This is the first installment in the Dr. Starkid astrobiology series, adapted from the astrobiology course Dr. Dakotah Tyler taught at UCLA and Pomona College.

Expect to learn what astrobiology actually means, why sci-fi aliens are usually too human, why UFO claims require careful assumptions, and why defining life is harder than it sounds. We cover viruses, dormant microbes, ideas as information systems, chemical possibility, life as a physical process, habitability, synthetic life, biosignatures, and why Earth life is the only place we can honestly start.

Hosted by Dr. Dakotah Tyler.

Lead with curiosity.

Dr. Dakotah Tyler sits down with Dr. Suh for a wide-ranging conversation on biomedical engineering, organs on chips, how biology behaves in space, stem cells, evolution, and human identity.

They talk about microgravity and aging, space travel, induced pluripotent stem cells, tissue engineering, animal research ethics, body odor genetics, microplastics, beauty standards, the manosphere, and what it means to deconstruct your sense of self.

Lead with curiosity.

What would alien astronomers see if they pointed an impossible telescope at Earth from millions of light-years away?

This episode uses that thought experiment to explain light travel time, relativity, time dilation, the Andromeda paradox, and the strange idea that there may be no single universal “now.” We also get into the block universe, why GPS depends on relativity, and what all of this might mean for how we think about the future.

Hosted by Dr. Dakotah Tyler.

Lead with curiosity.

This episode starts with the story behind the science: how a football injury, a lost sense of identity, and a Cosmos documentary helped send me toward astronomy and exoplanet research.

From there, we get into what my dissertation was actually about: atmospheric mass loss for close-in exoplanets. That means planets getting blasted by radiation from their stars, losing gas over time, and sometimes leaving behind clues we can detect from Earth. We talk Mars, Venus, hot Jupiters, helium escape, WASP-69b, the radius gap, young planets, and why understanding atmospheres matters for the search for life.

Lead with curiosity.

How did we go from knowing a handful of planets in our own solar system to confirming thousands of worlds around other stars?

This episode traces the story of exoplanets, from ancient “wanderers” in the night sky to the modern methods astronomers use to detect worlds we usually can’t see directly. We talk Galileo, Jupiter’s moons, hot Jupiters, pulsar planets, lava worlds, water worlds, rogue planets, Planet 9, and why the universe keeps handing us planets we never expected.

Hosted by Dr. Dakotah Tyler.

Lead with curiosity.