School has been shut down. People are working from home. Now more than ever, we need to stay connected. What are you doing to keep busy? How are you feeling right now? Call our hotline and let us know: (202)681-9144. You can also email your voice recordings to [email protected]. We want to share your transmissions on this new miniseries from Nate and The Show About Science!

Tara C. Smith has studied infectious diseases for twenty years in the U.S. and other countries around the globe. She currently leads the Smith Emerging Infections Laboratory at Kent State University which focuses on the transmission and evolution of zoonotic pathogens. She joins Nate on this episode to talk about a topic that's making everyone nervous - the coronavirus.

Learn more about Tara and her work: http://www.taracsmith.com/

The South Pole Telescope (SPT) is a 10-meter diameter telescope located in Antarctica that is taking pictures of our Universe. Sasha Rahlin is an observational cosmologist and part of the team at Fermilab collecting and analyzing data from SPT. On this episode, Nate visits Fermilab to talk with Sasha about what they're photographing down at the South Pole.

Learn more about SPT and the Cosmic Microwave Background : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBJmY3bJdQ8

Music on this episode was written by Breakmaster Cyclinder and https://SoundsLikeAnEarful.com. Our theme song was written by Jeff, Dan and Theresa Brooks.

Sound effects obtained from https://www.zapsplat.com and https://freesound.org.

I've been helping to produce a new podcast called The Show About Titanic. It's hosted by my friend Edward who knows everything there is to know about the Titanic. This episode is called "Halomonas Titanicae with Bhavleen Kaur" and all of you science fans are going to love it! Bhavleen Kaur is a Senior Scientist at the Ontario Science Centre. Dr. Kaur’s doctoral research into microbial life on the wreck of the Titanic led to the discovery of a new bacterial species, Halomonas titanicae. On this episode of The Show About Titanic, she describes to Edward how she got interested in these metal-munching bacteria.

Subscribe to The Show About Titanic where ever you listen to podcasts!

Learn more about Halomonas titanicae here:

Everything that's alive has a genome. On this episode of The Show About Science, we go behind the scenes at The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History where scientists are working to preserve and catalog the DNA of life on Earth. Our guest is Vanessa González, a computational genomic scientist at The Smithsonian's Global Genome Initiative (GGI).

Learn more about Vanessa and the work GGI is doing here: https://naturalhistory.si.edu/research/global-genome-initiative/about-ggi

Listen to the latest episode of The Show About Politics & History featuring an interview with NPR's Nina Totenberg here: https://soundcloud.com/the-show-about-politics/the-supreme-court-with-nina-totenberg

What can we learn from studying poop? Who better to ask than Dr. Poop! Rachel Santymire, Ph.D., is director of Lincoln Park Zoo’s Davee Center for Epidemiology and Endocrinology, and she's earned her Dr. Poop nickname by studying the physiology of animals using biomaterials like poop! On this episode of The Show About Science, Nate visits her lab at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago to learn more.

Our podcasting pals, Andrew & Polly, have some awesome news and I'm super excited to share it with you!

Award-winning children’s music duo Andrew & Polly “go for the moon” with their most adventurous sonic endeavor yet. Their fifth album, Go for the Moon, is set for lift-off on September 27, 2019.

To celebrate, I'm sharing an interview that I recorded with them about the periodic table, elements, DNA, and RNA. It was originally aired on Ear Snacks in an episode entitled Letters! (Part II).

You can preorder Go for the Moon at http://andrewandpolly.com/shop

And make sure to subscribe to Ear Snacks where ever you listen to podcasts! https://www.earsnacks.org/

Over on my other podcast, The Show About Politics & History, we've been visiting The Sixth Floor Museum to understand what happened when President John F. Kennedy visited Dallas in 1963. Before listening to this episode, I'd recommend listening to those episodes.

Mike Haag is a forensic scientist for Forensic Science Consultants and a senior forensic scientist and supervisor at a crime laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Mike started learning about forensic science at an early age from his father, Luke. On this episode of The Show About Science, Mike explains how modern science can debunk the many conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of JFK.

You can listen to the episodes recorded at The Sixth Floor Museum here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-show-about-politics-history/id1450732353

A quick note for parents. This episode talks about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy which may not be suitable for younger ears.

Make sure to subscribe and leave a review where ever you listen to podcasts!

On this episode of The Show About Science, Nate visits the John G. Shedd Aquarium in Chicago to talk about asian carp and the risks they pose to the Great Lakes.

His guest, Eve Barrs, is an aquarist with the Shedd’s quarantine team. Eve uses her knowledge of freshwater fish husbandry to provide top-quality care for a range of native Great Lakes species that find homes at Shedd.

Listen to more episodes of The Show About Science at https://theshowaboutscience.com.

Mark Hersam is a professor of Chemistry and Materials Science Engineering at Northwestern University. He joins Nate in The Show About Science studio to talk about nanotechnology, carbon nanotubes and how a pencil and some scotch tape led to the Nobel Prize winning discovery of graphene.

This video on graphene from The Verge Science was really helpful when researching this episode: https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/10/17548362/graphene-material-breakthrough-science-technology-hype

Learn more about Mark's work here: http://www.hersam-group.northwestern.edu/