For his latest book, “Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything? How the Famous Sell Us Elixirs of Health, Beauty & Happiness,” health-science expert Timothy Caulfield of the University of Alberta set out to answer a simple question: why do we believe in the health and beauty treatments that celebrities tell us will transform our lives, when they have no scientific foundation? Caulfield is in conversation with the Uncharted Festival curator, Lance Knobel, at the 2015 Uncharted Festival of Ideas. 

Chris Anderson was Editor in Chief of Wired Magazine for 12 years, but he gave all that up to devote himself to drones after an epiphany brought on by playing with a Lego Mindstorms robotic kit one Friday afternoon with his kids. As the founder of 3D Robotics, a drone manufacturer based in the Bay Area, he sees exciting possibilities for how drones can be put to work to solve some of our most pressing problems, in areas like agriculture and climate change. He talked about them with journalist and media innovator Peter Leyden at the 2015 Uncharted Festival of Ideas. 

Shannon Brownlee is a national leader in highlighting the scope and consequences of overuse in healthcare, and she explores many of these worrying issues in her book, “Overtreated: Why too much Medicine is Making us Sicker and Poorer.” Millions of people in the U.S. are being harmed — and are even dying — by having unnecessary health interventions, as she discusses with KQED Health Editor Lisa Aliferis. Recorded at the 2015 Uncharted Festival of Ideas. 

Ninth Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski, arguably the most outspoken judge on the federal bench, believes our criminal justice system is broken. He says we often rely on guesswork to convict people and suggests the firing squad is a more honest way of putting people to death than lethal injection. At the 2015 Uncharted Ideas Festival, Judge Kozinski is in conversation with William Turner, a first-amendment expert who teaches at UC Berkeley.

Shortly after Michael Brown was shot dead in Ferguson, Missouri, Pastor Michael McBride, a church and community leader in the Bay Area, went to Ferguson. He has since emerged as a spokesperson on gun violence prevention, boys and men of color and police-community relationships. At the 2015 Uncharted Ideas Festival, McBride spoke to KQED news anchor Joshua Johnson about the roots of the Black Lives Matter movement, and where it goes from here.