What happened to the giant bugs?
Once upon a time (around 300 million years ago), Earth was home to massive dragonfly-like insects and two meter long millipede-like creatures. Why did they die off? Guests: Ned Snelling, professor of...
23 Sep 27min
Dark matter and the end of answers
Five-sixths of all the matter in the universe is this invisible stuff called dark matter, and scientists barely understand what it is. So what happens if we can't answer arguably the biggest mystery i...
21 Sep 35min
What happened before the big bang?
It's a question that seems impossible to grapple with, but scientists won't take no for an answer. In this collaboration with Scientific American, we take on the big bang and a whole bunch of seemingl...
16 Sep 26min
What's the oldest story ever told?
An astrophysicist uses the motion of the stars to argue that a single story has been told for 100,000 years. A cognitive anthropologist has questions. Guests: Ray Norris, astrophysicist; Manvir Singh...
14 Sep 27min
Stopping the science that could stop the world
When scientists write their own rules for life, how do they know what could go wrong before it’s too late? This is the final episode of our new three-part series, Life from Scratch. Guests: Kate Ada...
2 Sep 36min
A breakthrough in synthetic life
Synthetic biologist Kate Adamala has been making major headlines as her lab creates cells that feed, divide, and grow — all from nonliving parts. It may sound like sci-fi, but Kate believes that these...
31 Aug 34min
Life from scratch
Scientists stripped a cell down to its most essential genes in order to find out what makes life...alive. What they found was more bizarre than they could have imagined. This is the first episode of ...
26 Aug 29min
The idea of a song
A few hundred milliseconds are often all you need to recognize a song, but a lot of recent hits have moved away from intros. Our friends at Switched on Pop (along with the National's Aaron Dessner) ...
24 Aug 44min
