The Show About Science

Hippety Hoppity, Here’s the Cacophony: Barro Colorado Island, Part 1

An accidental island sits in the middle of the Panama Canal, and for more than a century, it's drawn scientists from around the world. In this two-part series on Barro Co

Inside the Smithsonian's Hidden Cheetah Sanctuary

In this episode of The Show About Science, Nate visits the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Virginia, to learn how scientists

The Coldest Cold Case

In 1991, hikers in the Alps spotted what looked like a doll frozen in the ice. It wasn’t a toy. It was a body. What police thought was a recent accident turns out to be s

The Refugee Seeds

Seeds hold history. They carry the genetic blueprints of the past and the key to our future. But when disaster strikes, how far will scientists go to save them before the

STEM Flights with Dragan Lazić and Carley Walker

What is it like to fly a plane while attempting to make a podcast from 2,000 feet in the air? And can we pull this off? In this episode of The Show About Science, Nate c

The Great Cicada Symphony with Jorin Graham

It's the hottest day of the year, and deep underground, a mysterious countdown has finally hit zero. After years of silence, millions of cicadas are emerging from the ear

The Anachronisms in our Backyards with David Zaya

In this episode of The Show About Science, Nate unearths the surprising history of the Kentucky Coffee Trees growing in his backyard and quickly becomes obsessed with ger

Bacteriophages with Ben Chan

Bacteriophages, also known as ‘phages,’ are the most common lifeform on the planet. They are constantly hunting for bacteria to infect and kill. What if we could harness

Urban Water Chemistry with Stephen MacAvoy and Melissa Pierce

In this episode of The Show About Science, Nate heads to the banks of the Chicago River to meet up with Melissa Pierce, PhD, the Technical Program Director at Current, a

A City on Mars with Zach Weinersmith

What it would really entail to conquer the relentless Martian elements, engineer a thriving, self-reliant biosphere, and craft life-preserving abodes within the alien rea

The Twenty-One with Elizabeth Rusch

What happens when 21 kids sue the U.S. government for a dream of a world without climate change? On this episode of The Show About Science, Nate interviews Elizabeth Rusc

The Puzzling Platypus with Frank Grützner

The platypus is a fascinating animal that has perplexed generations of scientists. Now researchers are studying the platypus on the molecular level, and it's just as surp

Our Extreme Universe with Kimberly Arcand

Dr. Kimberly Arcand is a Visualization and Emerging Technology Scientist at NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard, and Smithsonian. In

The Science of Sound with Kimberly Arcand, Martin Gruebele, Carla Scaletti, and Mark Temple

Can sound help us understand the complex patterns in our universe? This question leads Nate to Symbolic Sound in Champaign, Illinois, where composer Carla Scaletti guides

Big Tree with Brian Selznick

Brian Selznick is an illustrator and author best known for his books The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Wonderstruck, and The Marvels and Kaleidoscope. Brian joins Nate on thi

Accelerating Science to Eradicate Disease with Priscilla Chan and Stephen Quake

The CZ Biohub’s inspiring story began when Priscilla Chan asked Stephen Quake a seemingly impossible question: “Is it possible to cure, prevent, and manage disease in our

The Tiny Zebrafish Hotel with Merlin Lange, Loïc Royer, and Shruthi VijayKumar

On the third installment of our CZ Biohub series, we visit a lab nicknamed "Le Petit Hotel de Poisson" (The Tiny Fish Hotel) where scientists are using zebrafish as a mod

Mapping the Cell with Manuel Leonetti

This is the second episode of our four part series focused on the CZ Biohub in San Francisco where scientists are working to cure, prevent, or manage disease by the end o

Bioengineering Malaria with Paul Lebel

Over the next 4 episodes, we're going to take you on a tour of the CZ Biohub in San Francisco where scientists are working to cure, prevent, or manage disease by the end

Santa Science and the Physics of Christmas (Rerun)

We're revisiting one of our favorite episodes of The Show About Science from 2015. Back when Nate was 5 years old, he interviewed Santa Claus about the science behind his