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Like breathing, sleeping and eating, playing is innate in humans. But unlike those other functions, which could easily mean the difference between a long life and an early death, the usefulness of play isn’t quite as obvious. Brains at Play investigates play through the work of Jaak Panksepp, professor of integrative psychology and neuroscience at Washington State University, who conducted pioneering research on play. By performing surgery on rats, Panksepp discovered that the instinct to play exists in the primitive part of the mammalian brain, and has surprisingly important implications for social development.
Producer: John Poole
Website: NPR Ed
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Wellbeing
Born in China, Zee seeks a gender-affirming life in the American Midwest
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Chemistry
Why do the building blocks of life possess a mysterious symmetry?
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Cosmology
Tiny, entangled universes that form or fizzle out – a theory of the quantum multiverse
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Rituals and celebrations
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Astronomy
The history of astronomy is a history of conjuring intelligent life where it isn’t
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Love and friendship
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Metaphysics
Simple entities in universal harmony – Leibniz’s evocative perspective on reality
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Biography and memoir
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Engineering
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