The Show About Science

It's the hottest day of the year, and deep underground, a mysterious countdown has finally hit zero. After years of silence, millions of cicadas are emerging from the earth, ready to take the stage in a...

In this episode of The Show About Science, Nate unearths the surprising history of the Kentucky Coffee Trees growing in his backyard and quickly becomes obsessed with germinating their seeds. This obsession leads him to...

Bacteriophages, also known as ‘phages,’ are the most common lifeform on the planet. They are constantly hunting for bacteria to infect and kill. What if we could harness these tiny microbes to help us in our fight...

In this episode of The Show About Science, Nate heads to the banks of the Chicago River to meet up with Melissa Pierce, PhD, the Technical Program Director at Current, a nonprofit water innovation hub. Together, they...

What it would really entail to conquer the relentless Martian elements, engineer a thriving, self-reliant biosphere, and craft life-preserving abodes within the alien realms of lava tubes? Zach Weinersmith is the...

What happens when 21 kids sue the U.S. government for a dream of a world without climate change? On this episode of The Show About Science , Nate interviews Elizabeth Rusch about the kids who are working to make that...

The platypus is a fascinating animal that has perplexed generations of scientists. Now researchers are studying the platypus on the molecular level, and it's just as surprising. Frank Grützner is a professor of genetics...

Dr. Kimberly Arcand is a Visualization and Emerging Technology Scientist at NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard, and Smithsonian. In this episode of The Show About Science, Nate and...

Can sound help us understand the complex patterns in our universe? This question leads Nate to Symbolic Sound in Champaign, Illinois, where composer Carla Scaletti guides him on a journey where sound, music, and data...

Brian Selznick is an illustrator and author best known for his books The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Wonderstruck, and The Marvels and Kaleidoscope. Brian joins Nate on this episode of The Show About Science to talk about...

The CZ Biohub’s inspiring story began when Priscilla Chan asked Stephen Quake a seemingly impossible question: “Is it possible to cure, prevent, and manage disease in our children’s lifetime?”. In 2016, the Chan...

On the third installment of our CZ Biohub series, we visit a lab nicknamed "Le Petit Hotel de Poisson" (The Tiny Fish Hotel) where scientists are using zebrafish as a model organism to study human development. Along the...

This is the second episode of our four part series focused on the CZ Biohub in San Francisco where scientists are working to cure, prevent, or manage disease by the end of the century. In this episode, we meet...

Over the next 4 episodes, we're going to take you on a tour of the CZ Biohub in San Francisco where scientists are working to cure, prevent, or manage disease by the end of the century. Every year, 400,000 people die of...

We're revisiting one of our favorite episodes of The Show About Science from 2015. Back when Nate was 5 years old, he interviewed Santa Claus about the science behind his workshop and what happens when kids send...