Scientists just discovered oxygen being produced without sunlight — without photosynthesis — at the bottom of the ocean. This “dark oxygen” could fundamentally change the story we tell of life on Earth and in the rest of the universe.

Guest: Alycia Smith, ecologist at Heriot-Watt University

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For decades, search and rescue teams followed an accepted playbook. Now, scientists are helping them reimagine how to find lost people.

Guests: Robert Koester, author of Lost Person Behavior, and Paul Doherty, search and rescue researcher

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With antibiotic resistance on the rise, some scientists are turning to viruses as a medical tool. But we barely know anything about the bacteria-eating viruses all around us. (First published in 2021)

Guest: Nicola Twilley, host of Gastropod

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Our bodies are teeming with viruses. But some of them, called phages, might play a really important role in keeping us healthy.

Guest: Tom Ireland, author of The Good Virus

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The FDA is about to announce whether it’s going to approve MDMA as a treatment for PTSD. Our friends at Today, Explained explore what this kind of therapy looks like, and why it’s so controversial.

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They probably didn’t roar like lions. Their real voices were likely much, much weirder. We asked scientists to help us re-create these strange, extinct sounds. (First published in 2022)

Guests: Michael Habib, professor at UCLA, Julia Clarke, professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and Jonny Crew, sound designer at Wounded Buffalo

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It’s possible that the entire observable universe is inside a black hole. All we need to do to find out is … build a gigantic particle collider around the moon.

Guest: James Beacham, particle physicist at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN

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Send this episode to the person who constantly hounds you not to slouch.

Guest: Beth Linker, author of “Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America”

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People yawn when they’re bored, right? So then why do athletes yawn before races? And why do so many animals yawn? … And why does reading this paragraph make you more likely to yawn? (Updated from 2022)

Guest: Dr. Andrew Gallup

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Can a physicist predict our messy economy by building an enormous simulation of the entire world?

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