The Curiosity Desk

Strategy, tactics, reading the room – all skills that Jennifer Shahade says we can learn from chess. She would know best, she’s a three-time national chess champion, and author of the upcoming book “Thinking Sideways.”  Shahade and Edgar talk about life and chess, while she gives Edgar a whooping in a live game.

Punch, an orphaned baby macaque at the Ichikawa City Zoo in Japan, gained a social media following when he bonded with an orangutan stuffed animal that zookeepers used to console him. Edgar talks to a wildlife conservation biologist Mikaela Gerwing about the monkey social dynamics on display. 

Plus, Oriana Aragon talks with us about the human response to cute monkeys like Aragon is an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Cincinnati, who’s done research into “cute aggression.”