The Anne Levine Show with Michael Over There

Michael Hill-Levine - Originally created by Anne Levine

A weekly exploration of the BIG QUESTIONS, the beautiful, and the nearly interesting with Michael Over There. Expect curious detours through brains, behavior, consciousness, comedy, cinema, culture, history, science, and the wonderfully unexpected. Every episode follows unlikely connections and asks the kinds of questions that are easy to understand but surprisingly difficult to answer. Sometimes we find answers. Sometimes we discover better questions. Dedicated to the one and only Anne Hall Levine: a force of nature, the love of my life, and the one person who could make us all laugh.

  1. 4d ago

    What Remains

    Send us Fan Mail Learning doesn’t start with a syllabus. It starts with “What is this?” and the courage to be wrong long enough to find out. We take a surprising tour through how humans actually learn, from newborn brains binding voice, face, scent, and warmth into a single person, to the way prediction and repetition carve “trails” in the brain. Along the way, we dig into statistical learning in language development and why babies are less like sponges and more like tiny scientists running nonstop experiments.  We also make a case that mistakes are not detours, they’re the road. A deliberate error in our opening song becomes the whole lesson: learning begins with correction. From Alexander Fleming noticing something strange in a contaminated petri dish to the Wright brothers questioning accepted data about lift, progress comes from paying attention when things don’t behave the way we expect. That’s why we’re wary of certainty and obsessed with curiosity: the goal is not a final answer, it’s getting closer.  Then we widen the lens to adult learning and emotional learning: masking, micro-corrections, and the slow timing of becoming yourself. We talk about triangulation, how other people help us see what we can’t see alone, and how humor and art make room for change without denying what hurts. The closing question is the one we keep returning to: after the answer changes, what remains?  If this makes you rethink how you learn, share it with a friend, subscribe, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What’s a mistake that taught you something real? Find our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/447251562357065/

  2. Jul 13

    Think About It

    Send us Fan Mail Every cathedral, every symphony, every scientific discovery, every terrible mistake, every joke that ever made you laugh, every act of kindness, every "I love you" and every "I'm sorry" all began the same way: Someone had a thought. But what is a thought? You can decide to think about an elephant. But can you decide what your very next spontaneous thought will be? That simple challenge opens the door to one of the oldest and strangest questions human beings have ever asked. Along the way, we'll discover why the Scarecrow may have been the wisest character in The Wizard of Oz, why Socrates annoyed almost everyone he met, how Eratosthenes measured the Earth with shadows, what Galileo saw that changed the universe, and why neuroscientists can watch your brain think without being able to explain why thinking feels like anything at all. We'll wander through optical illusions, consciousness, thought experiments, and the surprisingly powerful question that lies at the heart of critical thinking: How do I know this is true? By the end of the hour, you probably won't know where thoughts come from. Neither does anyone else. But you may find yourself asking better questions than you were asking when we began. And that might be how real thinking starts. Find our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/447251562357065/

  3. Jul 6

    Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

    Send us Fan Mail Time is the thing we trust most and the thing we understand least. We start with a deceptively simple question: how long is one day? From there, we unpack why solar time and sidereal time disagree by about four minutes, and how that tiny gap reshapes the night sky over a year and helps astronomers aim telescopes where they actually need to look.  Then we zoom out to the human side of timekeeping: calendars, power, and the quiet truth that “what year it is” depends on who’s counting. We talk Gregorian vs Julian history, other calendar systems around the world, and the way our “official” dates can collide with real life logistics. That leads straight into daylight saving time, where we lay out the strongest case for shifting evening daylight and the strongest case against it: circadian rhythm, sleep disruption, and the measurable risks that show up when we force the clock to jump.  From there, time gets physical. We tell the story of Britain deleting eleven days in 1752, the race to solve longitude with John Harrison’s sea watch, and the artifacts that make deep time touchable. Then things get wonderfully strange. Scientists flew atomic clocks around the world—and they came back disagreeing with the clocks that stayed home, just as Einstein predicted, plus isolation cave experiments that reveal how quickly our internal clock drifts without sunrise and sunset. We end in the biggest questions of all: the arrow of time, entropy, why we can turn around in space but not in time, and why stories about time travel hit so hard when real life won’t rewind. If you like big ideas grounded in everyday reality, subscribe, share this with a curious friend, leave a review, and tell us: what’s your personal theory for why time feels faster as you get older? Find our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/447251562357065/

  4. Jun 29

    Backstories

    Send us Fan Mail We abandon a planned “believable lies” story when our body refused to cooperate, then follow the real-life weirdness of objects that won’t stay simple. We trace how keys, boxes, marks, and junk drawers turn into evidence, memory, and obsession, especially while packing up a life and deciding what matters. • moving stress and the surprising honesty of the body • why “backstories” beat price tags for meaning • mystery keys as instant narrative machines • empty boxes as “ghost objects” defined by absence • maker’s marks, hallmarks, initials, and the urge to complete patterns • why we keep things, even minimalists • family museums and oral labels that drift over time • provenance as an object’s biography, clean or messy • the emotional hazard of cleaning and sorting keep donate sell trash • the phrase “I almost threw it away” as a gateway to treasure thinking • misidentification and how belief changes how we treat an object • staying curious without getting greedy, using “this might be” • The Maltese Falcon and the Holy Grail as object-quest warnings • the junk drawer as the most honest museum in the house Open a drawer. Not the one you already understand. Open a weird drawer. Take out an object you can't immediately explain and hold it for a second. And just ask what it is. And why you kept it. And what future you was supposed to do with it. And you might not get an answer, but you might get a story. Find our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/447251562357065/

  5. Jun 22

    Hidden In Plain Sight

    Send us Fan Mail A kitten on a mountain trail turns into a bobcat. A $4 flea market frame turns into a multimillion-dollar Declaration of Independence discovery. A jar of pickles becomes a roadside legend that refuses to disappear. We built this hour around one idea that keeps proving itself: the biggest breakthroughs are often hidden in plain sight, not because they are invisible, but because we stop asking questions once we think we understand what we’re seeing. We bounce from the Blue Ridge Mountains to small-town Iowa’s escaped kangaroo report, then back through history to the Antikythera mechanism, the ancient Greek device now considered the world’s first analog computer. For years it was dismissed as “just a clock” because it did not fit the story people expected. That same bias shows up in archaeology, where Caracol in Belize was known long before LIDAR mapping revealed terraces, causeways, and a 70-square-mile settlement that rewrites assumptions about Maya cities and population density. From there, we get practical about curiosity: why truly understanding technology means being able to explain it simply, why “easy” tasks like making coffee are packed with hidden choices, and why documentation and technical writing matter more than most people realize. We even detour into true crime oddities where pants become evidence, then close with a love letter to archives, matchbooks as personal history, and museums as living engines of scientific research behind the glass. If something here sparks a memory, share it with us: what’s the most interesting thing you’ve ever found that everyone else overlooked? Subscribe, share the episode with a curious friend, and leave a review so more people can find the show. Find our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/447251562357065/

  6. Jun 15

    Samba, So Many Bees, and the Great Buffalo Controversy

    Send us Fan Mail A capybara sprints into freedom, a buffalo becomes a political lightning rod, and a cemetery turns out to be one of the biggest bee neighborhoods scientists have ever documented. That’s where we start, and it only gets better from there. We’re coming to you from Cape Cod with a grab bag of stories that sound absurd at first, then land with surprisingly real questions about attention, ethics, and what we choose to protect. First up: Samba, the missing capybara from England’s Marwell Zoo, who keeps showing up in sightings and AI-generated social posts but still can’t be caught. Then we head to Bangladesh, where a rare albino buffalo draws crowds because it “looks like” Donald Trump, triggering a wave of viral fame, security concerns, and controversy over a zoo sign that doesn’t last long. We dig into why these stories spread, and what gets lost when an animal becomes content. Then we slow down for a science gut-punch: researchers near Cornell University find an enormous aggregation of solitary ground-nesting mining bees in an Ithaca cemetery, potentially millions of pollinators living underfoot. From citizen science to pesticide-free habitat, we talk about what this discovery means for biodiversity, agriculture, and how to notice the natural world in places you’d never expect. Finally, John from Silver Lake joins us for Waymo driverless car sightings, neighborhood change, indie film talk, and a trivia challenge that pulls real Los Angeles history into the mix. We wrap with books and movies, including “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” and a personal “found object” story that proves old stuff can still surprise you. Subscribe, share this with a curious friend, and leave a review if you like smart stories with a weird edge. What part are you still thinking about? Find our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/447251562357065/

  7. Jun 8

    Mayor Minerva, Robot Rover, and the Pink Pigeon Problem

    Send us Fan Mail A cat runs for office with an honest one-word platform, “Crime,” and somehow that’s only the start. I’m Michael Over There, and I’m keeping The Anne Levine Show rolling with the same curious tone, a little grief in the background, and a lot of strange stories that might make you stop and say, wait, that’s real? We start with animal mayors in Somerville, Massachusetts and Divide, Colorado, then zoom out to the surprisingly deep American tradition of “electing” pets to raise money, pull in tourists, and give communities a symbol they can agree on. If you think that’s odd, wait until you meet the legendary goat mayors of Lajitas, Texas and the Clay Henry saga that reads like folklore with newspaper receipts. Then we hit two 100-meter world records that feel like dares made manifest: a barefoot sprint across 661 pounds of LEGO bricks, and a quadrupedal sprint record set by an athlete who studies animals to perfect running on all fours. From there the tone swings between internet-era weirdness (including questionable Florida “laws”) and true historical catastrophe with the Great Molasses Flood of 1919, a Boston disaster that changed building regulations and left the city sticky for months. The back half gets speculative and a little philosophical: robot pets, Tamagotchi nostalgia, and whether AI could invent a religion built on curiosity and “holy” questions. We also ask what museums will collect from our era, from early smartphones to digital-only art, before closing out with strange-but-true tales, a quick Spider Noir review, and a very sincere love letter to Tillamook cheese and malted milk ice cream. Subscribe for more weekly oddities, share this with a friend who loves weird history, and leave a review so more curious people can discover the weird that is us. Next Week - Silverlake! Find our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/447251562357065/

  8. Jun 1

    Grief, Robots, And The Future

    Send us Fan Mail I’m back behind the mic after a long silence, and I’m doing it without Anne, the absolute love of my life. Losing her changes everything about how this show feels, but I still want a place where we can hang out, be curious, and talk about the strange world we’re building together even when life hurts. We start with a story that sounds like science fiction but is already real: a household robot helping an older couple stay in their home after they lose a service dog. It prompts daily routines, nudges healthy habits, and even turns into an exercise coach. That kicks off the bigger questions I can’t stop thinking about: would you trust a caregiving robot with your parents, is robot companionship better than loneliness, and what happens when this tech gets cheap enough for everyone? Along the way I connect it to the subscription economy and why “help” is starting to look like another monthly fee. Then we zoom out to the broader AI and technology moment. I look back at how people once feared elevators, telephones, and ATMs, and I lay out why I think physical robots will become as normal as microwave ovens, especially in warehouses and manufacturing. We also hit the upside of AI in science: NASA TESS data plus a new AI pipeline called Raven confirming exoplanets humans missed, and a James Webb Space Telescope deep dive into an unusual planet pairing. Finally, we take a hard left into history and mystery with an ancient Italian sanctuary uncovered during construction, treasure coins from the 1715 Spanish fleet, and the Whydah pirate wreck right here on Cape Cod. If you listen, share it with someone who likes big questions, and please subscribe and leave a review so this next chapter can find its people. Find our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/447251562357065/

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5
out of 5
12 Ratings

About

A weekly exploration of the BIG QUESTIONS, the beautiful, and the nearly interesting with Michael Over There. Expect curious detours through brains, behavior, consciousness, comedy, cinema, culture, history, science, and the wonderfully unexpected. Every episode follows unlikely connections and asks the kinds of questions that are easy to understand but surprisingly difficult to answer. Sometimes we find answers. Sometimes we discover better questions. Dedicated to the one and only Anne Hall Levine: a force of nature, the love of my life, and the one person who could make us all laugh.

Information

  • Creator
    Michael Hill-Levine - Originally created by Anne Levine
  • Years Active
    2010 - 2026
  • Episodes
    95
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Anne Levine Show with Michael Over There
  • Show Website
    The Anne Levine Show with Michael Over There

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