Let's talk about sex, baby. Let's talk about birds and bees. Let's talk about all the slime molds and the algae that can be, let's talk about sex. This week we are talking about the history of sex, where it came from, what it is, who has it, and why people are always trying to...

Continue reading

John Dupuis and Joanne Manaster join host Rachelle Saunders in what might be our most favourite and longest-running December tradition: science book recommendations! We've brought our book mavens back to talk about their 2022 science book highlights and give us a sneak peak at what they're looking forward to reading next year. As always, we've...

Continue reading

It's that time of year when Rachelle spends far too much time finding strange and wonderful new clocks, Bethany adds more mugs to her collection, and together we spend some time embracing our inner holiday-consumer and getting excited about lots of wonderful, delightful, charming and (sometimes) weird things you might get the geeks in your...

Continue reading

We all know what a "pest" is. We can all point to creatures that are pests in our neighborhoods, those invasive hard-to-get-rid-of, disruptive animals that civilization seems to be in constant battle with. The rats, the racoons, the pigeons... But what makes them pests, really? Who decides? And what about other animals that are pests...

Continue reading

Number 2. Poop. Crap. Doodoo. It's something that a lot of people just want to flush and forget, but others want to talk about it. Do they poop too much? Not enough? Easily enough? Not only can poop tell us about ourselves and our health, though, it could also doo much more. Feces can fertilize...

Continue reading

Usually when we talk about electricity we're talking about the technology that runs the modern world, but electricity is a lot more integral to our existance than making our tech work. Without electricty our bodies don't know how to move, see or hear, and the history of how we came to understand what electricity is...

Continue reading

The word "poaching" conjures images of elephants, tigers and pangolins. But there's a multi-billion dollar industry in poaching...trees. It might seem ok at first, trees grow back right? But it's so much more complicated than that. Today we're talking with Lyndsie Bourgon about her new book Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods.

Continue reading

It seems like no one vaccine is ever enough. COVID mutates and the vaccines fall short. A new flu vaccine every year, and each one different from the last. Wouldn't it be nice if we just could get one? One flu shot and call it done? One COVID vaccine and make everything better? Well, scientists...

Continue reading

Television dramas make it seem like easy work for forensic investigators to determine when a person has died. But figuring out the time since death can be tricky for bodies that have weathered away to mere skeletons. This week we’re talking with forensic scientist and molecular biotechnologist Noemi Procopio about how proteins in bones could...

Continue reading

Sharks are fascinating, often misunderstood creatures, and many of them are threatened or endangered, and they definitely deserve our conservation effort. But conservation effort takes time, money, and focused attention: all things that are limited resources, as much as we might wish they weren't. So how do we focus our conservation efforst to make the...

Continue reading