across generations, from kids to adults in their sixties • My own answer to the question I asked everyone else • What these responses reveal about our hopes, fears, and priorities • Why some scientific breakthroughs feel too urgent to wait 50 years • The spirit of curiosity alive at the MIT Museum’s Cambridge Science Carnival • How asking the right question can open up unexpected conversations

    35 min

  8. 2025-09-19

    Genetic Engineering, Space Colonization & The 500-Year Plan to Save Humanity

    There’s something both terrifying and oddly comforting about knowing we have four billion years left. The sun will expand, swallow Earth, and explode. We need to leave. The question isn't whether we should go, but how we'll survive once we do. I’ve always been drawn to stories about humanity’s future in space. Not the sanitized Hollywood versions, but the messy, complicated reality of what it would actually take. When I discovered Dr. Christopher Mason’s book, The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds, I knew I had to talk to him. Here’s a geneticist and computational biologist who’s been a Principal Investigator on 11 NASA missions, laying out an actual roadmap for reengineering ourselves to survive in space. What followed was a conversation that moved from CRISPR gene editing to exowombs, from the ethics of human enhancement to what life might look like on Mars in 2151. We talked about splitting atoms and landing on moons, about the kind of imagination it takes to see beyond what seems impossible today. This conversation felt like a reminder that the bold ideas that seem like science fiction today become tomorrow’s reality. In this episode, we discuss: • The 500-year roadmap for humanity’s survival beyond Earth • How CRISPR and genetic engineering could adapt us for life in space • What exowombs are and why they might be necessary on distant worlds • The ethics of reengineering ourselves and selecting for desirable traits • Why we have a moral obligation to safeguard life by expanding into space • What life could look like in 2151: Moon colonies, Mars stations, and beyond • Dr. Mason’s work on 11 NASA missions and what he’s learned about space biology • Whether humans are psychologically ready for the isolation of deep space • How imagination and bold thinking drive scientific progress • Why we can’t afford to be small-minded about humanity’s future 💡 Learn more about Dr. Christopher E. Mason: https://www.masonlab.net/ 💡 Read Dr. Mason’s book: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262543842/the-next-500-years/ 💡 About Curiously: https://www.curiouslypod.com/

    57 min
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About

Curiously is a podcast about questions—how we ask them, where they lead, and what we discover along the way. Host Dustin Grinnell talks with scientists, doctors, artists, and everyday thinkers about sleep, health, imagination, space, therapy, technology, and the search for meaning. If you’ve ever wondered how science connects to real life, or how people make sense of uncertainty and complexity, Curiously offers context, insight, and new ways of thinking about the questions that matter most.

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