Probably Science

Star of Doctor Who and the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy Karen Gillan (twitter.com/KarenGillan2) joins Matt, Andy and Jesse this week to talk about: Being on the cusp of superstardom! Andy and Jesse's rat problem! Growing up as a Scottish serf! The parade of bad accents! Kaisers of the Cosmos! Dealing with nerdy fans! Criticizing the physics of the movie Gravity! Closed captioning for grandparents! Alfred Nobel's personal ad! Karen's Carmina Burana funeral plans! This year's Nobel Prize winners! What's your go-to charity? Karen's freshly shaven head! Fruit bat fellatio! Androgen-insensitive supermodels! Parents tracking your career via Google! Metallic 3D printing! Karen's Twitter nemesis!

This week's episode comes to you from the second annual LA Podcast Festival (lapodfest.com), with Matt and Andy welcoming Rhys Darby of Flight of the Conchords and Brandon Fibbs of New Race For Space and the reboot of Cosmos, to discuss: An explanation of winglets! Rhys's knowledge of Morse Code! The technological prowess of the New Zealand Army! The Cryptid Factor podcast! Sea serpents: The guardians of Atlantis! Rhys Darby: Sasquatch Whisperer! The upcoming return of Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson! Elon Musk's Mars plans! Space sex! Astronaut reality shows! Harvesting Helium-3 from the moon! Space lawyers! Giving birth in space! New Zealand's lack of awesome Australian animals! The intricacies of the Welsh language! Rhys sells the audience some raffle tickets!

Matt, Andy and Jesse welcome podcasting pioneers Keith Malley and Chemda of Keith and The Girl fame to the show this week, covering a variety of topics including: Brooks's debut performance on SNL! The LA Podcast Festival! The wild west days of podcasting! Fan tattoos! Peter McGraw's upcoming Humor Code book! Estranged parents! What is clean comedy? The perfect musical ending to Breaking Bad! Having an intern clean the DNA off of your keyboard! Messing up the scientific studies of KATG! The hellscape that is Yahoo Answers! Monkeys that whisper! The government shutdown! Matt's perpetually happy face! The progression of British street youth! Jesse's undercover genius! Tomato/potato hybrids! The new ProbSci logo courtesy of Sally Grosart! Mastering self-pleasure in 10,000 hours! Jesse helps Stu buy a computer! Post-menopausal babies! Dancing with Buzz Aldrin and Bill Nye! The Apollo 11 contingency speech!

It's sports week here at Probably Science HQ, as Matt and Andy welcome to the show Sports Illustrated journalist and author of The Sports Gene David Epstein, as well as comedian Paul Morrissey, who played and coached college basketball, to dig into the meaty topics that David's excellent books discusses, including: Major league hitters who can't touch a 60mph softball! Being a short, white hustler at Venice Beach pickup basketball games! The excellence of Jamaican sprinters and Kalenjin distance runners! Being compared to Jimmy the Greek! What other sports could Lebron James have played? The anatomy of great pitchers! Getting critiqued by Malcolm Gladwell! Debunking the 10,000 hour rule! The genetics of wanting to train hard! The link between elite athletes and ADHD! The dangers of all-male stock trading! Andy's swimming career! The heart condition that claims the lives of many athletes! David's training advice for Matt!

Matt, Andy and Jesse welcome paleontology PhD candidate Kathleen Ritterbush to the show this week to discuss: Being the third man on The Dating Game! Roommate update: Stu's birthday is 9/11! Falling for the testicle-biting fish hoax! PhD superstitions and paperwork! Using fossils to determine skin and hair color! Teaching science to a boatload of evangelical kids! Thinking dinosaurs and humans coexisted! Paleontologists with Indiana Jones props! Kathleen comes bearing gifts of fossils! How fossils form! Chambered nautilus: The first submarine? The near-extinction of the amenites! What do we learn about marine ecology from mass extinctions? Studying the hydrodynamics of shells! Figuring out if you're looking at the fossil of a sponge! The bad science in M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening! Jesse gets compared to a schlubby squid! Cephalopod cosplay! Getting your wedding ring made out of snail fossils!

Matt and Andy are back together this week, welcoming British writer/comedian Humphrey Ker (twitter.com/thehumphreyker) and American writer/comedian Bryan Cook (twitter.com/bryancooking) on the program to discuss: Going on strike against Joan Rivers! Fallacious labor dispute arguments! The hilarious Competitive Erotic Fan Fiction show! Moving someone else's hand with your mind! Swedish fish -- not the candy ones, the testicle-biting ones! The Sharknado finale! Asylum movies! Andy's summer adventures with fleas and nearly dead roommates! Being able to listen to and/or tune out your spouse's voice! The curse of having a posh accent! British comedians learning to ski! Attributing Hitler quotes to Taylor Swift! The new Kit Kat-named Android OS! American Gladiators! A lengthy explanation of pantomimes!

Matt's still out of the country, but luckily he was able to record a remote episode with the very funny Nick Doody (twitter.com/nickdoody), his co-writer on the BBC Radio show Bigipedia. We'll be back soon with more new episodes!

Matt's been in the UK and Andy's been in Portland, so rather than leave the audience twisting in the wind for a few weeks, they decided to record some remote bonus interviews. These weren't supposed to be very science-y, but in the course of talking with Jesse Case, Dr. Richard Flower, Dr. Anna Collu, Jeff Mounts and Emily Mounts, the discussions actually ended up having a fair amount of legitimate science, and a bit of history as well. Keep your standards low, and enjoy!

Hank Thompson is a comedian and producer at The Young Turks (youtube.com/TYTComedy), and his brother Dr. Chris Thompson is a post-doctoral fellow at Scripps Research Institute in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience. This powerful comedy/science sibling duo join Matt and Andy this week to discuss: Sibling rivalry! Vocal communication in animals! Learned vocalization! Dolphins who know their own names! Inverted commas! Everything you ever wanted to know about songbirds! Chicago ladies! 3D syrinx models! Burning out parts of bird brains! Terrible Hunger Games writing! Taxi drivers' enlarged hippocampi! Axons, neurons, dendrites and synapses! The effect of Prozac on birds' songs! Getting harrassed by amateur birders! Albino African clawed frogs! Inheriting the chess team captain crown! Andy's upcoming 1,000-mile road trip with a Belgian stranger! The Jimmy Dore Show on TYT Comedy!

Theoretical cosmologist at Caltech, author and blogger Dr. Sean M. Carroll invited Matt and Andy to his Pasadena office this week to lend some insight into his areas of expertise, including: Being the house cosmologist on a paleontologogical dig! Dark matter! Defying what you thought you knew about the conservation of energy! The fixed density of dark energy! What happens a quadrillion years from now! Boltzmann brains! You might not have existed before this very instant! The arrow of time! Entropy! The second law of thermodynamics! We are the creamy tendrils in a universal cup of coffee! Consulting on movies like Thor and Tron: Legacy! Imposing boundaries on superheroes! Another blow to new age-y quantum BS! Multiple universes!