UnDisciplined

This week on Undisciplined, we’re going to talk about climate solutions. And here’s the curveball: while you might think that politically conservative states are an unlikely place to find a science-backed roadmap for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, that might not be the case.

This week on the program, we’re going to solve a puzzle. Or, we’re going to try, at least. And here’s the challenge: how do you communicate the depth and gravity and overwhelming scientific consensus on the changes that are coming for our world without making people throw their hands up in despair?

When we told psychologist Joshua Jackson that we were going to ask him to have a discussion with an expert in tree genetics, he wasn’t sure how it would go. But after the conversation, Jackson marvelled at just how interconnected their two worlds of research were.

This week on Undisciplined, we’re talking about “Project Iceworm,” a secret U.S. government project to build nuclear launch sites in northern Greenland back in the 1960s. Now the project site is getting a renewed look by scientists, thanks to a 1.3-kilometer-long ice core sample that was extracted from the site and kept in storage for more than 50 years. What secrets does it hold?

This week on Undisciplined, we’re talking about the impact of sports on human behavior and impact of chaos on plants, with guests whose fields couldn’t be more different. Or, at least, that’s what it looks like at first.

This week on Undisciplined, we’re talking about the black market exchange of diabetes medications in the United States and the evolution of vocal traits of a small, nocturnal primate in Indonesia, with guests whose work is very different, but whose drive to ask and answer complicated questions is very much the same.

This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about the discovery of an essential element for life on a meteorite, using A.I. for archaeology, and vampire bat buddies. It's time for the monthly science news roundup.

It's the October science news roundup! This month, we're talking about the little tiny monsters of the present, the really big monsters of the past, the really scary things people do on Earth, and the even scarier stuff out there in outer space.

This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about bee biodiversity, blood platelets, genetic engineering, environmental journalism, the fast-changing world of medicine, and the future of our planet.

This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about risk and, as we like to do, we're coming to that idea from two very different directions. One of our guests studies aquatic predators, like sharks, in an effort to better understand their role in the global ecosystem. The other creates transgenic organisms, like goats with spider genes, in an effort to build new knowledge and solve old problems.

This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about risk reduction.

This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about two ideas that fly in the face of conventional thought. One of our guests will tell us about the creatures in our gut — bacteria. The other will talk about an idea in many of our heads about how fake news impacts the political process.

This week on the show, we're talking about the science behind Hurricane Dorian, a "rat-pocalypse," a new human ancestor, and poison dart frogs. Everybody on the show is an expert on something, but none of them is an expert on those things.

This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking to a researcher who's demonstrated that some insects may actually benefit from pesticides. Then, we'll chat with a string theorist who is uncoupling ideas about the universe faster than you can say "Nikulin involution."

What if aging wasn't inevtiable? What if being 90 felt pretty much the same as being 40, just with a few extra decades of life experience? And what if the science that gets us to that point in human history wasn't the subject of speculative fiction — what if it was real?

This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about movement. Our first guest is a scientist whose research is helping us understand the ways the world's largest animal moves its body. Our second guest is a researcher whose recent studies uncover the ways animals are moved as part of complex global trafficking networks.

This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about the shape of the Milky Way Galaxy, life on the Moon, a poorly-timed tweet, and the potential impact of artificial intelligence on Hollywood. That's right, it's time for the monthly science news roundup!

Today on UnDisciplined, we'll be joined by a scientist who is searching the world for the blackest of black. Next, we'll talk to a researcher who is trying to get a handle on how superstitions spread.

This week on UnDisiplined, we're joined for the second time by Karen Lloyd, whose work is helping us understand the relationship between microbes, carbon, and the deep Earth.

For more than a year now, we've been bringing together researchers from different disciplines in our never-ending search to build interdisciplinary connections. That's a lot of researchers, who are all doing a lot of really fascinating work — but we haven't had a paleontologist on our program yet. So today, that's going to change.

There's no way we could let this month pass us by without talking about the 50th anniversary of one of the greatest scientific achievements of all time: the moon landing. But don't worry, we won't get stuck in the past.

Usually on UnDisciplined, we bring together two scientists to build interdisciplinary connections — but one of the research efforts we're talking about is already really interdisciplinary. So this week, we're going rogue.

Do you know what kills more women during and after pregnancy than anything else? The answer is probably going to surprise you. And do you have a pretty good understanding of how evolution works? If so, we might have another surpirse for you.

This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about the way dolphins survive in captivity, and the way humans make decisions based on the chemicals in their bodies.

This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about how things start.