Sing for Science

Recorded live at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, this episode features world-renowned soprano Renée Fleming and vocal-science researcher Dr. Sean Hutchins in a conversation that plays like part masterclass, part science session. Together they explore how the anatomy and neuroscience of singing shape everything from breath and resonance to pitch and vocal control. Fleming reflects on th...

Recorded live at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto on October 31, 2025, this episode brings together beloved children’s musician and advocate Raffi and University of Toronto psychologist Dr. Jennifer Stellar for a conversation about how music helps shape our earliest experiences of empathy, gratitude, and wonder. Raffi reflects on three songs spanning nearly three decades of his career—“T...

Recorded live at Emory IDEAS Fest in Covington, GA on October 18, 2025, this episode brings together Rosanne Cash—four-time Grammy winner, songwriter, and Americana icon—and psychologist Dr. Robyn Fivush for a conversation about how the stories we tell across generations shape who we become. Rosanne shares the story of “The List”—the 100 essential country songs her father, Johnny Cash, gave her wh...

Subscribe to Fela Kuti: Fear No Man. In a world that’s on fire, what is the role of art? What can music actually…do? Can a song save a life? Change a law? Topple a president? Get you killed? In Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, Jad Abumrad—creator of Radiolab, More Perfect, and Dolly Parton’s America—tells the story of one of the great political awakenings in music: how a classically trained 'colonial boy’...

Recorded live in front of a sold out crowd at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on September 18, 2025, Kacey Musgraves and pioneering mycologist Paul Stamets dive deep into the biology, evolution, and mental health potential of psilocybin. From its ancient ritual roots to its emerging role in modern therapy, their conversation reveals how this once-taboo organism is transforming our understanding...

“Amplify” author and AJR member Adam Met talks about the playbook he wrote applying fan-building strategies to the climate movement. Adam drops silver linings aplenty in our chat with Alexis Abramson, Dean of the Columbia Climate School, the world’s first truly comprehensive university climate program. Among the silver linings: it only takes 3.9% of a population to demand and create change, tremen...

Laurie Anderson joins us live from NYC’s Poster House Museum in conversation with Dr. Zia Mian (Princeton physicist & nuclear policy expert). We explore her iconic 1982 hit “O Superman” and its album Big Science—how it anticipated many of the tensions of the nuclear age and still resonates powerfully in today’s disarmament debates. Together, they challenge the logic of deterrence, unpack how nucle...

Singer-songwriter Noah Cyrus talks about her haunting new album inspired by a hymn written by her great-grandfather, and her deepest fear—not death itself, but being separated from her loved ones. She also opens up about her near-death experience and the profound losses that shaped her experience with love and grief. Joining her is Dr. Kim Penberthy of UVA’s Division of Perceptual Studies, whose r...

WARNING: This episode contains content related to mortuary science that some listeners may find disturbing. Korn frontman Jonathan Davis delves into his past as a mortician with popular science bestselling author, Mary Roach. Mary wrote the hit book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers and the two have no shortage of gory details to discuss. We talk about the biology of human corpse decompos...

Recorded live at Boston’s Museum of Science on July 31, 2025. Visionary singer-songwriter Neko Case joins ecological horticulturist and Brooklyn Bridge Park garden designer Rebecca McMackin for a wide-ranging conversation about land stewardship, biodiversity, and the joys of gardening. From Neko’s epic Vermont garden to Rebecca’s work creating pollinator-friendly urban habitats, the two share prac...

Join acclaimed singer-songwriter and Tiny Desk phenom Madison McFerrin as she bakes chocolate chip cookies live and chats with host Matt Whyte in the first Microscopes episode of Sing For Science. Madison shares how baking and music serve as parallel creative outlets—both shaped by improvisation, intuition, and love. They dig into the science of baking, from emulsification and leavening to the Mai...

Taped Live in Boston as part of the 2025 WBUR Festival at City Space. Join celebrated American songwriter, Josh Ritter for a chat about the night sky, the dimensionality of truth, UAP, creativity and more with Harvard Astrophysicist, Dr. Avi Loeb. This episode also includes a live performance of Josh’s song "Truth is a Dimension (Both Invisible and Blinding)"

Join UK superstar and boxing enthusiast, YUNGBLUD for his chat with renowned fitness performance scientist, Dr. Brad Schoenfeld. We chat about the mechanics of boxing, how YUNGBLUD’s boxing practice has improved not just his strength and stamina as a performer but aided in treating his ADHD, how to sculpt your body systematically with resistance training, myths about weight lifting and more!

Join UK superstar and boxing enthusiast, YUNGBLUD for his chat with renowned fitness performance scientist, Dr. Brad Schoenfeld. We chat about the mechanics of boxing, how YUNGBLUD’s boxing practice has improved not just his strength and stamina as a performer but aided in treating his ADHD, how to sculpt your body systematically with resistance training, myths about weight lifting and more!

Recorded Live at the Museum of Science in Boston on May 8, 2024, musician polymath and Talking Heads co-founder David Byrne talks with The Book of Eels author, Patrik Svensson. Even in today’s age of advanced science, no one has ever seen eels mating or giving birth, and we still don’t understand what drives them — after living for decades in freshwater — to swim great distances back to the ocean...

Taped Live in Los Angeles at Dynasty Typewriter with cultural icon and comedy legend, Tommy Chong alongside world-renowned cannabis researcher, Dr. Staci Gruber (McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School). Together, they do a deep dive on what science can tell us about cannabis use both recreational and clinical. Discover how cannabis is revolutionizing healthcare, its extraordinary biology, and its...

Join Grammy-nominated Colombian-Canadian singer, Jessie Reyez for a chat about her hypnotic ode to “Palo Santo”. We talk about smudging, incense rituals in Colombia vs North America, crowd surfing accidents, how we smell, why smells produce such strong emotional responses, the DOD’s “Stink Bomb” and more!

Join RÜFÜS DU SOL lead singer Tyrone Lindqvist for a deep dive on the breathing tools he and his band use to sustain their demanding live performances and on the experience that inspired their latest album. Also joining us is perhaps the best known expert on the subject from the science world, UCLA neurologist Dr. Jack Feldman. We cover the psychedelic experience that Wim Hoff breathing technique...

Join massive Canadian DJ BLOND:ISH for a conversation about seeking a life of balance, her philosophy on the exchange of energy and her non-profit “Bye Bye Plastic” which she started to help eradicate single use plastics from all aspects of the music industry. Also joining us is Dr. Kara Wiggin, a plastics researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. Kara is an ecotoxicologist a...

Duran Duran's Nick Rhodes and Particle Physicist Brian Cox discuss time travel, the intersection of politics and science and more!

This episode originally aired on Feb 2, 2022. Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, co-founders of Blondie speak with climatologist Dr. Michael Mann about ancient climate history, the relationship between agriculture and climate, preventing climate catastrophe and much more.

Star stuff! And lots of it. In this episode we chat with Rahim Redcar from Christine and the Queens and physicist, Matteo Cantiello about plasma - the most abundant form of matter in our universe: what is it, what’s it do and where is it found. We also cover extraterrestrial intelligence, the origins of life on earth, panspermia, Spirituality with a capital “S” and more.

Join Simpsons favorite, Moe The Bartender and his human counterpart Hank Azaria for a lively conversation with Social Neuroscientist, Dr. Kevin Ochsner. We talk about the legendary “Flaming Moe’s” Simpsons episode from both Moe’s and Hank’s perspectives, how and why our brains are wired to thrive in social contexts like Moe’s Tavern, Hank’s experience recovering from alcoholism, the neural underpi...

Recorded Live at the Museum of Science in Boston on October 8, 2024 as part of the Reno Family Foundation Symposium Series. #1 NY Times Bestselling Author Patricia Cornwell and Harvard astrophysicist Dr. Avi Loeb discuss the uncanny resemblance between Dr. Loeb and the primary murder victim in Patricia’s latest book “Identity Unknown”, the likelihood of alien life beyond our solar system, the conn...

Recorded Live at the Emory Ideas Fest at Emory University’s Oxford Campus on September 22, 2024. Global dance music stars SOFI TUKKER celebrate the release of their bread themed album Bread with a conversation about the science that makes bread so delicious and universal. Joining us is food scientist Dr. Maria Ortiz who runs the popular Instagram page “All You Knead Is Bread”. We talk bread chemis...