What The If?

By Philip Shane, Matt Stanley, Gabrielle PanicciaScience

What The If? episodes

May 20, 2022 Panspermia? PANSPERMIA!
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Got an IF of your own? Want to have us consider your idea for a show topic? Send YOUR IF to us! Email us at [email protected] and let us know what's in your imagination. No idea is too small, or too big!
Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com
Keep On IFFin',
Philip, Matt & Gaby
57 min
May 13, 2022 ZAP That Cancer AWAY - with Dr. Frank KEARLY!
(Apologies for the audio in this episode.)
Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif
Got an IF of your own? Want to have us consider your idea for a show topic? Send YOUR IF to us! Email us at [email protected] and let us know what's in your imagination. No idea is too small, or too big!
Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com
Keep On IFFin',
Philip, Matt & Gaby
1 hr 1 min
May 06, 2022 POWER In The WILD with Lee Alan Dugatkin!
Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif
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Our guest today is Lee Alan Dugatkin, an animal behaviorist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science in the Department of Biology at the University of Louisville. He is the author of more than one hundred and fifty papers and the author or coauthor of many books, including “The Altruism Equation: Seven Scientists Search for the Origins of Goodness.”
His newest book is “Power in the Wild: The Subtle and Not-So-Subtle Ways Animals Strive for Control over Others”, learn more here: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo127023354.html
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Got an IF of your own? Want to have us consider your idea for a show topic? Send YOUR IF to us! Email us at [email protected] and let us know what's in your imagination. No idea is too small, or too big!
Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com
Keep On IFFin',
Philip, Matt & Gaby
45 min
April 29, 2022 How To REBOOT Your Civilization
Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif
Got an IF of your own? Want to have us consider your idea for a show topic? Send YOUR IF to us! Email us at [email protected] and let us know what's in your imagination. No idea is too small, or too big!
Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com
Keep On IFFin',
Philip, Matt & Gaby
55 min
April 22, 2022 Summiting On MARS with Chris Carberry!
Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif
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What the IF your next awesome science conference were taking place... on MARS? How would you pack? When would you have to book your tickets? What's the cocktail party like? Important questions that boil the imagination like a hot day on the red planet!
Our fabulous guest this week is Chris Carberry, who is leading a real conference of amazing proportions here on Earth that's coming up soon: The HUMAN TO MARS SUMMIT in Washington, DC. Visit https://www.exploremars.org/summit/ to get the exciting details!
Chris Carberry is the CEO and co-founder of Explore Mars, Inc. (Explore Mars), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit space advocacy organization that was created to advance the goal of sending humans to Mars by the mid-2030s. Carberry is a well-respected expert and influential director of strategic alliances in the space community as well as with non-traditional organizations.
Carberry has presented oral (and written) testimony to both the United States Senate as well as the United States House of Representatives and has been active in all levels of policy engagement with both the Executive and Legislative branches of government.
In recent years, he has overseen Explore Mars’ annual Humans to Mars Summit, the largest annual conference focused on sending humans to Mars. He has also spearheaded dozens of programs including the Mars Innovation Forum, the annual Community Workshops for the Achievability and Sustainability of Human Exploration of Mars series, the AR/VR and Space workshop series, the ISS and Mars Conference in Washington, D.C. and in Strasbourg, France, and the Women and Mars Conference in Washington, D.C. He has also conducted programs overseas, in such countries as the United Arab Emirates, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Carberry is also the creator, and one of the senior editors, of the annual publication known as the Humans to Mars Report that was highlighted in the NASA Transition Authorization Act of 2017. In 2013, Carberry was awarded a NASA Group Achievement award.
Carberry is the author of over 100 articles and Op-Ed pieces that have appeared in such publications as USA Today, US News and World Report, Huffington Post, The Washington Post, San Jose Mercury Times, Foxnews.com, Houston Chronicle, The Hill, The Telegram (UK), The Boston Herald and many other publications. He has been featured in over 100 national and international television, radio programs and podcasts such as NBC Nightly News, Fox News, CNN, BBC World, and NPR and is frequently asked for commentary from print news outlets around the world.
Prior to joining Explore Mars, Carberry served as Executive Director of The Mars Society. He also played a leadership role in congressional outreach events such as the 2006-2020 Space Exploration Alliance Legislative Blitz and has coordinated numerous briefing panels and other events on Capitol Hill over the past two decades. Carberry serves on the Board of Advisors for iGiant and Mars World Enterprises, and is a former member of the Board of Directors of the National Space Society.
Carberry is the author of the 2019 book, Alcohol in Space: Past, Present and Future, and the upcoming book, The Music of Space (to be released in 2022). Both volumes are being adapted into documentary films.
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Got an IF of your own? Want to have us consider your idea for a show topic? Send YOUR IF to us! Email us at [email protected] and let us know what's in your imagination. No idea is too small, or too big!
Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com
Keep On IFFin',
Philip, Matt & Gaby
1 hr 2 min
April 15, 2022 Gecko STICKY Power!
Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif
Got an IF of your own? Want to have us consider your idea for a show topic? Send YOUR IF to us! Email us at [email protected] and let us know what's in your imagination. No idea is too small, or too big!
Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com
Keep On IFFin',
Philip, Matt & Gaby
58 min
April 08, 2022 Quantum STEAMPUNK - With Theoretical Physicist Nicole Yunger Halpern!
Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif
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Our guest this week is the time traveling, super imaginative theoretical physicist Nicole Yunger Halpern with an explosive, super mind-bending, steam train chugging, atom smashing idea ripped straight from her new book: QUANTUM STEAMPUNK.
Nicole asks, What the IF... The Victorians had become proficient in quantum science and used it in their technology?
Get your cosplay game in full gear, throw on your steampipe top hat and your aviator goggles and let's find out what happens when steam and PUNK collide... for SCIENCE!
Follow Nicole on Twitter @nicoleyh11
And check out her awesome book at https://quantumsteampunk.umiacs.io/book/
Nicole Yunger Halpern is a Fellow of the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science (QuICS), a theoretical physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland.
Nicole earned her Bachelors at Dartmouth College, where she graduated as a co-valedictorian of her class. As a Perimeter Scholars International (PSI) student, she completed her master’s at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Nicole earned her physics PhD under John Preskill’s auspices at the Caltech. Her PhD dissertation won the international Ilya Prigogine Prize for a thermodynamics PhD thesis. As an ITAMP Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard, she received the International Quantum Technology Emerging Researcher Award.
Nicole is the author of the book [Quantum Steampunk: The Physics of Yesterday’s Tomorrow](https://quantumsteampunk.umiacs.io/book/). She has also written over 100 monthly articles for [Quantum Frontiers](https://quantumfrontiers.com/author/nyungerhalpern/), the blog of Caltech’s Institute for Quantum Information and Matter.
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Got an IF of your own? Want to have us consider your idea for a show topic? Send YOUR IF to us! Email us at [email protected] and let us know what's in your imagination. No idea is too small, or too big!
Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com
Keep On IFFin',
Philip, Matt & Gaby
55 min
April 01, 2022 The BBC Spaghetti Trees!
We celebrate APRIL FOOLS DAY by taking on one of the greatest news pranks ever, The BBC Spaghetti Tree hoax. From jokes to facts... grab your basket and let's get stuffed with delicious spaghetti science!!!
"BBC: Spaghetti Harvest in Ticino" -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU -- is a famous 3-minute hoax report broadcast on April Fools' Day 1957 by the BBC current affairs program Panorama. It told a tale of a family in southern Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from the fictitious spaghetti tree, broadcast at a time when this Italian dish was not widely eaten in the UK and some Britons were unaware that spaghetti is a pasta made from wheat flour and water. Hundreds of viewers phoned into the BBC, either to say the story was not true, or wondering about it, with some even asking how to grow their own spaghetti trees. Decades later CNN called this broadcast "the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled." -- from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti-tree_hoax
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Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif
Got an IF of your own? Want to have us consider your idea for a show topic? Send YOUR IF to us! Email us at [email protected] and let us know what's in your imagination. No idea is too small, or too big!
Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com
Keep On IFFin',
Philip, Matt & Gaby
50 min
March 25, 2022 Science Class in... Ancient Babylon!
Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif
Got an IF of your own? Want to have us consider your idea for a show topic? Send YOUR IF to us! Email us at [email protected] and let us know what's in your imagination. No idea is too small, or too big!
Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com
Keep On IFFin',
Philip, Matt & Gaby
57 min
March 18, 2022 The Mechanics of LUCK
Got an IF of your own? Want to have us consider your idea for a show topic? Send YOUR IF to us! Email us at [email protected] and let us know what's in your imagination. No idea is too small, or too big!
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Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com
Keep On IFFin',
Philip, Matt & Gaby
52 min

About What The If?

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Learn how to think like EINSTEIN! Every week we learn science running imaginative thought experiments. Our brilliant guests are some of the world’s greatest science fiction writers, scientists &…