Probably Science

Comedian and actor Dan Oster ( @dernerster ) joins Matt and a normally voiced Andy to discuss pantomime dwarves, a desert update, neutron stars showing their cores , a porn star and a toad-venom death , psychological pain treatments, tripping on nutmeg and Dan's A Podcast, But Evil . This episode is brought to you by  The Great Courses Plus , offering Probably Science listeners a free trial with u...

Friends of the show Sarah Morgan ( @sarahlmorgan ) and JJ Whitehead ( @JJWhitesnake ) return to talk with Matt and a strangely deep-voiced Andy about a USB stick to protect you from the evils of 5G , controlling monkey minds via ultrasound , a super-deep octopus and monkeys stealing coronavirus samples . This episode is brought to you by  The Great Courses Plus , offering Probably Science listener...

Comedian, actor and voice performer extraordinaire Carlos Alazraqui (@ carlosalazraqui ) joins Matt and Andy to talk about what you can learn from hundreds of skydiving jumps, mud flows on Mars , laughing gas from penguin poop , a worm that survived being frozen for 41,000 years  and Carlos' new movie Witness Infection .

Comedian Kristin Key ( @thekristinkey ) joins Matt and Andy to talk about her new album Keeper of Feelings , the importance of moths , illicit surfing in bioluminescence , neon dolphins , Pluto's haze , SOFIA , thirsty koalas licking trees  and rain caused by nuclear testing . This episode is brought to you by  StartAPod , offering our listeners 50% off the first year of a monthly or annual subscr...

Writer Scott Vrooman ( @mescottvrooman ) joins Matt and Andy to discuss watching rocket launches, Trident missile tests , what it actually takes to make a ventilator, murder hornets , how to give CPR , the psychological health of vegetarians and meat-eaters , girlfriends' effects on risk-taking  and the new Quibi show Memory Hole . This episode is brought to you by  The Great Courses Plus , offeri...

Erstwhile Probably Science cohost Jesse Case ( @jessecase ) of Jesse vs. Cancer fame returns (remotely) to discuss everyone's new living situations, what the old Bluebell house looks like now , Andy's neighbor's text , a new LIGO discovery , bird brain sizes , a black paint that somehow cools buildings  and analyzing whether farts can spread coronavirus . This episode is brought to you by  The Gre...

Writer Sam Pasternack ( @SamPasternack ) of The Podcasternack joins Matt and Andy while riding his quarantine exercise bike to discuss the real toilet paper problem , bomb tests and whale shark ages , a VERY personalized toilet , an unexpected downside of planting trees , a Mercury mission that just got underway and a five-year time lapse of its path to Mercury orbit . This episode is brought to y...

Comedian/actor Danny Jolles ( @DannyJolles ) joins Andy and Matt to discuss celebrity centers , political science, the astrophysicist who got magnets stuck up his nose , arm hickeys, mouse emotions , finding Clooneys when stressed , neanderthal fishing , ancient Australian fossils , wrestler Mae Young , Danny's podcast Everything But The Scores and Brooks' ridiculous one-man hungover marathon . Th...

Comedian Grant Lyon ( @grantlyon1 ) returns to the podcast on the heels of the release of his new album " Scheduled Fun Time " to talk about "Imagine" parodies , a Mars lander hitting itself with a shovel , NASA accepting applications , genetically modified neurons and implants , Earth's tiny new moon , Grant's astronaut neighbor and an animal that doesn't need oxygen to survive .

Dr. Barry Fox is a Clinical Professor of Infectious Disease at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. He also teaches An Introduction to Infectious Diseases on The Great Courses Plus , which turns out to be a very timely lecture series right now. Dr. Fox talks with Matt and Andy about infectious disease in general, and COVID-19 in particular, while helping clarify what w...

Comedian/actor Langston Kerman ( @LangstonKerman , Insecure , South Side , Bless This Mess ) joins Matt and Andy for a COVID-19 quarantine edition of the podcast, discussing oceanography, subterranean chlamydia , raining molten iron , bike speed records , tiny dinosaurs , mammoth bones , forbidden fruit and insect butter . This episode is brought to you by  The Great Courses Plus , offering Probab...

Comedians Sharon Mahoney ( @sharonmahoneyca ) and Byron Bertram ( @byronbertram ) join Matt and Andy to discuss glowing amphibians , COVID-19, Pence's spotty record, the Halifax Explosion and molecular oxygen being found beyond the Milky Way . This episode is brought to you by  The Great Courses Plus , offering Probably Science listeners a free month of unlimited access by visiting TheGreatCourses...

Barry Rothbart ( @barryrothbart ) returns to Probably Science eight years after his last appearance to discuss Scorcese films, Mad Mike Hughes, an autism apology, COVID-19, relative risks and vaccines, expensive cars and being a dick , electricity from thin air , seatbelt laws and lives saved and bomb-sniffing locusts .

Video game writer/narrative director and VR advocate Rob Yescombe ( @robyescombe ) joins Matt and Andy to discuss 90s computer games on TV, Gamesmaster with Take That , Oculus Quest, inside-out tracking, parallax, light field cameras, volumetric video capture, Surinder Rattan's The Lick , making the VR whodunit The Invisible Hours  and the game RiME . This episode is brought to you by  The Great C...

Writer/producer Krister Johnson ( @KristerJohnson ) joins Matt and Andy to discuss his hilarious new Netflix show Medical Police , God's Pottery , Matt LeBlanc and a very specific accent , virus-naming , radiation-eating fungi , autism and myelin , extreme knitting and walking sharks .

Comedian Ed Salazar ( @edasalazar ) joins Andy and Matt to talk about the new Goop show, Marianne Williamson's disease theories, yoga scammers, Catholic workouts, Einstein being right again , Mercury retrograde explained , YouTube Wired experts , dorking out on musical intervals , more giant horrendous creepy-crawlies , the upcoming show The Great Debate and koala balls . This episode is brought t...

Comedian Tiffany Stevenson ( @tiffstevenson ) joins Matt and Andy to talk about loads of Australian spiders and how to catch them , more drop bear nonsense , Vesuvius turning brains to glass , alcoholic spines, eating too many Australian cakes , Dr. Heimlich and cuttlefish VR .

Alice Fraser ( @aliterative , Tea With Alice , The Last Post ) sits in as guest co-host for this chat with Comedy Store Players veteran and Whose Line Is It Anyway cast member Richard Vranch ( @richardvranch ), who more importantly for us is Dr. Richard Vranch, former physicist, for talk about the early days of UK comedy, and his experiments with silicon chips and radiation.

While on the road, Matt talks to Dr. Damian King about his work as the head of Neutral Beam Injection for the JET (Joint European Torus) at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy and why heating things to 30 million degrees isn't nearly enough. This episode is brought to you by  The Great Courses Plus , offering Probably Science listeners three months of unlimited access for only $30 by visiting TheG...

Comedians Kate Kennedy ( @TheOGKennedy ) and TJ Chambers ( @tjchambersLA ) join Andy to discuss physics for poets, Feynman memoirs , family trips and home movies ,  record-breaking geysers , blood waterfalls  and freezing water at its boiling point . This episode is brought to you by  The Great Courses Plus , offering Probably Science listeners a free trial with unlimited access to thousands of le...

Writer/comedians TJ Chambers ( @tjchambersLA ) and Jordan Morris ( @Jordan_Morris ) return to the podcast to wrap up the decade that was the 2010s, covering things along the way including penis fish , the cat that says "well, hi!" , the biggest scientific happenings of the decade, Karen Gillan's box office dominance, the book Orange World and the podcast Bubble .

Author of books, graphic novels and comics including DC's Batgirl Cecil Castellucci ( @misscecil ) joins Matt, Andy and her neuroscientist father Vincent to talk about her new graphic novel memoir Girl on Film , which intertwines the story of her life in the arts and schooling at Laguardia High School of the Performing Arts with sidebars on the neuroscience of memory and a look at Vincent's life's...

Comedian Louis Katz ( @louiskatz ) of the podcast Road Heads joins Andy and Matt to discuss robot deliveries , semen shocks (and overly detailed pictures ), honking dinosaurs , the Jurassic Park melodica cover , plants making noises , Mort Garson's music for plants , Brazil's museum that burned down, browncardigan.com , a robot space hotel and who's in space right now .

Comedian and game show-hosting veteran Bil Dwyer ( @BilDwyer ) returns to the podcast 7 1/2 years after his last appearance to talk about Dirty Rotten Cheater , more reasons to hate paper straws , the greatest prank call ever , BLEVEs , frozen dogs , shrinking birds , tattooed mummies , audiophile coral reefs and a possible fifth force of nature .

Matthew D. LaPlante ( @mdlaplante ), author of the new book Superlative: The Biology of Extremes , joins Matt and Andy to talk about all creatures great and small (and fast and slow and strong and old and deadly...) and look at the many surprising things to be learned from nature's outliers.