Our Floral Planet
We admire the ornamental beauty of flowers in a garden, but those blooms are more than lush color. The seemingly fragile, delicate petals ar...
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Big Picture Science
Big Picture Science: A smart and humorous take on emerging trends in science and technology. Tune in and make contact with science. We broadcast and podcast every week. bigpicturescience.org
Episodes
20 of 699 episodes
On a Collision Course
Breakthroughs around the detection of cosmic neutrinos — the “ghost” particles that may reveal why matter, not antimatter, fills the univers...
Skeptic Check: Sunny Daze
A growing online movement of sunscreen skeptics believes that sunblock is toxic, even suggesting that it might cause skin cancer. Medical ex...
The Rights of Rivers
Healthy rivers and riparian ecosystems are teaming with life, but should rivers themselves be considered alive? The question is central to t...
How Hot is Too Hot?
Extreme heat is taking its toll on the natural world. We use words like “heat domes” and “freakish” to describe our everyday existence. Thes...
A Coup De Grace in Space
A new space telescope will soon give us an expanded field of view of some of the strangest phenomena in the cosmos. The launch of NASA’s Nan...
Malawi: A Path Forward
The abrupt defunding of USAID in 2025 caused global shockwaves. The cuts thrust recipient countries who were dependent on foreign aid for me...
Leave it to Beavers
They are known for holding branches in their paws and gnawing on them like corn cobs. They build lodges and dams which occasionally flood ro...
Measure for Measure
Whether in miles or pounds, meters or kilograms, we take daily measure out our lives. But how did these units ever come to be, and why do we...
Calling All Aliens
Are we alone in the universe? Is there other intelligence out there? COSMIC, the most ambitious SETI search yet, hopes to answer that. We he...
What Moves Us
What physical activity gives you joy? Whether it’s walking, running, dancing or swimming, your body evolved to do it. We are made for moveme...
Skeptic Check: The Body Electric
Electricity plays an important role in our everyday lives, including allowing our bodies to communicate internally. But some research claims...
Worms of Endearment
Earthworms may be small, limbless, and blind but, as Darwin observed nearly 150 years ago, they play a critical role in soil ecology. Darwin...
Arctic Dispatch
The Arctic serves as the world’s refrigerator, keeping the planet cool. But temperatures in the Arctic are rising nearly four times faster t...
Cold Comfort
Another scorching summer has us blasting the AC and grabbing a chilled drink. Air conditioning and refrigeration may beat the heat, but they...
CRISPR Mosquitoes
The powerful gene editing tool CRISPR is already being tested on animal and plant cells. It has even been used on humans. How might this rev...
Skeptic Check: Blue Light Special
Many of us know the feeling: we intend to go to bed but pull out our phones for one last scroll. Setting them aside hours later, we’re wide...
Make Space for Animals
Long before Yuri Gagarin became the first human to go into space, Laika, a stray dog, crossed the final frontier. Find out what other surpri...
Skeptic Check: Disclosure Day
The latest Hollywood romp through the world of aliens has landed in theaters. Steven Spielberg’s movie Disclosure Day suggests that our gove...
Vroom!
Self-driving cars, once a thing of science fiction, have become a reality in a handful of cities across the country. As our vehicles gain au...