Ologies with Alie Ward

Shipwrecks. Treasure. Sunken planes. Scuttled submarines. New life forming around old machinery. There’s an -ology for that -- just ask Maritime Archaeologist and wreck nerd Chanelle Zaphiropoulos. This absolutely charming and passionate scuba diver, history buff and antiquities scholar dishes about pirates, warships, admirals worth admiring, and ships ranging in size from water taxis to the Costa...

Real skulls. Fake pistols. Vegan steaks. Onstage bonfires. Cursed productions. Industry secrets and more with the world’s most lovable and beloved prop master, Professor Jay Duckworth aka @Proptologist on TikTok. A veteran of stage and screen and now an adjunct professor at Pace University, Jay chats about props vs. wardrobe vs. set design, how he keeps tracks of the thousands of items used to mak...

Because one bears is not enough bears, SIX more ursinologists join to answer your questions about polar bear fur, monogamy, that scene from "The Revenant" and more. Five chapters of bear life, from mindblowing mating strategies to how bears get from point A to B, media portrayals of these beautiful beasts and how to save them. Also: do bears want you to sing to them? Bear biologists and conservati...

Grizzlies. Pandas. Black bears. Chonkers. The episode you’ve begged for with scientist, explorer, and Ursinologist Chris Morgan. Why are bear ears so cute? What’s up with hibernation? How do you play nice with bears? What is it like to hug them? How creepy is Teddy Ruxpin? Panda patterns, fat bear competitions, tooth nubbins, land “bridges,” camping tips and more with host of “The Wild” podcast an...

This encore includes tons of previously cut and never-before-heard bonus material (and maybe an eggregious number of sidenotes) about how perfect and weird eggs are. The biggest eggs! The smallest eggs! The people arrested for stealing the most eggs! Oologist Dr. John Bates gives Alie a tour of the egg vault at the Field Museum of Chicago and it was a barrage of beautiful sights and shocking facts...

PART 2 with legit professional Fanthropologist Meredith Levine. In this thrilling conclusion, we take Patreon questions and address stans vs. fans, cults and fandom, how fan fiction circumvents the studio system, how showrunners feel about fan suggestions, fangirling, fanboying and a novel term for that plus a bonus tables-are-turned interview about your weird dad’s favorite stuff. Fanthroplogy: a...

Why does some music give us butterflies? Why do we loooove certain comic books, social media accounts or TV characters? What story does your toothpaste tell? Legit professional Fanthropologist Meredith Levine is a fount of fandom knowledge and we chat all about everything from cosplay to K-Pop, Star Wars, Frasier, Trekkies, fan-fic, how influencer culture works, the algorithms, and how loving what...

What’s in pee? Should you donate a kidney to a stranger? Which hurts worse: childbirth or kidney stones? Why are some kidneys the size of footballs? March is World Kidney Month and before you shrug it off: 15% of adults have chronic kidney disease -- and most don’t even know it. This episode could save a life. Transplant Nephrologist Dr. Samira Farouk chats about how nephrology is for cool kids, h...

They are numerous. They are patient. They are COMING for the United States in droves this spring: They are cicadas. *The* Cicada guy Dr. Gene Kritsky joins to chat all about the annual cicadas you may see every summer vs. the periodical ones that cycle through the states in broods of giant numbers. Learn how they survive underground for decades, what they are doing down there, all about their life...

Yes, an entire episode on butts. Primatologist and anthropologist Natalia Reagan joins to chat about the caboose: why do we have butts? Why do we like butts? How do we appreciate ours even more? She drops knowledge on bidets, wiping, twerking, the mystical field of Rumpology, how our derrieres have our back, plus butt dimples, and crack formations. Also: some personal revelations and getting back...

This one’s got it all: teeny tiny cellular factories, obscure trivia, historical gossip, sick beats, mitochondrial relevancy, viral popularity, a backstory that with charm you to death, sports cars, lab coats, smelly vats, Space Camp and mysteries of the brain. Raven The Science Maven has a background in molecular biology and is getting her Ph. D in Science Communication and shares stories from bo...

You might only know carob as not-chocolate, which is a tragedy of its disco-era branding. This tough, gnarly, drought-resistant plant is the real-life Giving Tree, explains passionate Carobologist Megan Lynch. Dripping with leathery banana-shaped legume pods, this tree quietly dots suburban streets but has kept people alive through wars and famines, can feed livestock, makes beautiful furniture, a...

Part 2 is here! Gamestop, #stonks, Universal Basic Income, how to incentivize things that are good for us, whether or not kids should have an allowance, Trekonomics and more. Economist, professor and “Freakonomics” co-author Steven Levitt joins to chat about everything from being cheap and what decision making costs our minds to the worth of the Amazon rainforest. Rising economics star and Harvard...

Choices! Trade-offs! Money! How much should you save? And how much should stimulus checks be? Don’t be scared by the term “economics,” especially since it doesn’t end in -ology. This 2-part Economic Sociology bonanza addresses the behavior that motivates the fiscal systems of the world, from avocado toast to retirement funds. Economist, professor and “Freakonomics” co-author Steven Levitt joins to...

A LOST EPISODE! Three years in the making, this interview features vials of vile creatures, worm drama, febrile hallucinations, spooning, and unfortunate snacks. It has waited a long time to meet you, so let’s get weird, take a trip back to summer of 2017 -- before Ologies existed -- and unearth one of the very first, never-before-heard interviews. Alie absolutely bungles her way through a chat wi...

RATS: They love pizza. They invade taquerias at midnight. They scurry. They cuddle. They outsmart. They inspire movies that inspire musicals. Proving that not just woodsy megafauna can be charismatic, rats have lives we would never suspect. Globally-lauded Urban Rodentologist Dr. Robert Corrigan, or Bobby if you like, has been studying these animals in their big-city ecosystem for decades and he i...

The Coronasode we’ve been waiting for! Vaccines. Finally. But what does this mean? As a Vaccine Infodemiologist and science communication lead for The COVID Tracking Project , Jessica Malaty Rivera specializes in infectious disease epidemics and the surge of misinformation that accompanies them. The very first human trials of the COVID-19 vaccine occurred in March 2020, and Alie asks Jessica one m...

Part 2 of a very special duo! The fresh catch-up interview to learn what the world’s most charming and enthusiastic tree expert, Casey Clapp, has been up to since his 2018 episode aired. He’s been busy. Listen to hear if he’s gotten more pine cone tattoos, what other trees he hates, which ones he gives 10/10, musical blunders, winter pagan traditions, and why trees may play a huge role in his pers...

Part 1 of a very special duo: Do trees have feelings? How do they talk? How old can they get? Are there any tree stories that will make me cry? Spoiler: YES. This episode aired in May 2018 and is worth a revisit, especially since Part 2 is a brand new 2020 interview with possibly the world's most enthusiastic tree expert, J. Casey Clapp. Learn about his many tree tattoos, new additions to those ta...

This specific episode was cited in The New Yorker this week , so we’re giving it an encore refresh with bonus material and a 2020 update from Dr. Esposito herself! Scorpions: the victims of undue shade. If you've ever wanted to impress a date with weird facts THIS IS THE EPISODE FOR YOU. A handful of people on planet Earth have a PhD in scorpions and Dr. Lauren Esposito is one of them. She spills...

A long snout. Hundreds of teeth. Scales that could slice you. What is a gar and should we fear it? Should we hug it? One of the world’s most passionate and knowledgeable experts on this ancient, mysterious fish joins to make you fall in love with these slimy longbois. Dr. Solomon David is affable, charming, enthusiastic and absolutely shameless when it comes to fish puns. Slip into some hip waders...

Gaze into the cosmos and wonder at broken satellites, retired rockets and shattered contraptions. Archaeologist Dr. Alice Gorman is a leading expert on orbital debris and chats about what’s up there, how it got there, and how to get it down. Strap in to hear about everything from Sputnik to sports cars, flaming garbage bonking us, alien clutter, collision potential, the most adorable space rubbish...

Alligators, crocodiles and … a shut-down nuclear weapons plant? The excitement never ends when you’re Laura Kojima, an Alligator Ecotoxicologist. A longtime reptile cheerleader, Laura has passion to match some truly bananas stories about field work, tail smacks, gator jaws, mercury levels, swamp boats, and crocodilian evolution, overbites, and locomotion. Her incredible work keeps people -- and th...

Gratitude: what’s the deal? Does it really make us happier? Even when the world seems terrible? Or is being appreciative a bunch of hokey flim-flam? Author Neil Pasricha started a blog of 1000 Awesome Things in 2008 and it led him down rabbit holes looking into the science of gratitude and how to better survive some really tough times. Learn about your new morning ritual, how much of happiness is...

Sexy apes: you’re one of them. And Biological Anthropologist Dr. Lara Durgavich joins to chat about everything from monogamy to PMS, male birth control pills, freezers of orangutan urine, imposter syndrome and testosterone, how the Pope makes you buy more tampons, which species has better sex, pancakes vs. boners, and boobs as a life preserver. It’s wall to wall gonad gossip and just may change th...