EP 142
The neuroscientist who maps boredom
Why the brain treats an empty afternoon as a problem to solve — and what we lose when we never let it.
A long-form interview podcast
Wavelength
Two-hour conversations with people who think for a living — scientists, founders, artists, and the occasional contrarian.
Listen on
New episode every Tuesday.
A Podcast
Wave
length
Hosted by Naomi Adeyemi
218 episodes · Independent since 2019
Now playing — latest episode
The neuroscientist who maps boredom
EP 142 · 1:21:50
28:14
1:21:50
218
Episodes published
14.8M
Total downloads
4.9★
Avg rating · 24,408 ratings
148
Countries reached
As heard on
The Lantern Review
/
Meridian Magazine
/
The Driftwood Post
/
Slow Culture Weekly
/
Aperture Quarterly
/
The Common Hour
/
Threshold Books Journal
/
The Lantern Review
/
Meridian Magazine
/
The Driftwood Post
/
Slow Culture Weekly
/
Aperture Quarterly
/
The Common Hour
/
Threshold Books Journal
/
Recent conversations
Latest episodes
EP 141
A war reporter on telling the truth slowly
Thirty years in conflict zones taught her that the fastest story is almost never the most honest one.
EP 140
The luthier who builds violins for the dead
A craftsman restores instruments orphaned by war, and explains what wood remembers that we forget.
EP 139
The founder who shut down a profitable company
She walked away from eight figures of revenue — and argues that growth was the easiest thing to question.
EP 138
The cartographer of disappearing languages
He records the last fluent speakers of dying tongues — and what each silence costs the rest of us.
EP 137
The economist who studies what people regret
After 40,000 interviews, she found regret follows rules — and most of them have nothing to do with money.
About the show
An unhurried hour, then another.
2 hours
The average conversation length
Wavelength began as a simple frustration: every interview Naomi Adeyemi wanted to hear ended right as it got interesting. So she built a show with no clock on the wall — one where a guest can think out loud, contradict themselves, circle back, and arrive somewhere neither of them expected.
The format is deliberately old-fashioned. No co-host banter, no rapid-fire segments, no soundbite engineered for a clip. Just two chairs, two microphones, and a host who has actually read the work. Guests are scientists and founders and novelists and the occasional contrarian — anyone who treats thinking as their craft and is willing to do it on tape.
Two hours is the point, not the price of admission. It takes the first forty minutes for a conversation to shed its press-tour reflexes. What remains — the part most shows cut — is the reason this one exists.
Start here
New to the show?
EP 118
The mathematician on living with uncertainty
The cleanest introduction to how this show thinks — patient, precise, never glib.
2:09:41 EP 094The chef who closed her restaurant to listen
Proof that the show works far outside science — a warm, surprising hour on attention and taste.
1:52:18 EP 071The historian who changed his own mind on tape
The episode regulars send to friends — a guest reasons his way to a genuine reversal, live.
2:17:06Your host
The voice in the chair
NA
Naomi Adeyemi
HostA former foreign-desk journalist and oral historian who spent a decade interviewing people for newspapers before deciding the best parts never made the page.
@naomi.adeyemi“Most interview shows feel like a transaction. Wavelength feels like being trusted with a long, slow afternoon — the kind of conversation you only get from people who genuinely have nowhere else to be.”
Diego Ramos
Five-star review · Apple Podcasts
The full archive
218 episodes — browse by guest or by theme
Wavelength has no seasons. It's one long, unbroken run since 2019 — every conversation still live, still worth your evening. The archive is sorted two ways: by the person in the chair, or by the question the episode was really about.
Open the archive42 episodes
Mind & brain
38 episodes
Building things
35 episodes
Art & craft
29 episodes
History & memory
41 episodes
Science & nature
33 episodes
The contrarians
Good questions
Frequently asked
How long are episodes, really?
Most land between one hour forty and two hours twenty. We don't pad and we don't trim to a target — the conversation ends when it's genuinely finished. If you only have a commute, every episode is split into chapters so you can pause at a natural seam and pick up later without losing the thread.
Where can I get transcripts?
Every episode has a full, human-checked transcript published the same day, linked from the episode page and the show notes. They're free, searchable, and timestamped to the audio. Subscribers to the Wavelength Letter also get a short pull-quote digest if you'd rather skim before you listen.
How do I pitch a guest?
Email [email protected] with a few sentences on who they are and the one question you'd want them asked. We read everything, though we book months ahead, so a reply can take a while. The best pitches name a specific idea the person has changed their mind about — that's usually where a two-hour conversation finds its center.
Are episodes edited or raw?
Lightly edited, never reshaped. We remove false starts, long technical fumbles, and the occasional interruption — nothing else. We don't cut a guest's hesitations, tangents, or second thoughts, because that thinking-in-real-time is the entire reason the show runs long. What you hear is the order it happened in.
Is there an ad-free version?
Yes. Wavelength runs two short host-read sponsorships per episode; a listener-supported membership removes them and adds the occasional extended cut. It's pay-what-you-can — the show stays fully independent either way, and no episode is ever locked behind the paywall.
New episode every Tuesday
Find your wavelength
Subscribe wherever you listen and the next two-hour conversation arrives on its own. Start with one — the archive isn't going anywhere.