Science for the People
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Science for the People
Science for the People is a long-format interview podcast that explores the connections between science, popular culture, history, and public policy, to help listeners understand the evidence and arguments behind what's in the news and on the shelves. Our hosts sit down with science researchers, wri...
Episode të Fundit
300 episode
#642 The Last Episode
Join the team of Science for the People for one last episode, where we interview... ourselves. We talk about our time as Skeptically Speaking and Scie...
#641 The Last Nerd Gift Guide
For the last time, Bethany and Rachelle skip gleefully across the world wide web, plucking nerdy objects out of obscurity to shine a spotlight on in h...
#640 The Last Science Book Club
For the last time, Joanne Manaster and John Dupuis talk us through their favourite science reads from the last year, and add a little "time travel" se...
#639 The One About Periods
Period. Menstruation. For something that roughly half the human population does, we sure don't talk about it much. But it's a fascinating biological p...
#638 Do you feel love? What about ecstasy?
If you're plugged in to science news (and you, our listeners, definitely are) then you know that psychedelics like ketamine and LSD are having a momen...
#637 A special announcement
In the beginning, way, way back in 2008, this podcast was just a bunch of Canadians wanting to talk about science and skepticism. Nearly 15 years late...
#636 Life on an unruly planet
We might say climate change is coming for us. But really, it's here. Fires are worse in hotter, drier conditions. Hurricanes are powered up supersoaki...
#635 Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet
In the book Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet, journalist Ben Goldfarb details how roads have transformed our world. On...
#634 Back to the future
We all know that climate change is coming for us. It's already here. But it's really, really hard to change people's actions, especially when those ac...
#633 An Ice History
Ice is one of those invisible little gears of the modern, westernized world. We don't notice it when we have it, and as soon as we can't get it we fin...
#632 We are what we eat
You are what you eat, right? Well then, who were the ancient Romans, and who were the people they colonized? And who are we? And why do we eat so much...
#631 Tenacious Beasts
In his book Tenacious Beasts, philosopher and writer Christopher Preston explores creature comebacks. Some of these stories highlight the evolutionary...
#630 The Jewel Box
A lot of us learned basic ecology in primary school. Maybe we took a biology class in high school or secondary school and dug in a little more. We use...
#629 How birds go the distance
Birds carry out some of the most amazing feats of athleticism in the world. Hummingbirds cross the entire Gulf of Mexico, their tiny wings beating con...
#628 Brave the Wild River
In 1938, two botanists, Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter, made an ambitious voyage down the Colorado River driven by the desire to chronicle the plant li...
#627 Ancient Migrations
Humans are a roaming species. We've been traveling from continent to continent since our very earliest evolution. In fact, we've been doing it even be...
#626 Our Friend, the Wasp
Is there an insect more universally despised than the wasp? What have they done to incur so much of our ire? No one likes them. Well... almost no one....
#625 This one really is about aliens
Do you believe there's something Out There? What do our ideas of aliens say about what life is, how life could look and act? And what does it say abou...
#624 The Devil’s Element
With fertilizers that supply phosphorus–what Asimov called “life’s bottleneck”– people broke the circle of life. Dan Egan’s new book The Devil’s Eleme...
#623 Peopling the Americas
Thousands of years ago, people crossed a land bridge from Siberia to Western Alaska and dispersed southward into what we now call the Americas. The st...
#622 What's wrong Colonel Sanders? Feeling chicken?
Give a cluck about chickens. The most popular meat actually has a 3,500 year history of cockfighting, backyard keeping, incubation invention, and a lo...
#621 Of memoir and sea creatures
Sea creatures do so many things that astound us. They regrow and regenerate, they incubate eggs for years without ever eating a morsel. They can be on...
#620 The Matter of Everything
In the past 120 years, physicists have revamped our understanding of matter — of everything that makes up the world. This week on the show, particle p...
#619 Breathless
In January 2020 a race began to identify, control, and understand a novel coronavirus that quickly spread around the world creating a global pandemic....
#618 This is your brain on music
Humans are musical. Really, really musical. But why? What is it for, how did it come about, and what do we get from it? Let's get between the science...
#617 Emotional Ignorance
On this week’s show, we’re getting emotional. Our guest, neuroscientist Dean Burnett, talks about his new book Emotional Ignorance. He shares how the...
#616 The one about sex
Let's talk about sex, baby. Let's talk about birds and bees. Let's talk about all the slime molds and the algae that can be, let's talk about sex. Thi...
#615 2022 Science Book Haul
John Dupuis and Joanne Manaster join host Rachelle Saunders in what might be our most favourite and longest-running December tradition: science book r...
#614 Clocks, Mugs and Other Nerdy Gift Ideas
It's that time of year when Rachelle spends far too much time finding strange and wonderful new clocks, Bethany adds more mugs to her collection, and...
#613 Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains
We all know what a "pest" is. We can all point to creatures that are pests in our neighborhoods, those invasive hard-to-get-rid-of, disruptive animals...
#612 The Poopisode
Number 2. Poop. Crap. Doodoo. It's something that a lot of people just want to flush and forget, but others want to talk about it. Do they poop too mu...
#611 Spark: The Life of Electricity and the Electricity of Life
Usually when we talk about electricity we're talking about the technology that runs the modern world, but electricity is a lot more integral to our ex...
#610 Thieving Trees
The word "poaching" conjures images of elephants, tigers and pangolins. But there's a multi-billion dollar industry in poaching...trees. It might seem...
#609 A world of universal vaccines
It seems like no one vaccine is ever enough. COVID mutates and the vaccines fall short. A new flu vaccine every year, and each one different from the...
#608 Bone Proteins and Body Farms
Television dramas make it seem like easy work for forensic investigators to determine when a person has died. But figuring out the time since death ca...
#607 Shark Matters
Sharks are fascinating, often misunderstood creatures, and many of them are threatened or endangered, and they definitely deserve our conservation eff...
#606 Carte Blanche: The Erosion of Medical Consent
Even the luckiest and healthiest of us will interact with the medical systems we live in eventually, and navigating these systems can be frustrating,...
#605 Designing wilderness
There's no doubt that we humans have done some pretty awful things to our landscapes. Draining swamps, cutting down forests, shooting almost all the b...
#604 Sticky: The Secret Science of Surfaces
This week we’re zooming in on surfaces, where lots of action happens as things slip, grip, slide, and more. Our guest Laurie Winkless, author of the b...
#603 Remaking the face
In 2022 it seems surgery can perform miracles. Plastic surgery in particular can reshape noses, jaws, and even transplant entire faces. But not so lon...