Glad You Asked

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.