Sophus Helle

We all have something we would like to forget, or something we would like others to forget about us. But it can be surprisingly difficult to forget. You can try to make yourself hold on to a memory, but letting go of it can be much trickier....

When Sophus’s grandfather died, he left behind an old encyclopedia with a mysteriously empty page. In this episode, Sophus talks about happens when we run out of words, as when the mind is made blank by old age or when our loved ones die and we grieve...

Sophus launches the podcast with a deep-dive into the human mind, this engine of chaos and expanse of possibility we all carry around inside us. The episode begins with a reminder—taken from, of all places, the British tax collection agency—to marvel...

The episode traces the history of a single word, serendipity, across seven centuries and just as many countries. A "serendipity" is a "happy and unexpected discovery", and the history of the word is itself full of happy and unexpected discoveries,...