SciShow Tangents

Some small, magical corner of your heart wants dragons to be real, right? Well... sorry. They’re not. But this week, we wanted to celebrate some science-adjacent to dragons!

Mucus grosses people out. Whether it’s coming out of your nose or slime oozing from an animal, it’s not really a pleasant substance. But scientifically, mucus is super cool—it can be used for protection, hunting, lubrication, or plain old stickiness.

At some point, we’ve all probably looked up at birds and wished we could fly. And some curious people took that wish and did science! From the biology of flying animals to machines that help humans take to the skies, this week, we’re exploring the science of flight.

Are you one of those people who doesn’t feel awake until you have caffeine coursing through your bloodstream? Well, you can choose to ingest some chemical stimulants, but they’re also something your body makes! Just think about the adrenaline rush before a public speech.

This week, our producer Caitlin Hofmeister is joining the pod to talk about the Sun, and lending her expertise as a host of the YouTube channel SciShow Space.

We’ve all heard about “The Algorithms” that affect our lives, making decisions for and about us. And artificial intelligence systems are recommending podcasts, picking out targeted ads, and playing games against humans every single day. This week, we’re going to skim the surface of AI and chat about everything from Siri to personality prediction software.

Do you ever just wonder, “are the bees doing okay?” They’re so important to our food industry and native ecosystems, and every couple of years it seems like something horribly bad is happening to them. So this week, we’re taking a look at the fascinating lives and deaths of bees!

For our very first live show at PodCon 2, we were joined by Elah Feder, the co-host and producer of the podcast Undiscovered! Podcasting on a stage with a live audience meant we really had to bring our A-game, so we swapped stories of famous actors, politicians, and other celebrities who also dabbled in science.

When can you start calling a rodent “giant?” When it’s twice the average size of its species? When you’re not grossed out by it? When it could be a mascot for a family fun center? We don’t really have a precise answer to that… but this week, we’re exploring the science of big ol’ rodents!

If you think about it, we’re all time travelers moving forward at one second per second… right? This week, we try really hard to define time, get sort of existential about it, and then talk about the science of timekeeping, from circadian rhythms to weird mechanical clocks.