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Invisibilia - Season 2

Back for another summer of riveting stories and hidden truths, Invisibilia debuts on WMRA Sunday, June  19th at 10pm and repeats Thursday, June 23rd at 3pm. This is a 7 episode season and will run each Sunday night at 10pm and Thursday afternoon at 3pm.

Invisibilia is Latin for "invisible things." The program explores the unseen forces that shape human behavior -- things like ideas, beliefs, assumptions and emotions -- interweaving narrative storytelling with scientific research that will ultimately make you see your own life differently. The show is co-hosted by a trio of NPR's award-winning journalists, Alix Spiegel, Lulu Miller and Hanna Rosin, who have roots at This American Life, Radiolab and The Atlantic.

In the first season, Invisibilia showed us how science sheds light on what we individually experience; the second season will delve more often into how our lives are entwined, sometimes invisibly, with each other and the larger world.

This second season, Spiegel, Miller and Rosin, look at terrorism in Denmark, a McDonalds in Russia, and a grand social experiment in Rwanda. They go to a prison to explore whether our personalities are as stable and constant as we think; an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico to see if the culture of masculinity can shift, and a village in Belgium to test a radical way of treating mental illness.

Invisiblia Season 2 Trailor Subscribe to the Invisibilia Podcast Invisibilia on Facebook Follow on Twitter @NPRinvisibilia

Invisibilia Season 2 Schedule and Descriptions:

Episode 1
Sun June 19 10pm
Thu June 23 3pm
You probably don't even notice them, but social norms determine so much of your behavior -- how you dress, talk, eat and even what you allow yourself to feel. These norms are so entrenched we never imagine they can shift. But sometimes they do, and the impacts can be profound, far-reaching, and long-lasting. On this episode, Alix Spiegel and new co-host Hanna Rosin examine two experiments that set out to do just that.

Episode 2
Sun June 26 10pm
Thu July 7 3pm (Due to a technical error - this episode will air out of order)
We like to think of our own personalities, and those of our spouses and children and friends as predictable, constant over time. This belief comforts us and gives us confidence in passing judgements on all sorts of people: from our life partners (who we tend to think of as inherently good) to violent criminals (who we tend to think of as inherently bad). But what if they aren't? What if in fact we can't point to a single thing about a person that doesn't change over time?

Episode 3
Sun July 3 10pm
Thu June 30 3pm (Due to a technical error - this episode aired out of order)
Americans LOVE solutions, to political conflicts, social ills, clogged drains. But are there ever problems we shouldn't try to solve? It seems like the height of irony, but in this episode, we examine a problem, one that many of us privately face on a daily basis, that actually gets worse the more you try to solve it.

Episode 4
Sun July 10 10pm
Thu July 14 3pm
How a new frame of reference can change your life. The ways we see the world, and our feelings about it, are shaped entirely by our personal frames of reference. So what happens if you're suddenly exposed to a new frame of reference? Invisibilia hosts Alix Spiegel and Hanna Rosin explore what happened when a woman on the autism spectrum was given a brief insight into the range of human emotions in others... emotions she had been missing all along.

Sun July 17 10pm (Episode 5)
Thu July 21 3pm (Repeat Episode 5)

Sun July 24 10pm (Episode 6)
Thu July 28 3pm (Repeat Episode 6)

Sun July 31 10pm (Episode 7)
Thu August 4 3pm (Repeat Episode 7)

Matt Bingay is the Executive Director and General Manager for WMRA and WEMC.