Big Picture Science
Episodes
The Best Things in Life are Tree(s)
15 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
While humans were leaving the Stone Age and entering the Bronze, some Bristlecone pine trees grew from seeds to sprouts. They’ve been growing ever s...
A Real Gas
08 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Just because something is invisible doesn’t mean it isn’t there. We can’t see gases in our atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide, oxygen, and nitro...
Amazing Amazonia
01 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Amazon is often described as an ecosystem under dire threat due to climate change and deliberate deforestation. Yet there is still considerable ho...
Flu the Coop
24 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The worry about whether H5N1 will trigger a human pandemic has concealed a startling reality. Avian influenza has already taken an enormous toll on th...
Skeptic Check: String Theory
17 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The idea that the universe is made of tiny vibrating strings was once the science theory du jour. String theory promised to unite the disparate theori...
Solar Good
10 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Brazil, leaders from across the globe are gathering for COP30, the premier climate summit in the world. For the first time, the U.S. is sitting it ...
Katrina and the River
03 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“The Mississippi River will always have its own way; no engineering skill can persuade it to do otherwise,” said Mark Twain. In this, our final ep...
The Decomposers
27 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What happens to us after we die is as much a question for anthropology and ecology as it is for theology. Death and decay are not comfortable subjec...
Shipwrecks
20 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Shipwrecks are scenes of tragedy, but they are also bits of history frozen in time that can provide insights into events and ideas from long ago. That...
Mad About Mars
13 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Long before Orson Welles provoked a panic with his 1938 radio broadcast of a Martian invasion in War of the Worlds, we were fascinated with the possib...
Skeptic Check: Health Fads
06 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The tiny bean-shaped structures in your cells – mitochondria – are little powerhouses. Recent research suggests they may unlock overall good healt...
Not Just a Phage
29 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We’re hurtling towards a post-antibiotic world, as the overuse of antibiotics has given rise to dangerous drug-resistant bacteria. Can we fight back...
Spare (Body) Parts
22 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Strapped-on brass noses, frog skin grafts, human organs grown in pigs: The world of replaceable body parts is both amazing and a bit unsettling. But w...
Some Chemicals are Forever
15 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As their name suggests, “forever chemicals” have extraordinary staying power. When these nearly indestructible compounds find their way into our s...
Animal Alphabets
08 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Have scientists discovered an alphabet in whale calls? As researchers try to decipher the series of clicks made by sperm whales, we ask whether these ...
Aliens Now
01 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We are closer than ever to finding aliens according to astrophysicist Adam Frank. He isn’t alone in his optimism. Over the last two decades, the too...
Don't Lighten Up
25 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A canopy of stars in the night sky is more than breathtaking. Starlight is also an important tool that astronomers use to study our universe. But the ...
Katrina and the River
18 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“The Mississippi River will always have its own way; no engineering skill can persuade it to do otherwise,” said Mark Twain. In this, our final ep...
Beyond the Standard Model
11 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ever heard of a beauty quark? How about a glueball? Physics is full of weird particles that leave many of us scratching our heads. But these tiny part...
Scoping Out the Universe
04 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Telescopes are like light buckets. The bigger the telescope, the more light collected for astronomers to observe. With recent advances in technology, ...
Leave it to Beavers
28 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
They are known for holding branches in their paws and gnawing on them like corn cobs. They build lodges and dams which occasionally flood roads. Cute,...
The Play's the Thing
21 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Has children’s play become too safe? Research suggests that efforts to prioritize safety harms children’s mental and physical development during p...
Nuts and Bolts
14 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How frequently do you think about fasteners like screws and bolts? Probably not very often. But some of them a storied history, dating back to Egypt i...
Coffee of the Future
07 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Drinking a cup of coffee is how billions of people wake up every morning. But climate change is threatening this popular beverage. Over 60% of the wor...
What Moves Us
30 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What physical activity gives you joy? Whether it’s walking, running, dancing or swimming, your body evolved to do it. We are made for movement. But ...
The Rights of Rivers
23 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Healthy rivers and riparian ecosystems are teaming with life, but should rivers themselves be considered alive? The question is central to the growing...
Lithium Valley
16 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The discovery of a massive amount of lithium under the Salton Sea could make the U.S. lithium independent. The metal is key for batteries in electric ...
Alien Says What?
09 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Whales are aliens on Earth; intelligent beings who have skills for complex problem-solving and their own language. Now in what’s being called a brea...
Hurricane Comms
02 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A big challenge during a hurricane or other disaster is keeping lines of communication open when the power goes out. In this episode, the second in ou...
Hurricane Season
26 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the twenty years since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, powerful hurricanes such as Sandy, Irma, Maria and Helene have caused immense p...
Touching a Nerve
19 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Some call it your sixth sense. You refer to it when you have a “gut feeling.” With a vast fiber network running throughout your body, the vagus ne...
NASA Under the Axe
12 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The White House has proposed unprecedented cuts to NASA’s budget - the largest in the agency’s history. If approved, this withdrawal of funding wo...
The Wrong Stuff
05 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
By one estimate the average American home has 300,000 objects. Yet our ancient ancestors had no more than what they could carry with them. How did we ...
Inside Planets
28 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
With planets and moons, it’s what’s inside that counts. If we want to understand surface features, like volcanoes, or their history, such as how t...
Tech in Check
21 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Worried that AI will replace you? It may not seem like the Hollywood writers’ strike has anything in common with the Luddite rebellion in England in...
Skeptic Check: Cryptids
14 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Bigfoot could get official status if proposed legislation passes making it the state cryptid of California. If nothing else, the effort shows that fas...
Vroom!
07 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Self-driving cars, once a thing of science fiction, have become a reality in a handful of cities across the country. As our vehicles gain autonomy, th...
Skeptic Check: Asteroid Mining
31 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Asteroids are rich in precious metals and other valuable resources. But mining them presents considerable challenges. We discuss these, and consider h...
Disappearing Data
24 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Firing federal workers and freezing grants has upended research institutions, prompting uncertainty about their futures. We look at the real-world imp...
Amazing Arctic
17 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What’s it like to live on a block of ice, especially when it thaws? An environment writer shares his forty-year experience in the Arctic, including ...
Preventable
10 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Two infectious diseases that we’ve been able to prevent for a half-century are re-emerging. One of the most contagious viruses in the world, measles...
Your Mind on Movies
03 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
By one estimate we spend a fifth of our lives watching movies or TV. In fact, we consume entertainment almost as habitually as we eat or sleep, activi...
The Latest Buzz
24 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Is your windshield accumulating less bug splatter? Insects, the most numerous animals on Earth, are becoming scarcer, and that’s not good news. They...
Skeptic Check: Into the DeepSeek
17 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When the Chinese developer of DeepSeek released its model R1, a rift opened up in Silicon Valley. The company, a relatively unknown player, appeared t...
Chasing an Asteroid
10 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Everyone knows that a big rock wiped out the dinosaurs. But the danger from an asteroid hitting Earth is not limited to ancient history. To deal with ...
Coming to Our Animal Senses
03 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Animals experience the world differently. There are insects that can see ultraviolet light, while some snakes can hunt in the dark thanks to their abi...
Skeptic Check: Drone Panic Revisited
31 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We have an update to our recent episode, Skeptic Check: Drone Panic. If you remember, our guest astronomer Andrew Franknoi recalled the story of Jimm...
Skeptic Check: Drone Panic
27 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When several mysterious objects were spotted flying over New Jersey, their unknown identity led to frightening rumors, and triggered frustration and a...
The Best Things in Life are Tree(s)
20 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
While humans were leaving the Stone Age and entering the Bronze, some Bristlecone pine trees grew from seeds to sprouts. They’ve been growing ever s...
The Ocean's Genome
13 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
After helping to sequence the human genome more than twenty years ago, biochemist Craig Venter seemed to recede from the public eye. But he hadn’t r...
Night Flight
06 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Owls are both the most accessible and elusive of birds. Every child can recognize one, but you’ll be lucky to spot an owl in a tree, even if you’r...
Skeptic Check: Naomi Klein
30 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Our information age is increasingly the disinformation age. The spread of lies and conspiracy theories has created competing experiences of reality. F...
Extraordinary Ordinary Objects*
23 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“To live is to count and to count is to calculate.” But before we plugged in the computer to express this ethos, we pulled out the pocket calcula...
Spotlight on SETI ep 4: Chenoa Tremblay
21 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The SETI Institute’s search for alien biosignatures and technosignatures depends on radio telescopes. You may have seen the stunning photos of massi...
2024: Our Space Odyssey
16 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This year has been a spectacular one for celestial phenomena. The northern lights delighted in unexpected ways while a total solar eclipse cast a shad...
A Real Gas
09 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Just because something is invisible doesn’t mean it isn’t there. We can’t see gases in our atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide, oxygen, and nitro...
Going Multicellular
02 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine life without animals, trees, and fungi. The world would look very different. But while the first life was surely single-celled, we don’t kno...
Skeptic Check: Near Death Experiences
25 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Near death experiences can be profound and even life changing. People describe seeing bright lights, staring into the abyss, or meeting dead relatives...
Spotlight on SETI ep 3: Pascal Lee
21 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How do we know where to look for life on other planets? SETI scientists use analog sites on Earth, not only to study how life has evolved here, but t...
Beyond the Periodic Table
18 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
You interact with about two-thirds of the elements of the periodic table every day. Some, like carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen, make up our bodies and th...
Amazing Amazonia
11 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Amazon is often described as an ecosystem under dire threat due to climate change and deliberate deforestation. Yet there is still considerable ho...
Fuhgeddaboudit**
04 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A thousand years ago, most people didn’t own a single book. The only way to access knowledge was to consult their memory. But technology – from ...
How Hot is Too Hot?*
28 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Extreme heat is taking its toll on the natural world. We use words like “heat domes” and “freakish” to describe our everyday existence. These ...
Platypus Crazy*
21 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
They look like a cross between a beaver and a duck, and they all live Down Under. The platypus may lay eggs, but is actually a distant mammalian cousi...
Spotlight on SETI ep 2: Nathalie Cabrol
17 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is life? Even as the search for life in the universe evolves, surprisingly, there is no consensus on what life is. We must consider hunting for l...
Skeptic Check: String Theory
14 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The idea that the universe is made of tiny vibrating strings was once the science theory du jour. String theory promised to unite the disparate theor...
We'll Always Have Parasites
07 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine tapeworms longer than the height of an adult human. Or microbes that turn their hosts into zombies. If the revulsion they induce doesn’t do...
Measure For Measure
30 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Whether in miles or pounds, meters or kilograms, we take daily measure out our lives. But how did these units ever come to be, and why do we want to c...
Skeptic Check: Cell Phone Bans
23 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As middle and high schools across the country implement new cell phone bans, we consider what drove this bold step and what science says about how dig...
Cold Comfort
16 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Air conditioning and refrigeration may beat the heat, but they also present a dilemma. The more we use them, the more greenhouse gases we emit, the ho...
Introducing Spotlight on SETI!
12 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Are we alone? The search for life in the universe is on! For 40 years, the SETI Institute has been a leader in the search for life and intelligence b...
Shipwrecks
09 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Shipwrecks are scenes of tragedy, but they are also bits of history frozen in time that can provide insights into events and ideas from long ago. That...
Calling All Aliens*
02 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Are we alone in the universe? Is there other intelligence out there? COSMIC, the most ambitious SETI search yet, hopes to answer that. We hear updates...
Life in the Solar System
26 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Spewing lava and belching noxious fumes, volcanoes seem hostile to biology. But the search for life off-Earth includes the hunt for these hotheads on ...
Catching Fire
19 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We have too much “bad fire.” Not only destructive wildfires, but the combustion that powers our automobiles and provides our electricity has gener...
Not Just a Phage
12 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We’re hurtling towards a post-antibiotic world, as the overuse of antibiotics has given rise to dangerous drug-resistant bacteria. Can we fight back...
Skeptic Check: Is Social Media Harming Kids?
05 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Social media use among teens has risen alongside rates of anxiety and depression. Addressing what he calls a mental health crisis, the Surgeon General...
Animal Alphabets
29 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Have scientists discovered an alphabet in whale calls? As researchers try to decipher the series of clicks made by sperm whales, we ask whether these ...
Allergy Reason*
22 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Runny nose. Itchy, watery eyes. Sneezing. If you don’t have allergies, you probably know someone who does. The number of people with allergies, incl...
CRISPR Mosquitoes*
15 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The powerful gene editing tool CRISPR is already being tested on animal and plant cells. It has even been used on humans. How might this revolutionar...
Don't Lighten Up
08 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A canopy of stars in the night sky is more than breathtaking. Starlight is also an important tool that astronomers use to study our universe. But the ...
Aliens Now
01 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We are closer than ever to finding aliens according to astrophysicist Adam Frank. He isn’t alone in his optimism. Over the last two decades, the too...
Skeptic Check: The Body Electric*
24 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Electricity plays an important role in our everyday lives, including allowing our bodies to communicate internally. But some research claims electrici...
Flower Power*
17 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Before everything could come up roses, there had to be a primordial flower – the mother, and father, of all flowers. Now scientists are on the hunt ...
Animals Being Jerks*
10 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
They’re cute and cuddly. But they can also be obnoxious. Science writer Mary Roach has numerous tales about how our animal friends don’t always bo...
Post Social Media*
03 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Before you check your social media feeds today. And post. And post again. And get into an argument on Twitter, lose track of time and wonder where the...
Skeptic Check: Feeling Risky*
27 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It’s not just facts that inform our decisions. They’re also guided by how those facts feel. From deciding whether to buckle our seat belts to addr...
Beyond the Standard Model
20 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ever heard of a beauty quark? How about a glueball? Physics is full of weird particles that leave many of us scratching our heads. But these tiny part...
The Play's the Thing
13 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Has children’s play become too safe? Research suggests that efforts to prioritize safety harms children’s mental and physical development during p...
Nuts and Bolts
06 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How frequently do you think about fasteners like screws and bolts? Probably not very often. But some of them a storied history, dating back to Egypt i...
Phreaky Physics*
29 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It was a radical idea a century ago, when Einstein said space and time can be bent, and gravity was really geometry. We hear how his theories inspire ...
De-Permafrosting*
22 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Above the Arctic Circle, much of the land is underlaid by permafrost. But climate change is causing it to thaw. This is not good news for the planet. ...
For the Birds*
15 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Birds have it going on. Many of these winged dinosaurs delight us with their song and brilliant plumage. Migratory birds travel thousands of miles in ...
Fungi Fear*
08 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The zombie eco-thriller “The Last of Us” has alerted us to the threats posed by fungi. But the show is not entirely science fiction. Our vulnerab...
Coffee of the Future
01 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Drinking a cup of coffee is how billions of people wake up every morning. But climate change is threatening this popular beverage. Over 60% of the wor...
When the Moon Hits Your Eye
25 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Great North American Solar Eclipse will trace a path of shadow across Mexico and 13 U.S. States on April 8th. Phil Plait, also known as The Bad As...
Skeptic Check: Asteroid Mining
18 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Asteroids are rich in precious metals and other valuable resources. But mining them presents considerable challenges. We discuss these, and consider h...
Feet Don't Fail Me
11 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Standing on your own two feet isn’t easy. While many animals can momentarily balance on their hind legs, we’re the only critters, besides birds, f...
Lady Parts**
04 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe has ignited fierce debate about bodily autonomy. But it’s remarkable how little we know about female physiology....
Tomb with a View*
26 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A century ago, British archaeologist Howard Carter opened the only surviving intact tomb from ancient Egypt. Inside was the mummy of the boy king Tuta...